A photo of two sexist children's books covers from the London department store Harrods has triggered an outburst of criticism on Twitter, reports The Huffington Post.
London TV producer Krystina Meens posted this photo of two books placed side by side:
"Shocked and appalled at this in @harrods children's reading room," she tweeted. "Please rt to get these sexist books off the shelf."
By the next day, over 600 people had retweeted the photo. According to The Huffington Post, the book on the left is described on Amazon as a guide to "all you need to become is a gorgeous goddess," while the book with the boy on the cover is a guide to "becoming or just appearing highly intelligent."
Most people who commented on Meens' picture were outraged by the message the books seemed to be sending.
"C'mon Harrods, get into this century!" tweeted one user. "Harrods, you need to get rid of this NOW!" posted another.
One user commented, "Fair play on the gorgeous one being sexist, but why should the one about being smart be removed?" to which Meens responded, "Smart one shouldn't be removed---it just shouldn't only have a boy on the front cover."
Ironically, Harrods recently unveiled a new 'gender-neutral' toy department, says The Huffington Post, that organizes toys into zones called Dreamscapes rather than separating them by gender.
Lead designer of the new department, Matt Smith, told the Telegraph that the zones "are deliberately non-gender-specific, because we felt that was an antiquated way of looking at toys...I think increasingly kids are playing with an array of different toys and we wanted to give that balance," he said.
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