June 29, 2026 at 12:51pm EDT

A New York mom is taking to social media to express her frustration over the difference in the lengths of girls’ and boys’ shorts sold at her local store. The mom of two daughters, Victoria (@toriyav), recently filmed a TikTok in what appears to be the toddler clothing section of Target. In the clip, she’s holding up a pair of denim shorts for boys and a pair for girls to show the drastic difference in length.

“Can someone explain how this makes sense?” she wrote in her post. “I couldn’t find longer shorts for little girls anywhere but the boys’ are perfectly age-appropriate.” In the TikTok, which has been viewed more than 530,000 times, Victoria appears to be holding up Target’s Cat & Jack brand girls’ denim cutoff shorts and boys’ button front denim shorts. On the store’s website, the girls’ shorts are listed to have a 2.5-inch inseam, while the boys’ version has a 5.75-inch inseam.

With more than three inches of extra fabric on the boys’ shorts compared to the girls’, it’s easy to see why Victoria finds the difference a bit baffling. “And this is how it starts,” the mom writes in her caption.

This isn’t the first time the TikToker has called out Target for its kids’ fashion. A few months ago, she posted a clip holding up one-piece swimwear for girls in the store with the caption, “Not sure why it took us this long to stop making bikinis for little girls.”

And Victoria isn’t the only parent who has seen this drastic gender difference in clothing. “A lot of my daughter’s t-shirts are from the boys’ section,” said one parent. “For God’s sake, a crop top for a 4 year old?”

“My 5 year old deserves to put her butt in a sandpit without worrying about sand in her pant leg,” said another. “She needs pockets for stones and treasures, too. I have been buying boy pants for a long time now.” One mom chimed in, “And don’t even get me started on the crop tops or the cut-outs in the swimsuits.”

In fact, the comment section on the viral post is filled with parents who agree that girls’ clothing seems to be over-sexualizing little ones. What’s more, most parents commented that they usually buy their daughters shorts from the boys section for this very reason.

The difference in shorts length is, for sure, a bit of a head-scratcher. Perhaps one commenter summed it up best when she said, “Girls and women just want good-quality clothing and footwear that lasts and is practical to live a life beyond being pretty.”