The internet thinks this mom and her daughters are sisters, and it's easy to see why
Yahoo Lifestyle has chosen this story, originally published on November 8, as an example of one of our best of 2017.
Kienya Booker isn’t a regular mom, she’s a cool mom. And a super young-looking mom. So much so, that people don’t even believe that she’s the mother of her two gorgeous children.
In a viral narrative that started when Booker first posted a “then-and-now” collage of herself and her two daughters, the natural hair guru is believed to be the long-lost triplet of her teenage offspring. Although the first of the throwback photos makes it evident that Booker is the eldest of the three, it seems that as her daughters K’Lienya and Kolieya Smith age, she simply does not.
“It was throwback Thursday on Instagram, and I decided to post a split picture,” Booker explains to Yahoo Lifestyle. “The top half of the picture was a throwback of me and my daughters from about 12 to 13 years ago, and the bottom half was a more recent picture of us. And that’s when it all started.”
As many on the internet do, people began to make memes. Most of the captions, along the lines of “Did their mom even age?” were funny and flattering. But others got a little weird.
“I came across a lot of people saying, ‘She’s not the mom, she’s their sister,’ or ‘She probably raised her little sisters and took them as her daughters,’ or ‘People will do anything for fame,’ meaning I’m pretending to be the mom,” Booker says. Then some began to claim that she might have even been a teen mom, saying that she must have been 15 years old when she first gave birth — which she says she was not.
A post shared by Dark Skin Women (@darkskinwomen) on Jan 21, 2017 at 10:15am PST
As the meme continued to be reposted on various pages, Booker was exposed to a number of opinions of strangers on the internet, including those who called her Benjamin Button. She calls the experience “bittersweet.”
“Thrilled about the meme but a bit thrown off with some of the negative comments,” she explains. “But for the most part, it was totally awesome!”
#tbt ……..If God be for us, than who can be against us? Romans 8:31 #meandmydaughters #mysquad
A post shared by Kienya Booker (@kienyabooker) on Nov 2, 2017 at 2:11pm PDT
#tbt to me and my daughters?????? #oneofmyfavs @kaay.s_ @koliieya.s
A post shared by Kienya Booker (@kienyabooker) on Oct 5, 2017 at 3:09pm PDT
Through the numerous photos that Booker continues to post of herself and her two daughters, followers can see that the resemblance between them all is uncanny. However, she passed something else onto her daughters as well.
“My Instagram page focuses on natural hairstyles and caring for natural hair, so I’m posting pictures of my daughters and I daily showing our hairstyles and the products we use,” Booker says. “I also record and post video tutorials showing how we created some of the styles.”
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