Should Old Navy Advertise 'Boyfriend' Jeans to Kids?

— -- Old Navy, the clothing chain known for its moderately-priced clothes and wide range of styles and sizes, is making headlines for advertising its “boyfriend” and “super skinny” styles of jeans to kids.

The chain, which is owned by Gap Inc., has a photo of a young girl in jeans on its homepage next to a label describing the jeans as, “The Boyfriend Skinny Jean.”

Other pages on the website show “Skinny,” “Super Skinny” and “Boyfriend Skinny” jeans advertised for “Girls,” and a picture of a toddler modeling “The Boyfriend Jean” on the “Toddler Girls” page.

The clothing brand offers the same “The Boyfriend” style in women’s jeans, as well as options like “The Diva,” “The Flirt” and “The Sweetheart.”

A writer for the website Jezebel tweeted to Old Navy on Feb. 23, writing, “@OldNavy can you tell me more about these Boyfriend Jeans for small babies.”

The writer, Jia Tolentino, followed up her tweet with an article headlined, “Attention Cool Moms: Old Navy’s Boyfriend Jeans for Babies Are On Sale.”

A Old Navy spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News that the product name is "intended to describe only the fit, cut and style" of the popular pants.

"Old Navy creates fashion essentials that celebrate current trends and styles for the whole family. Our product names refer to popular styles, and are intended to describe only the fit, cut and style. It is never our intention to offend anyone, and we appreciate this feedback from our customers," Debbie Felix, an Old Navy spokesperson told ABC News.

The co-founder of Big City Moms, a New York City-based resource for mom’s with over 300,000 members, agrees that the jeans’ titles are just about the style and should not be read into any further.

“I think it’s just being true to their style names,” Leslie Venokur told ABC News. “My kids don’t know what the style is called. I give them jeans and if the jeans are comfortable, they wear them.”

Venokur, who worked in children’s fashion before founding Big City Moms, says the keeping of the same style and name from women’s to girl’s follows a fashion trend.

“The trend in the last couple of years is the whole “mini-me” look, with moms and daughters and dads and sons wearing the same fashion,” said Venokur, mom to a 2-year-old boy and 6-year-old daughter.

“Do they need to change it? No,” Venokur said of Old Navy. "If they want to appease some opinionated parents, then that’s their call.”

A New York City-based psychologist argues that the term “boyfriend” should not even be on kids’ radar at the toddler and under-12 age range.

“Can’t we just buy jeans because we like them, and not have the ‘boyfriend’ label associated with them?,” said Joe Taravella, PhD and supervisor of pediatric psychology at Rusk Rehabilitation at New York University Langone Medical Center.

“It sets up our children to want and need a boyfriend, when at these early ages, this terminology should not be part of their vocabulary or on the radar of what they should be thinking about,” Taravella told ABC News. “I am hard-pressed to understand why the label “boyfriend” was associated with these jeans."