Sick of going to Target and seeing only princess, Hello Kitty, or Monster High underwear for your daughter?

Check out this totally cool female superhero underwear that I saw on  A Mighty Girl’s Facebook page:

Supergirl:

And Batgirl

Seeing this reminded me of a Huffington Post story a few people sent me last month: “Why I Bought Boys Underwear for my Daughter.” The post was written by a frustrated dad trying to shop for his 5 year old daughter:

Our underwear shopping system seemed to be going fine until my daughter discovered the existence of the boys’ underwear aisle.

“Dad! Come over here!”

I followed her voice and found my daughter standing, slack-jawed and indignant, looking at the much, much larger and more varied selection of character underwear in the boys’ aisle.

 

“They have LEGO ‘Star Wars’ underwear! And superheroes! OH! And ‘Phineas and Ferb!’ Dad, can I get these? Do they have girl ones?”

And I had to stand and tell her that no, no, they didn’t make girl versions of these brands of character underwear and I didn’t really have a good explanation why.

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of children’s character underwear, here’s a quick breakdown:

In the girls’ aisle, they have underwear featuring Disney princesses, Hello Kitty, Monster High (a goth-themed toy line), and maybe a few Nickelodeon-branded kids shows (“iCarly,” for example). That’s it.

In the boys’ aisle, they have underwear featuring ‘Star Wars’ (both LEGO and regular versions), DC Superheroes, “Phineas and Ferb,” “Toy Story,” “Batman,” “Transformers,” “The Avengers” –- it’s a much larger character pool.

 

So up to there I’m totally with this Dad. But then, this:

Do kids’ underwear manufacturers think that, if they put an image of a male character on girls’ underwear, that it will somehow turn the girls into boy-crazy sex maniacs? The logic completely escapes me.

 

The logic is that there are limited female characters on underwear, because there are limited female characters at all. Even though females are half of the kids population, in kidworld, except for the pink ghetto, girls are shown as a minority.

My big issue is that my daughter is a huge comic book, “Star Wars,” and superhero fan, and, in my vast shopping experience, I have never found any girls’ character underwear that spoke to any of those creative properties. Fine — If you think that having Anakin Skywalker on her undies will turn my daughter into a lusty, inhibition-challenged Jedi-chaser, then just let her have some underwear with Princess Leia or Ahsoka Tano on it, OK? But none exists.

There’s a pack of boys’ DC Superhero underwear that only has the logos of various superheroes on them. Why couldn’t they make those for girls? If the Superman “S” or the Batman bat symbol can appear on boys’ undies, why can’t you stick the same logo on girls’ undies and just call them Supergirl and Batgirl underwear? I couldn’t even find her any Wonder Woman underwear, even though I know my sister was the proud owner of Wonder Woman Underoos back in the ‘80s.

The dad, as you can tell by the post title, ends up buying his daughter boy underwear:

I’m glad this dad saw a problem here, but the larger issue is the lack of heroic, female protagonists in stories marketed to girls and boys.

But here’s the good news. Now there is female superhero underwear. Not only that, but on its Facebook page, A Mighty Girl reports:

Last week we posted about our discovery of a new line of superhero underwear for girls but they were so popular that they sold out on Amazon half an hour after our post. Well, we said that we’d let you know when they were restocked and thanks to A Mighty Girl supporter Megan Millaway Burks for giving us a heads up that they are now available again.

Of course, we can’t promise that they will last very long this time as well so our apologies in advance if they become unavailable. To check out the new superhero line for girls, with seven different designs featuring Batgirl, Supergirl and Wonder Woman, visit http://www.amightygirl.com/7pk-dc-comics-girls-briefs

Also, due to the many requests for more options, we found several new superhero underwear sets for teens and adults and added them to our clothing section at http://www.amightygirl.com/clothing?clothing_type=153

To check out all superhero-related clothing on A Mighty Girl, including many t-shirts and PJs, visit http://www.amightygirl.com/clothing?clothing_themes=144

Sold out. Are you listening Hollywood and Target? We are starved for narratives, toys, and clothing with female protagonists.

Buy female superhero underwear here. (Or try to!)