Not every little girl wants to be a princess, wear tutus or don the color pink.

That’s exactly why two ISU alumnae created a clothing line, called Svaha, to empower girls. The clothing line works to break down gender stereotypes by creating a line of five T-shirts with designs that include dinosaurs, astronauts, baseball players, firefighters and dump trucks.

As their website states, “We believe that children learn what they are ‘supposed’ to be like from a very young age and if the only options they have to choose from (and we provide) are gender traditional, we are inadvertently marketing gender stereotypes to our own children.”

Svaha’s founder, Jaya Halepete Iyer, who received her Ph.D. in fashion merchandising at Iowa State, decided to begin the company after searching for an astronaut T-shirt for her 3-year-old daughter, who wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. Iyer was only able to find a boy’s astronaut T-shirt.

After realizing how unfair this was, Iyer decided to do something about it.

“All you see are things with princesses for little girls,” Iyer said. “I’m not just a mother, but an apparel professional, which is why I wanted to create something to empower children.”

A second line of clothing geared toward girls ages 6 to 12 is in the works, with designs related to careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Designs for this line include T-shirts with test tubes and robots.

“We want girls to know that it’s perfectly fine to sport a shirt with Spider Man or an astronaut on it,” said Mansi Patney, apparel, education studies and hospitality alumna. “Our goal is to expose children to a wide variety of things because these gender stereotypes are everywhere.”

Iyer and Patney launched an online campaign for their clothing line, on May 1 and have 38 more days to reach their goal of $30,000.

Kickstarter campaigns are “all-or-nothing” funding. If the goal is reached, the women will get the $30,000. If not, those who donated will not be charged and the company will not receive any money.

For those who choose to back the company, small rewards are given correlating to the amount of money that is donated, such as a T-shirt for a $20 donation.

Although the women launched a first kickstarter campaign, they ultimately ended it early due to lack of awareness. The women are searching for more people to back up their company, in hopes of eventually expanding their business to incorporate other clothing items, such as dresses and leggings.

“We aren’t the only one trying to create these types of clothes for girls,” Iyer said. “But what really sets us apart is our fun designs. We wanted to create something with fun design elements that every girl would want to wear.”