Star Wars, bullying and girls
Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 6:25AM
The Official Star Wars Blog has a post from Ashley Eckstein (@ashley_eckstein), a voice actress in the Clone Wars TV show and the founder of Her Universe, about bullying and girls who like Star Wars. Ashley will be interviewing Carrie Goldman (@carriemgoldman), the author of a new book, Bullied, at the upcoming Star Wars Celebration VI convention in Orlando, Florida.
One of the points Ashley makes in her post is that there is a tendancy to market Star Wars only to boys, and that the effect of this can be that girls are teased or made to feel ashamed for being Star Wars fans. The comments below the post confirm this. For instance, a reader named Amanda says:
My 7 year old daughter loves SW. Last year for her BDay we had a party and we got her lego SW for her DS and a couple lego SW sets. When she opened them, she allowed herself to get embarrassed. We asked her why and she said because her friends think SW is for boys. Well, we keep telling her that she can like whatever she wants to. We keep encouraging her not to be shy about liking SW or anything else that is considered “boyish.” We’ll keep drilling this message into her head.
When I was growing up Star Wars was definitely aimed at boys, and when I meet people my age today the men are almost always former Star Wars fans to one degree or other. The women of my generation tend to be much less familar with Star Wars, but there are certainly exceptions, including my own sister. As I've said before, this blog is aimed at male Star Wars fans from the original trilogy generation, but Star Wars was not exclusively a boy phenomenon even in the 1970s, and it certainly ought not to be treated that way in the 2010s.
The Official Star Wars Blog: Bullied: Join The Conversation At Celebration VI