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Women in Star Wars


DANA-kin Skywalker
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Here is the fact of the matter whether it's right, wrong or indifferent. In 1977 Star Wars was a movie for boys, plain and simple. The toys were for boys. The bed spreads for boys. Just how it was. As time has gone on the line between what's "for boys" and "for girls" is less exact, but it still exists. Go down the aisle in a toy store. The aisles with barbies and dolls are "for girls". The lines with soldiers and guns and the like are "for boys." Star Wars still falls into the "for boys" category.

 

Now I'm not saying it's right. It's just how it is. It's the world we live in. The lines between "for boys" and "for girls" are less strident than they once were. But those lines are still there.

 

I'm also not saying it's wrong or weird or anything for girls to love Star Wars. I think it's great if they do. I'm just stating a fact.

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Boys like Star Wars because the heroes have powerful energy phalluses that come to their hands when needed and grow several times bigger. Boys hate more girls in Star Wars because they give them confusing feelings, especially if those girls also have powerful energy phalluses. Girls like Star Wars because they know if they had their own powerful energy phalluses they wouldn't need boys.

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I'm pretty sure you're wrong about Star Wars being "for boys" in 1977. I know plenty of women who were fans from day one. It's like saying "There were no black people in medieval Europe". It's false statements perpetuated as fact, and then becomes the default story. Like this article explains.

 

I would say that in 1977, males were GL's target auidence, if you believe his long referred to influence of the traditional fairy tale, where literally one or two females (princess, queen or general damsel in distress) was the representation of virtue (and male love/protection interest). This includes other GL influences of a similar structure, such as Flash Gordon (Dale Arden) and Buck Rogers (Wilma Deering) across all of their media version. Further, the merchandising of Star Wars (which GL controlled) was decidedly male oriented--beyond the male-leaning action figure category. The advertising (print and tv spots) featured boys with only the occasional inclusion of girls.

 

It appears in creating a modern myth, he consciously carried over the old archetype of the male-centric fairy tale, which he had to understand would not exactly scream out to girls. Of course, creating another important female for ROTJ was a shift--acknowledging (after criticism I've read from the period) the need to see more than one strong female, but at the end of the day, the lion share of ANH's appeal came from boys.

 

That's not sexist, unless one thinks the man who structured his fantasy was some sort of social dinosaur.

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Highly unscientific but probably a fair representation of fandom is right on this site. Go to the members list and filter it to show all the female members. There are 7 pages. Then have it list all the male members, there are 19 pages.

And I was at Star Wars Celebration this past weekend where I'd guess at least half the attendees were women. They weren't all young, either.

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In some countries females have taken over the geek world. Look at Japan. This has been going on her in the US too and I am happy to say, my daughters are part of it. It was my older daughter that sat down with the younger one to watch Star Wars not me. (I had promised my wife I would not do to the young one what I had done to the older one.) Now my younger daughter is a VERY big SW fan and is in the geek girl group at school.

The Clone Wars had very strong females and the Rebels do too. Just because some people here do not count them dose not mean Disney dose not. I wait they do count them and will even start to have cross overs in to the movie...

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I would say that in 1977, males were GL's target auidence

I would agree with a large part of this. A big part of GL's success was his retaining the rights to the toys and action figures, all of which were marketed to boys. Boys were his money maker. Now, you had girls who didn't care that trucks and action figures were for boys and would rather play with those than Barbies. I don't remember any Princess Leia Barbies growing up.

 

Disney, however, wants to appeal to a broader market share. Ignoring women and young girls is a huge demographic that they can sell to. I think we will see a much wider array of Star Wars toys that appeal to boys, tomboys, and girly-girls. Star Wars for everyone = $$$.

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I wasn't around then, so I genuinely don't know, but did they have pink and blue aisles in the toy section of stores like they do now?

 

I know toys have always been grouped by type, so naturally the dolls were on one aisle while the Nerf guns were on another, but now you can find Nerf products both in the pink aisle and the blue aisle.

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I would say that in 1977, males were GL's target auidence

I would agree with a large part of this. A big part of GL's success was his retaining the rights to the toys and action figures, all of which were marketed to boys. Boys were his money maker. Now, you had girls who didn't care that trucks and action figures were for boys and would rather play with those than Barbies. I don't remember any Princess Leia Barbies growing up.

 

Disney, however, wants to appeal to a broader market share. Ignoring women and young girls is a huge demographic that they can sell to. I think we will see a much wider array of Star Wars toys that appeal to boys, tomboys, and girly-girls. Star Wars for everyone = $$$.

 

Sadly, Disney marketing is doing the exact opposite of this. They want Star Wars to be their "boy" property and say so in every piece of marketing and strategizing material.

 

This is why I refuse to shut up about this topic. The creators want diversity. Marketing has their head stuck in the sand.

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A big part of GL's success was his retaining the rights to the toys and action figures, all of which were marketed to boys. Boys were his money maker. Now, you had girls who didn't care that trucks and action figures were for boys and would rather play with those than Barbies. I don't remember any Princess Leia Barbies growing up.

Yah... they didn't completely ignore girls, but I do remember the toy commercials having like a 3-1 boy:girl ratio, so it was pretty obvious who the target audience was.

 

I think the 12" figures were the closest they came to Barbie. The Vader one was awesome.

 

Ultimately, I couldn't care less if a movie/toy has a fan base that is 99% one gender or another (though the odds of that ever happening naturally are pretty slim), but it's pretty dumb to try and stifle somebody's interest in something just because they are a girl or boy, which has occurred both directly and indirectly with SW.

