Visiting Next in Derby today, my daughter (8 years old) headed straight for the ‘boys’ clothes section. Why? Because Next still divide their children’s clothes by old-fashioned views of how different sexes should dress and all the non-pink, glittery clothes are labelled for boys. Can somebody remind me which year it is?

The picture at the top of this post is a photo I took in their girl’s clothes section. This is from the boys…

Now, it would be easy to suggest that I maybe took worst case examples for both of these picture but, nope, this is how is consistency looks. You have a choice between pink/glitter/princess clothes or clothes with all the trendy brands on – Minecraft, Minions, Star Wars, etc.

There are few children clothes that are actually different – shoes, hats, t-shirts, trousers, shorts are all the same. So why is it not okay these days to seperate toys into different sexes but it is okay for clothes? Yes, there are some which will be sex specific and that’s fine – why not a children’s clothing section with small sub-sections for sex-specific items? It was telling that there were more girls in Next’s boys section than there were girls.

Next need to be setting an example, not demonstrating a horrible view of sexual division – particularly, in this case, as there isn’t one. What makes a Pokemon t-shirt boy specific?

As of 2nd August, John Lewis has now done exactly what I suggested to Next – children’s clothes are no longer divided by sex, allowing them to choose what they want