海角大神

A young dinosaur enthusiast in聽Middlesbrough, England, isn't happy with Clarks offerings of girls shoes, and she seems to have found some company.

鈥淒EAR Clarks, I don鈥檛 like how girls have flowery shoes 鈥� I like dinosaurs and fossils, so I think that other girls might as well,鈥� wrote Sophia Trow, age eight to the multinational shoe retailer, according to聽

, an online community for female archaeologists, geologists, and paleontologists, has lent their support to her campaign, posting聽pictures of their footwear to Twitter under the tag

In an email interview,聽, a founder of TrowelBlazers and a bioarchaeologist at the Natural History Museum London, writes, 鈥淲hen we saw the story about Sophie Trow, who wanted to purchase dinosaur themed shoes but was told they were not made for girls, we thought we could step in and show Sophie that 'dino shoes' aren鈥檛 the only way to have a connection to dinos.鈥�

鈥淚 tweeted a picture of my shoes with our office pterodactyl figurine perched on them to make the聽point, with the hashtag聽#InMyShoes,鈥� Dr. Hassett writes. 鈥淗appily, we have an amazing community at TrowelBlazers who jumped in to show their support for Sophie by sharing their own pictures.鈥� (It should be noted that the pterodactyl was not a dinosaur.)聽
The rest of the TrowelBlazers founding team 鈥� 聽NHM 聽paleobiologist聽, University of Bordeaux archaeologist, and聽University of Georgia archaeologist聽鈥� also stepped-up and posted their footwear in solidarity, as have many others from around the globe.

According to Hassett, their hope is that Clarks, who also make a line of ichthyosaur-themed footwear for boys called聽聽will 鈥渏ump at the chance to show Sophie their other cool paleontology related shoes and that scientists everywhere, men and women, will keep making the effort to show that it can be for anyone.鈥� (Ichthyosaurs weren't dinosaurs either.)

鈥淥ur mission is to reset imaginations, and to show that despite common perceptions of what might be 'appropriate', women have been making contributions to the fields we work in for much longer than most people realise,鈥� Hassett writes. 鈥淲e are absolute supporters of efforts to improve the numbers of girls and women in science, especially earth science, and really believe that role models are crucial to overcoming 'stereotype threat' 鈥� the added pressure that comes with being in a minority group.鈥�

She adds, 鈥淚t was absolutely one of the best moments in TrowelBlazer history when we read that Sophie's mum had shown her our responses, and that Sophie thinks she might want to be a scientist when she grows up.鈥�

Hassett and her colleagues strongly believe in the axiom that 鈥渋f you can't see it,聽you can't be it.鈥�

She concludes, 鈥淚 think it's incredibly important for women who can act as role models, especially in areas where women are unrepresented like the sciences, to make an effort where they can to show girls like聽Sophie that dinosaurs are something anyone can be into.鈥