Doyin Richards calls it “the ultimate selfie” and many parents would enthusiastically agree.
The Los Angeles dad, who has become an Internet sensation after posting a photo of himself combing his 2-year-old daughter’s hair while holding his infant girl on his chest in a baby carrier, was greeted by applause when he stopped by to chat with the TODAY anchors on Friday.
Al Roker called him “my hero” for the tender father-daughter moment captured in the picture, while Richards explained he took the photo on a busy morning last fall.
“I was on paternity leave and my wife was getting the older (daughter) ready, and she’s running late for work, so she’s like, ‘The baby’s crying, I’m trying to do her hair, I don’t have time,’” he recalled.
“I said, listen, I’ve got this. So I put the little one in the Ergo and then I had (my older daughter) come over and I was combing her hair. And I thought there’s no way my wife is going to believe me… so I took the ultimate selfie.”
The picture, posted on his blog, has received an avalanche of “likes” on Facebook and has been shared thousands of times. Richards said he was surprised by the wave of love at first, but now understands all the interest the photo has sparked.
“There’s race, there’s fatherhood… there’s all types of things that go into it,” he said.
But not everyone loves Richards, who has also received some negative comments from men who say he’s making them look bad. So the anchors jokingly joined in with their own complaints.
“Thanks for setting the bar so high,” TODAY’s Carson Daly said sarcastically, to laughter in the studio. “Now when we can’t do something, our wives will just say, 'Well, Doyin does it!”