Going shopping as a kid is a confusing experience, with shelves stretching up into the skies and loads of treats lying around you aren’t allowed to nibble on.
When it comes to clothes shops things get even weirder; eerie mannequins pose in forbidden window displays with perfectly matched clothes and no faces.
It’s no wonder some children don’t know what to think about the creepy eyeless figures frozen in the middle of Topshop and New Look like they’d just remember they had left their wallet at home.
And for one little girl it was just all too much to deal with…
While out shopping at an Old Navy store in Sanford, Florida, with her mother, the unnamed little girl took a particular liking to one of the mannequins; hugging it close like an old friend.
Her highly amused mum filmed the adorable encounter, which showed the girl clinging on tight to the headless mannequin and describing it as her ‘brother’.
Despite the figure being headless and made of plastic, the emotional young shopper had mistaken it for her older brother and point blank refused to leave the shop without him.
Speaking about the too cute for words footage, her mum said:
We were at Old Navy and my daughter kept saying the mannequins were her brother. When I told her they had no head, the look on her face was priceless.
In the video, the mum can be heard asking, ‘you love your brother?’ to which the girl firmly replies, ‘I don’t want to leave my brother!’ wrapping her arms tighter still around the humanoid coat hanger.
After the girl declares once again she loves her brother too much to leave him, her giggling mum lifts the camera to capture the empty space where a head should be.
At this point, the mum patiently explains:
You have to leave your brother. It’s not your brother, it’s a mannequin. Look, there’s no head.
The complete surprise as the girl looks up at the headless model before moving swiftly away is perfect.
Her cackling mum then lifts hats from other mannequins to prove they are also in no way related to them, or to anyone.
However, still not quite grasping the situation, she wails ‘My brother don’t have a heads!’, shaking the mannequin sorrowfully before appearing to head for the exit.
The video quickly went viral and people loved the dramatic little girl with her concern for mannequin welfare. Some commenters even shared hilarious mannequin mishaps of their own.
One person wrote:
That’s not embarrassing at all my oldest son was three-years-old we were in Macy’s Bra department and I lost him.
I was screaming out my child name I was thinking the worst has happened long story short he was sucking one of the store mannequins boobs.
People were walking by laughing and pointing he gave No … at all!
Another admitted:
I bumped into a mannequin once in a department store, I apologised profusely and thought it was quite rude that the ‘person’ didn’t respond.
Had walked on but decided to look around, I then realised it was a mannequin and a person nearby who had witnessed it cracking up laughing!!!
Hopefully this girl hasn’t been left too traumatised by her “brother’s” true identity!
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.