Aimée Morrison tweeted these pajamas she found at a Target store. Photo: (By Christine Robinson Logel via Twitter) In today’s entrenched-sexism-in-baby-clothing news: girls can’t be super heroes.
Well, at least if you ask Target, which is selling a pair of tot-sized onesies. The pink one (because, girls!) proclaims, “I only date heroes.” While the neutral black-and-grey offering announces the wearer is a “Future Man of Steel” below the Superman logo.
Not only are the pajamas sexist in assuming girls can’t be heroes — Superwoman, Batgirl, Buffy and Katniss are all secretly men, apparently — but they’re also kinda creepy. I mean, if your girl (or pink-loving guy) is still wearing footie pajamas, should they really be dating anyone, hero or otherwise?
The pajamas were flagged by Aimée Morrison, University of Waterloo professor, on Twitter under her handle @digiwonk.
Target’s corporate media line did not immediately return request for comment, but the store’s assistant manager apparently didn’t see the issue.
Morrison said in an interview it’s actually a fellow professor Christine Robinson Logel’s photo and she asked to share it on Twitter. It was snapped at a Target in Waterloo, Ontario when Logel was shopping with her two daughters.
The assistant manager of the store was approached about the pairing of pajamas and she said they were “cute.” Logel said in an email she explained the issue to the assistant manager — the clothes are “an example how, from birth, boys are taught that they can be strong and accomplish things, and girls are taught that their sexuality and relationships to men are what matter.” She also told the store she’s a social psychologist and left her email.
“I have not heard back. It’s been over 24 hours,” Logel said.
“We did not think they were cute,” said Morrison when asked why she shared the photo to Twitter after seeing it on Logel’s Facebook.
“We talk about the sexualization of girls, it’s not like a g-string onesies, but this makes reference to dating. This is an infant,” said Morrison, an English prof who specializes in new media. “It’s already imagining the wearer of the pink onesie as someone whose identity is wrapped up in who they date, and the wearer of the black onesie as someone who gets to have their own identity.”
“It’s the two sets of pajamas placed against each other. It’s the contrast between what we imagine in the future for boys and what we imagine in the future for girls,” Morrison said. “One is, ‘I can grow up to be somebody powerful,’ and the other one is ‘I can grow up to date somebody powerful.”
“It’s not like the boys’ onesie said ‘I’m going to date supergirl some day,’ and the girls’ said ‘I’m going to date superboy someday’… when you put the two together, it actually says a lot about how we socialize boys and girls to think of what their future holds for them, where they get their power in the world.”
Logel also pointed out that such clothing can also send subconscious signals to adults around the children: “No matter how much adults believe that boys and girls are equal, and men and women are equal, the words on those outfits are likely to trigger behaviour from them that conforms to those gender norms too – teaching the boy to be active and strong and the girl to be passive and pretty. Psychology research supports my prediction.”
But the psychology prof is also “gratified” by the growing online backlash. She said, “It shows that people do understand that babies are all just babies, and it’s not fair to typecast them when they are so young, and restrict who they can become when they grow up.”
What do you think? Is this just typical for kids clothing or over the line? Weigh in in the comments section.
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