11 yr old girl frustrated by sexist ‘Star Wars’ Halloween costumes

I got this comment on Reel Girl today, ARGH!

Thank you for your brilliant comment, Maya. So sorry you have to grow up in a culture that is so horrifyingly sexist, but your imagination will continue to protect you. Your costume sounds great! Please send me a pic of you on Halloween.  And you can call me Margot : )

Dear Mrs. Magowan:

My name is Maya, and I am an eleven-year-old girl. I am a big fan of Star Wars, and having read your blog for a long time, I am fully aware of the sexism in the movies. I could go on for hours about Princess Leia, Padme Amidala, the sparse females, and their sexual objectification (such as in Leia’s metal bikini), and I thank you for bringing attention to that issue.

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Yesterday, my mom and I were browsing the website of Five Below and saw a very cool Star Wars T-shirt with pictures of many of the iconic characters, such as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and R2-D2. I was psyched looking at the shirt, until I realized something. “Where’s Princess Leia?” She was one of the main characters of the series, in addition to being the ONLY female. She needed representation. So on a shirt dominated by males, where the heck was she? I had the same problem when we were looking for Star Wars shirts at Wal-Mart. One of them had Star Wars characters in 8-bit pixelization. It was a really cool and fun shirt, but it had the same problem: although it depicted Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Stormtroopers, and even R2-D2, Leia – the only female character (and a totally kickbutt one at that, a perfect role model for girls AND boys) – was nowhere to be found.

Females need representation, in both girls’ AND boys’ merchandise, to show BOTH genders that in the world of fantasy, both males and females can do amazing things. So even if it IS a “boys’ shirt,” that’s no excuse for Princess Leia not to be there. I’m so glad Target realizes this, by showing Star Wars fans of both genders playing together. That advertisement sends the perfect message, and I’m grateful to Target for doing so. I would also like to thank you, Mrs. Magowan, for blogging about it and spreading the word to even more people.

I also have one more thing to share with you. Since I love Star Wars so much, I am probably going to dress in a Star Wars-themed costume for Halloween. The problem is, girls don’t have many options for Star Wars Halloween costumes. Boys have tons of Jedi, Sith, aliens, rebels, troopers, and even droids to choose from. Girls have Leia, Padme, Hera and Sabine from “Rebels,” and Ahsoka from “The Clone Wars.” That’s it. And although Padme practically has a new costume in every scene change and Leia’s wardrobe is nothing to sneeze at either, that is still very few options compared to the boys. Don’t fault the girls for that; fault the makers of Star Wars, for giving them so few choices in a franchise girls can love just as much as boys.

Even worse, my mother and I were browsing Star Wars costumes on the Internet, and almost every female costume for adults that we saw was SEXY. For every Darth Vader costume for males, there was a Sexy Sabine or Sexy Leia costume in revealing dresses that they were NEVER portrayed as wearing in the movies…or, even worse, a Sexy Darth Vader, complete with skintight “armor” and a miniskirt. Boys could have actual costumes that were actually relevant, true to the movies, heroic-looking, and covered them up well. If they were real heroes, they would be able to move, fight, and win in the outfits. Girls’ costumes needed to be sexy, skintight, and disturbingly explicit. There would be no way they would be able to move around or fight in those costumes, let alone do anything but LOOK pretty. The boys looked like heroes. The girls looked like objects for the boys to win. (On another note, wouldn’t people who wore those costumes be cold on Halloween? I mean, it’s an autumn night at the end of October. It’s going to be cold. People need to be covered up and warm, and sexy costumes are disturbingly impractical.) I decided to dress as a Jedi for Halloween. Since so many people were going to dress as human Jedi, I decided to do something different and go as an alien Jedi – a Twi’lek, which is the alien race of Hera from “Rebels”. We were browsing pictures of Twi’leks online, and all of the shown pictures looked disturbingly sexy and explicit – anorexic, supermodel-looking extraterrestrials with impossibly large breasts and barely anything to hide their privates. We had to look and look to find a picture of a Twi’lek that was actually well-covered-up, in cool Jedi robes, that actually looked appropriate. That is what I’m going as for Halloween. Interestingly, all the male Twi’leks were muscular, heroic, and not explicit at all. Hmm…I wonder why?

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for starting up this blog and making the sexism that plagues our society known to the world, especially in the fantasy inhabited by kids. When we are children, our minds are most vulnerable and open to new ideas, and when marketers shape those minds with sexism, that is a terrible thing. Thank you for helping make those ideas known to society and doing your part to eradicate sexism, empower women, and ultimately, lead to true gender equality.

Sincerely,
Maya Blumenthal

Reel Girl’s blogs on sexism and ‘Star Wars’

Florida mom, I’d rather see my 4 yr old in orange jumpsuit than dressed as slave Leia

Slut-shaming Princess Leia or protecting childhood from adult sexuality?

Responding to #WeWantLeia campaign, Disney will stock stores with Leia toys

From the Disney store to Stride Rite to Whole Foods: the degradation and annihilation of Princess Leia in kidworld

Trade in your tiara for a light saber this Halloween

If you won’t buy your kids racist presents, don’t buy them sexist ones

In revolutionary new ad, Target shows girls and boys playing “Star Wars” together

Star Wars, where are the women?

Gender stereotyping leads to bullying

If a stormtrooper had no epic, would he exist?

My daughter teased for ‘boy’ shoes on soccer field

 

 

6 thoughts on “11 yr old girl frustrated by sexist ‘Star Wars’ Halloween costumes

  1. I had the same thing happen that was like the shirts. In my bathroom thier is a stool for when my brother was younger. It is Toy Story themed. It has a picture captioned with “No One Gets Left Behind”. It has two of the main characters in color, Woody and Buzz along with Rex. It then has in silhouette, Slinky, Ham and a alien. Now you could say that it’s portraying only Toy Story 1 characters but there in silhouette is Bulls-Eye. Where’s Jessie! She is much more of a main character then Rex and definitely more of a main chacter than the Alien yet she doesn’t even get to be in silhouette. When I looked it up on google I found the “girl version” of the stool, a pink princess stool. The funny thing is that the stool says No One Left Behind when really it should have said the classic version, No Man Left Behind, because they forgot the one who should be in color, Jessie.

  2. Slave Leia made sense because she was being held by a drug and weapon smuggling gangster lord. Of *course* he wanted to degrade her and put her in attire like that. It’s fitting within what you’d expect from a sleeze-monger like Jabba.

    Has anyone read the recent Leia comics? A strong heroin, dressed appropriately to the task at hand, and real threat combat-wise. It’s a great read.

      • And what happened to the bad sexist slug in the movie? Leia won, it’s ok for women to be put in bad situations as males ie carbonite. That’s why people have a problem with Rey, only character with no flaws in star wars which as a character is boring. Great actress though

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