A mother from New Zealand has called on stores to remove ‘gendered’ labels from children’s clothing range as her daughter liked a boy’s dinosaur shirt.
India Springle shared a photo of her happy 2-year-old girl Lola wearing her new shirt from Kmart. But after checking again, she discovered that her daughter’s favorite t-shirt was labeled for boys.
Ms. Springle then took to Facebook and called on Kmart to get rid of the ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ labels so children can freely choose what they want to wear.
“’Hey Kmart… Get with the program already would you?! Even my nearly three year old thinks your gender labels are bull,” she wrote on Facebook.
“Why the hell are all the cool T-shirts labeled “boys” – what makes this T-shirt a boy’s T-shirt anyway?
“Girls can only wear a dinosaur T-shirt if it’s pink and full of sequins?! Honestly it is beyond ridiculous get in the modern world you archaic bunch of fossils… down with gendered kids clothes and down with lame girls clothes.
“Sure there are heaps of bigger things going on in the world right now but I happen to think that it is pretty important to allow our children to wear whichever clothes they choose and not feel shame or stigma because that piece of clothing has been assigned a specific gender.”
A spokesperson for Kmart told Daily Mail Australia: “At Kmart our store design is set up to assist customers with a convenient shopping experience based on their shopping behaviour.
“At Kmart we are constantly listening to our customers and incorporating their feedback to both future product ranges and store design.”
She also started an online petition calling on Kmart to roll out genderless labels across all stores.
One mother said: “Ridiculous, I cannot understand in this day and age why I have to go to the boys section to get even just a plain black t-shirt and black jeans for my two-and-a-half-year old girl. Labelled boys – WTF. It’s mental.”
But her petition backfired with one mother saying: “I feel sorry for Lola having a mum that can get so upset over a label. Why didn’t you name her GREG or even better, why can’t you take the label off?”
Another wrote: “Why does it matter so much about the words written in the label? Your daughter looks delightfully happy in her dinosaur top so why make an issue out of nothing.”
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Replaced!