Ten-year-old Hailey wears a cheerleader outfit, a short pink and blue suit with sequins and a big blue bow on her head, she's sitting in front of a blue wall looking into the distance. She is one of about 400 American girls portrayed by photographer Eva Verbeeck for her series "America's Girls."
Verbeeck grew up in Belgium. As a kid, she looked at many American glossy magazines and dreamed of looking like all the beautiful women she saw in the ads. She is now 27 years old, lives in the USA herself and sees everything a bit more differentiated and critical.
"The expectations that are placed on women can make it difficult for young girls," says Verbeeck DER SPIEGEL. She wants to make portraits that draw a different and more realistic picture and question the media-mediated concepts of beauty.
She met girls between the ages of six and 16, as she was particularly interested in this transitional phase: "Young girls seem to experience an incredibly rapid change in their youth, and for many, that's the hardest time of their lives." Your own body is developing and many are very insecure.
photo gallery
10 pictures
This is how we look: Photo project on young women in the USAVerbeeck's pictures show girls and young women whose hobbies are making or dancing music, riding rodeo or learning to shoot. Although the portraits are quite classic, Verbeeck still manages to capture the individuality of the person in small gestures and looks - through a raised chin, a cheeky look or the hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth.
Before taking pictures, Verbeeck talked to the project participants for a long time, asked them many questions. She tried to find out what interests her, what she likes about herself, how she feels at this stage of her life. Only when there was a certain intimacy between them, she set up the camera. She let the girls take a position where they felt comfortable - and pressed the trigger.
Even though the young women knew they were being watched and photographed, Verbeeck always tried to give them so much time until they did not pose - they were just themselves.