Salt Lake City Dad Spends $1,500 to Transform His 3-Year-Old Daughter Into Wonder Woman
"It was worth it to get my point across that women are powerful," says commercial photographer Josh Rossi, who built daughter Nellee's handcrafted leather costume and staged a photo shoot to make her look like she's soaring through the air.
Years down the road, when Nellee Rossi flips through her family's old photo albums, one page will surely catch her eye: Halloween 2016 — the year her father shelled out $1,500 to transform her into Wonder Woman. Now 3 years old, the Salt Lake City toddler has roused her parents at daybreak every morning for the last three weeks to declare that it's time to retrieve her new Wonder Woman costume from its special spot in the armoire so she can get dressed for the day.
"She refuses to take it off from sunrise to sunset, no matter where we go," Josh Rossi, a 31-year-old commercial photographer, tells PEOPLE. "I guess that's the price I pay for dreaming up the idea. My wife definitely won't let me live it down."
A once-in-a-lifetime outfit
After outfitting his only daughter as Little Red Riding Hood at age 1 and Disney's princess Mulan at age 2, Rossi — who also has a newborn son — decided he wanted to do something extraordinary this Halloween. "Since Nellee adores bold characters and can't get enough of Wonder Woman, I chose to go all in," he says. "I began building her costume on September 1, thinking, 'This is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime outfit — something she'll never forget.'"
It's certainly something Rossi won't be forgetting either, especially after the bill arrived for Nellee's handcrafted leather costume, props, and a photo shoot designed to make it look like she's soaring through the air and rescuing the world. "'Fifteen hundred dollars! Why would you do that?' I hear that plenty," he tells PEOPLE. "But it was worth it to get my point across that women are powerful."
More than being beautiful
"I wanted to portray my daughter as a strong character, rather than doing a shoot centered on her looks or how adorable she is. I want her to grow up knowing there's more to life than being beautiful," Rossi says. "To achieve the best possible result, a lot of pre-production was necessary, and that comes at a cost. But when I look at the final images and see how happy Nellee is, I think it was money well spent."
With the highly anticipated Wonder Woman movie starring Gal Gadot not due out until the following summer, Rossi turned to the film's trailer for inspiration. With assistance from her mother, Roxana, 29, Nellee practiced copying her favorite character's facial expressions by watching vintage Wonder Woman TV episodes from the 1970s. During the daylong photo shoot, five people lifted Nellee into the air to create the illusion that she was flying.