Does this shirtless guy say 'kids clothes' to you?

On the mall directory, you can find the abercrombie store listed under "Children's Fashions," next to Gymboree, Janie and Jack, the Disney Store, Hannah Andersson and GapKids.

The abercrombie clothes, marketed to people who don't mind spending $30 on a short-sleeved shirt for a grade-school boy, are stylish and carry a certain cachet for the fashion-conscious preteen-into-teenager set.

That's why Sue Randall of Barrington decided she'd grab an abercrombie gift card online as a special Christmas gift for her 11-year-old son, Scott. Until she discovered the only gift card option featured a shirtless hunk.

"And in a cold room," Randall quips. "Put a shirt on, for goodness sake."

Even if she were fine with it, she suspects her son wouldn't want to get such a provocative gift card. At Christmas. From his mom.

"He doesn't even like to walk through the lingerie section in Target," Randall notes.

Her friend, Deanna Griffin of Inverness, actually went to the store to buy abercrombie gift cards. The stuffed moose head (the store's logo) above the register sports a childish feel with that volleyball resting in the antlers. Shoppers generally include some moms, a couple of girls and maybe a grandma or two.

"I wanted to be the cool aunt," explains Griffin, whose 16-year-old daughter, Courtney, and 18-year-old son, Kevin, have outgrown the store. Griffin was at the register when she was told the only gift card was the bare-chested beefcake. Not even a scantily clad female model to balance the scales.

"Would you give that to your fourth- and fifth-grade nieces?" asks a squeamish Griffin, 49. "It's not about being a prude. It's just a weird social situation."

She left without buying a gift card, assuming there'd be more kid-friendly options online. There aren't.

Randall convinced her to tell me the story.

"Why did you get me into this?" a laughing Griffin told her friend. "I sound like Tipper Gore."

But these two suburban moms aren't right-wing activists decrying immorality, or urging a boycott.

"I'm not a prude. In exercise class, because there are two Sues, I'm know as wild Sue Randall," notes the 50-year-old mother of four. She even makes a cougar joke as she insists the two moms don't have anything against good-looking, shirtless, young men.

They just think abercrombie's children's store should know that that gift card cost them sales.

"It's such an incredibly bad business decision," Randall says. She thought stores would bend over backward to reach a broader market during this mad rush to make a profit.

"In this market, I am kind of surprised by it," Griffin says.

In abercrombie's online comment section, Griffin told her story of lost sales, but the only response she got was a scolding about exceeding the 260-character limit. Her shorter plea has gone two days without a response. Randall's e-mail to the company also hasn't gotten a response yet.

And neither did my phone call Wednesday.

But the company is used to controversy.

Originally founded in 1892 by David T. Abercrombie and Ezra H. Fitch as a sporting goods company, the company that once equipped Teddy Roosevelt for safaris and sold shotguns (maybe even the last one he ever fired) to Ernest Hemingway now is best known for selling a sexy look.

The Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs always draw publicity for the racy photos, with all the emphasis on bare-chested young men barely out of boyhood and scantily clad young women.

Earlier this decade, the store settled a $40 million class action lawsuit filed on behalf of minorities who claimed discrimination and paid another settlement to a female clerk after her prosthetic arm led to a legal dispute about whether she met the visual requirements to be a clerk.

Convinced that abercrombie, as A&F's offshoot store designed for children, should offer more kid-appropriate gift cards, Randall and Griffin aren't fighting back with lawsuits.

"No, I went to the Gap," says Griffin, who bought her gift cards at that competitor. "There's a plaid design, and they come in four colors."

And not one of them is flesh tone.