Moms are taking to social media to call out Target and Walmart for their limited selection of girls' fashions.
One mom, who uses the name Assignment: Mom, shared a post of her frustrations with the Target department store chain on Facebook.
“Dear Target, You know I love you … but we need to talk about tween girls for a minute,” she wrote in a Facebook post that has earned over 6,000 reactions. “More specifically, we need to talk about what you’re offering them in the athletic wear department these days. It’s ridiculous.”
The Midwestern mom of four goes on to describe how she turned to Target to purchase athletic shorts for her nearly 10-year-old daughter, who is going to basketball camp.
However, instead of finding shorts for the girl to wear, the mom complained that all she could find were “teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy, way-too-short shorts.”
“I get that shorts are, by definition, short. But where are the mid-length shorts? The approaching-knee-length shorts? The shorts that don’t require built-in underwear she’d undoubtedly find uncomfortable?” she vented.
Assignment: Mom, who is raising three daughters, said she tried the women’s department — but couldn’t find anything there, either.
“I don’t fancy myself a prude, but neither do I take the responsibility to teach my daughters about modesty and appropriate dress lightly. We live in a culture sexualized enough as it is; I wish I could go shopping for my tween and not have to worry about her backside or her underwear showing in a pair of athletic shorts,” she wrote on Facebook.
In the post, she said she ended up shopping in the boys' section for shorts for her daughter, and implored Target to "do better by our tween girls."
Assignment: Mom told told Fox News, “I have no ill will toward Target, and I know I’m free to shop elsewhere (and I do).” But she adds that she's “disappointed a store like that, where so many moms shop for necessities, doesn’t offer an alternative option for athletic girls who don’t wish to wear short-shorts for sports.”
And her grievances seemed to have struck a chord with many other parents who are equally upset by the limited options for young girls.
“Agree totally,” one mom wrote.
“My sentiment exactly,” another wrote.
But the frustrations did not end at Target. Another mom, Kate Paddock, said she’s experienced the same thing elsewhere.
“100 percent […] but it’s not just target[,] I went to like five places before finding Bella clothes[,] it’s ridiculous," wrote Paddock. "People are designing little clothes girls like hooker-style … yup I just said it and nope I don’t care who it makes mad.
"If you attempt to tell me by teaching my child modesty that I’m shaming her ‘body’ I’ll just delete you because I don’t care. Because what I’m actually teaching her is that she doesn’t need to flaunt what she has just to prove she’s worthy of value.”
Assignment: Mom told Fox News she didn’t expect the response, “as I was just expressing my frustration, and have been surprised at the chorus of moms agreeing.”
Another mom said she had the same thing happen at Walmart.
“I went to Walmart to get my toddler daughter a pair of shorts for soccer and ended up picking them up from the boys’ section. For my two-and-a-half year old! The ones in the girls’ section were all basically short tights, which she finds very uncomfortable.”
"We offer three types of shorts for girls: short, midi and Bermuda. Over the last few years, we’ve actually been going longer, not shorter … this is the case even with our short shorts. We lengthened them over a year ago and have seen a very positive response to the range of length, particularly with midi and Bermuda. We’ve also expanded our offerings in these assortments."
