Mum calls out Asda for using 'sexist' Boys Will Be Boys slogan on a children's jumper

A mum has called out Asda for using a ‘sexist’ slogan on a children’s jumper.

Debbie Dee from Huntly, Aberdeenshire was browsing her local Asda when she noticed the £4 blue jumper that had the words “Boys Will Be Boys” emblazoned across it.

Sharing a picture of the jumper to Facebook she went on to explain, in a now deleted post, why she found the slogan so offensive.

“Quite literally gobsmacked and raging to see this in Asda Huntly!” she wrote. “This is so damaging we cannot possibly still be spouting this nonsense to our children.”

The web designer explained that she believed the jumper was “presupposing that gender is binary” and asked “what about when boys are not boys?”

She went on to say that the phrase was often “used to excuse bad behaviour (in boys and men) like hitting, being destructive or boisterous.”

And she also claimed the phrase goes “as far as excusing rape and sexual assault.”

Her post drew a mixed reaction online. Many parents agreed with the mum that the slogan appearing on a kids jumper was inappropriate.

“Not what our kids should be taught as acceptable or our youngsters,” one user commented.

While others thought that calling the issue out in such a public way could contribute to the problem.

“I’m against gender stereotyping/sexism/discrimination of any kind…but I worry that getting upset about things like this muddy the water and then mean that real sexism is treated as more hysteria,” one user wrote.

A statement from Asda released to the Sun read: “Our aim is to make clothing people love, never to offend.”

According to the Daily Record, Dee’s post was also picked up by campaign group Let Clothes be Clothes who are calling on retailers to cease the gendering of children’s clothing.

It isn’t the first time that retailers have been called out for gender-stereotyping their children’s clothes and toys.

Ealier this year parents called on the Early Learning Centre (ELC) to address the gender stereotyping in its advert for children’s fancy dress costumes.

Sharing a screenshot of an email advert promoting fancy dress outfits, mum Laura Benson tweeted her frustration about the images, which feature girls dressed as princesses and ballerinas and boys dressed as Spiderman, a wizard and a doctor.

“Oh my God I really thought we were starting to get past this s**t,” she wrote in the accompanying tweet.

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