Colin Hanks And His Daughter On The Lack of Female Star Wars Characters And Toys

So, the other night, on May the 4th to be exact, I sat down with my 4 year old daughter and showed her Star Wars: A New Hope. It was her first time watching it. She loved it. Her favorite character was Princess Leia. She kept asking “Where is Princess Leia? Where is Princes Leia?” A few nights later, I show her Empire Strikes Back (or as she called it “The Emperor stripes back) and within four minutes of watching the movie she says, “It’s so tiring watching these movies. It’s always boys, boys, boys and there’s only one girl.” I could not of been more proud of her. So today I take her to Toys “R” Us to buy her a light saber and a Princess Leia toy. After being told that the light sabers were “in the boys section”, she picks out the light saber of her choosing and asks about the Princess Leia toy. One problem: they only had the “slave Leia”. As you can see, sad depressing, “slave Leia”. So wrong. The only good to come from this is that, once again, my daughter makes me look at the world in a whole new light. #HelpusJJyoureouronlyhope

A photo posted by Colin Hanks (@colinhanks) on May 9, 2015 at 6:06pm PDT

Last night on Instagram, Colin Hanks posted a bittersweet story about what it was like to show his daughter the first two movies of the original Star Wars trilogy for the first time. His daughter kept asking where Princess Leia was, and complained about how it’s always boys on screen and there’s only one girl.

On top of that, when he took her to the store to buy some new Star Wars toys, not only were the lightsabers “in the boys’ section,” but the only Princess Leia toy they had was a Slave Leia toy.

Ugh.

So, here’s your shot, Star Wars: The Force Awakens powers that be. You’ve got a big, hyped-up toy launch date coming. Please don’t blow it.

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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