Last April, NYU employee Jason Y. Evans snapped a photo in NYU’s very own bookstore of a girls’ “I hate my thighs” onesie right next to a boys’ “I’m super” onesie, complete with a cape and all.

Evans posted the photo to Facebook with the caption: “I had a very difficult time not raging out about this in the college store. These are onesies … for
infants … guess which one is for girls and which one is for boys. THIS is the problem.”

The same Wry Baby onesie that made international headlines for body-shaming baby girls had the NYU community up in arms and taking to social media to express their concern over the outfits. Within hours, the onesie was removed from the bookstore. Evan’s photograph showed that the pressure placed on girls to worry about their appearance has gone so far as to be imposed on babies, whereas young boys are only praised.

Well good news is here: this back–to–school season, 10 independent businesses are tweeting #ClothesWithoutLimits​. After seeing the NYU onesie scandal followed by a number of other kid-clothing atrocities, a group of moms had had enough.

There are no limits to a young girl’s dreams, and Clothes Without Limits’ supporting boutiques understand this. Little girls are not all models, princesses and actresses, they are scientists, athletes, leaders and sometimes a combination of all of them. These clothes are showing no limits by featuring dinosaurs, robots and graphics like “Smart Girls Club.” Free To Be Kids even turned the table and made a boys shirt with a kitten that says, “I’m a cat guy.”

Now you may be thinking, babies can’t even read; why does it matter?  Maybe it’s irony, maybe it’s just funny. But this has as much to do with the kids being labeled by the adults as it does with the kids labeling themselves. The New York Times did a study on elementary school teachers and found that the teachers overestimated male students’ abilities in STEM subjects while simultaneously underestimating female students’ abilities in the same areas.

Clothes Without Limits is an campaign initiative that promotes that girls are intelligent and boys can be sensitive and that the clothes they are given should respect and reflect their diverse interests whether science, fashion, sports or leadership. They want to change the gender expectations of dressing, and make it more about just being a kid.

A version of this article appeared in the Sept. 14 print edition. Email Madison Reis at [email protected]