I read a quote on Pinterest the other day which stated, "I never know how dirty a song's lyrics are until I hear a small child singing them." And while my children do not know any songs with questionable lyrics, I did have a similar moment the other day.
This is the conversation that I had with the Little Dude at bedtime last night when he was requesting his tuck-in story.
"I want the story of Jabba's sail barge and with Princess Leia where she got tooken off her disguise so she had no clothes on except the little bathing suit that Jabba gave her." Unhunh. "Probably that bathing suit is Oola's." He says to me. "Did Oola and Princess Leia become friends?" Yeah, there is a lot to unpack there.
Up until now I've mostly been amused with his interest in Star Wars. I mean, I like Star Wars, and I like to share the things I like with him. Though I realize that Star Wars is too violent and much of it is beyond his comprehension at this point. And since he does not watch TV yet, I have had control over what he does know of the Star Wars narrative. I don't lie about it, but I do soft-sell certain points, and omit others. We generally focus on the good vs. evil aspect of it. We talk about robots a lot, and also, creatures are a big favourite; Banthas, Rancors, Wampas etc. And of course we talk about the main characters, especially Luke, Leia and Han. And up till now I've been very happy to have such a positive female role model for him in the form of Princess Leia. I mean, she's not only a princess, but also the leader of the rebel alliance. Sure she's getting rescured by Han and Luke, but she is anything but passive and is a good shot with a blaster. And I like to tell him the story of how she went in disguise to Jabba's palace to rescue Han. Role reversal, right? So its all good.
But there have been recent developments. Ever since we got this new book from the library, there's been a new level of focus.
See the figure third from the right? Yeah, that's the lego minifig version of "Slave Leia".
Sigh. Where do I begin. On the one hand, I could use this as a teachable moment to talk about slavery. And of course, that's what I've done. We talked about how slavery is bad and sad, and that it means that one person takes away another person's freedom and won't let them leave and makes them work without pay and they don't get to make any choices about their lives anymore. And its awful, they usually don't get enough to eat, and they have to stay in jail cells and it hurts them in a lot of ways, etc. Without being graphic I do my best to convey how bad it is in an age appropriate manner.
But he's really, really interested in her outfit. The outfit is kind of a big deal. So yeah, its sort of like hearing a song lyric you've heard a million times before comeing out of your sweet childs innocent mouth and realizing that it is just a thinly veiled double entendre. Of course, I knew that this was a 'sexy' outfit, but never really thought about the implications of that. Because to put it bluntly, Leia was a sex slave. That's why she's wearing what she's wearing (or not wearing) That's why she's chained up to Jabba. That's why he licks her. And that is not something that I feel like I need to get into with a four year old. But really, he is fascinated by this image. He has so, so many questions. He needs to know why she's wearing what she's wearing. "Why is she half-naked mom?" Yeah, why is she? Previously when Hubs and I looked through the catalogue of what was availabe from the Lego Star Wars empire, I was relieved to see that this particular item was not for sale currently. Because as I put it to him "I don't want to normalize women with chains around their necks for him." And of course, since he's seen this picture he has asked me about a million times why she has a chain around her neck.
So I'm not quite sure of what to do. I've kind of been trying to avoid the conversation, but of course he can totally tell when I'm hedging and just has a million more questions. So what do I do, internet friends? How do I explain this to him? Any advice?
Addendum: I just spent 20 minutes google image searching Slave Leia for a picture of Carrie Fisher in the original costume and I feel like I learned a lot. I mean, most of what I found was just hyper-active fanboy salivation/ojectification crap that I'd expected, but there was some interesting stuff too. Like this guy who created a gender bent Slave Leia costume for himself to wear (as Slave Leo, and writes a good blog post about it too) and also, I'd never noticed what Leia wore on her feet in this scene, but look at this costume shot:
An oddly, I kind of like those boots. This surprises even me. They are sort of an Ugg precursor, but less schlumpfy, and with cuter detailing. I was totally expecting some sort of ridiculously impractical knee-jerk high heel choice, but I like that the costume designer went in a more authentic-to-the-period-and-culture-of-Tatooine direction on this one. Its refreshing.
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