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I would say that in 1977, males were GL's target auidence

I would agree with a large part of this. A big part of GL's success was his retaining the rights to the toys and action figures, all of which were marketed to boys. Boys were his money maker. Now, you had girls who didn't care that trucks and action figures were for boys and would rather play with those than Barbies. I don't remember any Princess Leia Barbies growing up.

 

Disney, however, wants to appeal to a broader market share. Ignoring women and young girls is a huge demographic that they can sell to. I think we will see a much wider array of Star Wars toys that appeal to boys, tomboys, and girly-girls. Star Wars for everyone = $$$.

 

Sadly, Disney marketing is doing the exact opposite of this. They want Star Wars to be their "boy" property and say so in every piece of marketing and strategizing material.

 

This is why I refuse to shut up about this topic. The creators want diversity. Marketing has their head stuck in the sand.

 

WHHHYYYYYYYY?

 

Seriously, though, that's so dumb. I'm not saying they need to make pink lightsabers. I don't buy Quinn Disney Princess legos, I buy her regular ol' legos. (Or, she actually requested some Batman ones the other day while we were at the Lego store. Daddy happily obliged.) I don't think little kids really see that something is for girls or something is for boys unless they're told it. I see little boys at Quinn's daycare wearing dresses, taking care of babies, building with blocks, etc. We are starting to see a bit of a difference at the preschool age, but I think that's because some of the dads are starting to wig out about their boys not being "manly", which is annoying. My kid continues to do her own thing. She rarely plays with dolls other than babies, and even then she only has 1 or 2. She plays mostly with what I would consider gender neutral toys. But maybe that's because I was the same way. If she had a more traditionally feminine mom, she'd probably have more girly crap.

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What destiny said. In my extended family, we have four girls and two boys. I call them nieces and nephews even though no blood relation. My eldest nephew has three older cousins all girls. They grew up together, very very close. All the kids politely hug and kiss every adult when they leave. My nephew had no problem kissing and hugging adult guys, or playing with his cousins' princess dolls. Unlike his girl cousins, he had an interest in swords and guns but it was forbidden for him, and all the girls. Then suddenly his homophobic father was threatened by this, and his son's short stature, and forbid him kissing guys and playing with dolls. Now he only plays with his trucks and (no longer forbidden) guns and swords. There does seem to be a reasonable case for some generalizations about boys vs girls, but there is no "line". The only line is where we draw it for them, or what they learn from the world. And believe me, their little brains soak up a lot.

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I had TONS of "girly crap" growing up. It did not succeed in making me more girly. And, frankly, all my brother's blocks, Erector sets, Lincoln Logs, Knex, and other "real" tool building sets would have gone to waste if I didn't play with them. All of our dolls and action figures did go to waste.

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I'm guessing a lot of my tomboy-ness came from being the only girl in the neighborhood. If I wanted to play with a friend, I was going to have to play with GI Joes. I'm guessing Cerina might've had some similar influence from older brothers. I think the other part is that my mom wasn't very involved in playing with me because she was sick a lot when I was little. My dad was the one interested in sci-fi and space, so that's definitely where I get that from. But I was never like, wow I really wish I had some pink and purple legos. That's why some of this "outreach" to young girls stuff makes me roll my eyes. It's great that they recognize it, but the efforts are still just off the mark.

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This can probably be a whole new topic...

 

I actually have one younger brother. I was just showered with girly stuff since birth, and it never interested me. I wasn't really a "tomboy", just always more interested in more STEM stuff than "girls should" have been. But purple has always been my favorite color.

 

I don't mind the pink LEGO things. I was always bothered by the lack of pink and purple LEGO bricks in sets. I got really tired of my houses having just red and yellow flowers out front.

 

But I have a question. Why is it that there is such a backlash from the pink LEGO sets, but not from say Princess Awesome? There are very few anatomical differences in boys and girls at that age that would necessitate specially cut and sized clothing, so why can't girls who want dinosaur shirts just get them from the "boy" section? You have to go to the "boy" section of the toy store to get the original LEGO sets. So why is it not ok to girlify something like LEGO sets but it is to girlify dinosaur/space/science/math themed clothing?

 

I'm talking purely about kids here. It's HIGHLY annoying to not be able to find women's clothing with the same sorta geeky/nerdy themes. Well, it used to be highly annoying. You can usually find a lot now. But not in larger sizes, which brings me back to highly annoying. Ok, I'm annoyed.

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But I have a question. Why is it that there is such a backlash from the pink LEGO sets, but not from say Princess Awesome? There are very few anatomical differences in boys and girls at that age that would necessitate specially cut and sized clothing, so why can't girls who want dinosaur shirts just get them from the "boy" section? You have to go to the "boy" section of the toy store to get the original LEGO sets. So why is it not ok to girlify something like LEGO sets but it is to girlify dinosaur/space/science/math themed clothing?

I would've bought the boys clothing anyway. That stuff has never bothered me. My dad buys Quinn space shirts from the boys section all the time. I think girly STEM clothes are fine, too. I have a bigger problem with stuff like The Children's Place having shirts about girls not being good at math but good at shopping. Just WTF, man.

 

I think the backlash from "girl" legos are that they aren't just legos. They're essentially replacements for dolls, they aren't necessarily for building things. But I see Legos as a gender-neutral toy, I don't think Lego "Friends" needs to exist. If they wanted to do characters of popular girl-themed shows, that's cool. Just like how Quinn has Batman legos, I would be cool with My Little Pony legos. I would have gone nuts for some Rainbow Brite legos back in the day. You're right, though, throw some purple and pink bricks in the regular sets. It's not going to turn a little boy gay to play with pink bricks (Disclaimer: NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT). The only pink bricks Quinn has are from some baking set. Because all baked goods are pastel.

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