preoccupiedpepper:

pentag0nal:

This is my friend TJ, wearing a costume she made for Halloween, 1977.  She was 16 at the time.

Now, keep in mind: there was no internet to search for images.  She could not have rented and paused the movie, because it wasn’t released on video until 1982.  No, TJ just went to the movie a bunch of times, took notes with a flashlight, drew a bunch of sketches, and put this together.

In 19-fucking-77.  So let’s bury this bullshit about how women didn’t grow up on Star Wars.

I want to tell my story about growing up on Star Wars and this seems like a real good place to do it. 

When I was four my cousins (all boys) and their friends (all boys) told me that we were going to play Star Wars and since I was the only girl I would have to be Princess Leia. 

They all got to have toy lightsabers or nerf guns, but my job was to lay helplessly on my grandparent’s bed and wait to be rescued. So while a dozen little boys ran around playing, I sat and waited. 

Now I had seen Star Wars. I knew this wasn’t how the story went. I grew madder and madder and madder as they refused to let me join them in the actual game. 

So when one older boy came and lifted me off the bed by my arm, twisting it behind my back painfully, I did what I thought Princess Leia would do in such a situation. (In hindsight, this was perhaps not exactly what Princess Leia would do, but I was four, so cut me some slack.)

I kicked him in right in the crotch and took his lightsaber. 

I was four and I knew that Princess Leia was not helpless.