TORONTO - Hundreds of people denounced Target for selling "sexist" baby pyjamas after a university professor posted a photograph of the clothing on social media.
The boy clothing features a Superman logo and the line "Future Man of Steel," while the girl item has the same logo but the line: "I Only Date Heroes."
"It seems kind of ridiculous to talk about who an infant girl is going to date," said Aimee Morrison, an associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo.
"Even for tiny babies, we seem to think of girls as gaining power and worth from whom they're romantically linked to and boys get to become agents of action in their own right."
The photograph was taken on the weekend at a local target store by Morrison's friend, Christine Logel, also a professor at the university.
Logel initially put the picture on Facebook but gained little traction.
"We were all sort of complaining about the sexism in the image and the same 10 people always commenting, and she said, 'Nothing ever changes'," Morrison said in an interview.
The women decided to share the image on Morrison's Twitter account, sparking hundreds of retweets and comments.
The response was overwhelmingly against the gender stereotyping, with many responders passing along their own examples.
One person sent her a photograph of a similar set, with one shirt saying, "Training to be Batman," and the other saying, "Training to be Batman's Wife." Another person said she found the same outfits in New Brunswick but her posted photographs on Facebook didn't get much attention.
The responses came from as far as Spain.
The girl shirts in Spanish said "Beautiful like Mommy," and the boy one said "Smart like Daddy."
The point, said Morrison, is that the stereotyping found in the Target clothing is not an isolated occurrence.
"They were really very easily and very quickly able to send me picture after picture that demonstrated this deeply held but not explicitly discussed bias to thinking about girls and women in terms of their sexual currency and men in terms of their capacity to conquest.
Not everyone saw a problem with the clothing.
About a dozen people called on Morrison to get a sense of humour.
"There are more important problems in the world like world hunger," one tweeted.
"You obviously don't have anything important to do," another posted while yet another urged her to "grow some balls."
Target refused to discuss the issue but released a statement saying it "strives to treat all our guests with respect, and it is never our intent to offend anyone."
"We appreciate the feedback we've received and will continue to listen to our guests to ensure we offer merchandise that appeals to, and reflects, our diverse guest population," the company said.
