Cheryl Rickman, a writer and mother in Winchester, England, was at her wit's end when she went shopping with her 7-year-old daughter, Brooke, and found only pink and princess-themed clothes in the girls' section. None of the shirts offered any themes that Brooke was interested in, like dinosaurs.
So she decided to take matters into her own hands and created a clothing line for young girls called Climbing Trees Kids.
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It celebrates little girls who love outer space, pirates and dinosaurs — subjects that most clothing companies have decided should appear exclusively on boys' clothing.
Rickman describes her inspiration for the line on the line's website:
I’m a mum with a 7 year old daughter. She cares about what she wears. We went to buy her a top with a dinosaur on it, but they didn’t have one ... Since my daughter was 4 we've bought most of her clothes from the boys aisle because the stuff she loves doesn't exist in the girls aisle. The point is, we shouldn't have to, so we've created our own range.
The shirts prove that girls can rock a T-rex shirt...
And a space ship shirt...
And a badass pirate shirt. In fact, every kid should be allowed to rock a kickass dinosaur shirt, regardless of gender. Period.
"I wanted to show my daughter that she can like whatever she likes, wear whatever she wants to wear and be whoever she wants to be, without gender-based limitations being imposed on her," Rickman told the Daily Mail.