Princess Leia is my Role Model and Other Musings...

I was recently asked if I had seen Star Wars. This question was quickly qualified, pointing out that the questioner meant the original. The first thing that ran through my head was, originals? You mean there is anything else? Oh yeah, there were those 2 1/2 pieces of crap the powers that be decided to torture us with. ( 1/2 of Revenge of the Sith is worthwhile, I will grant that, but no more.) I laughed when answering this question, because of course I had seen them. Hadn't everyone in this country? I often forget that the whole Star Wars deal isn't a universal experience, and that as a child of 1974, my perspective on their cultural impact might be a bit skewed.

So yeah, I've seen them. Several times. Probably several dozen, sadly enough. Okay, fine - I own them, actually. As a kid, we all lived and breathed Star Wars. We were the original brand loyalists - we had Star Wars sheets, trading cards, lunch boxes, t-shirts and action figures (with extra cool points for those with parents who would patiently cut out UPC codes for the limited edition 1979 Boba Fett.) I was so jealous of my friend Paul - while I had to be content with my dinky Landspeeder and TIE fighter, he had the Millenium Falcon with all it's eight million moveable parts!

The nice thing about being the lone girl in a circle of friends was that I always got to be Princess Leia. Which was fortunate, what with the dearth of female characters around. If you didn't fancy yourself spending an afternoon pretending to be tied to a rock or fainting a lot, the princesses were the way to go. Princess Leia and Princess from Battle of the Planets got to kick butt and be stylish. Other than that, you were pretty much out of luck. Wonder Woman seemed too far out of reach for a little girl, far too womanly with that sparkly bustier and bosom that could front the prow of a ship. The bionic woman was boring when you took away the sound effects. Charlie's Angels required more girls than we had around, and left the boys to be bad guys or a disembodied voice. Besides, unless they were blonde, they all dressed like Mom. We occasionally played Dukes of Hazzard, but that entire game just involved jumping in and out of the window of my Dad's car until he would catch us and tell us to knock it off.

Princess Leia had it all going on, though. She had attitude in spades and snappy dialogue to go with it, trading sassy banter with bad and good boys alike. She was handy with a blaster and tactical maps and could pilot a ship when the occasion called for it. All that, and pretty white dresses that didn't get dirty, like ever, and extremely complicated hairstyles. This is who I totally wanted to be when I grew up - I wanted to have adventures and face down unspeakable evil while moving through life with courage and grace, and an endless supply of smartass remarks. Of course, I also figured by the time I grew up, one could actually win an interstellar spacecraft in a card game and there would be plenty of evil aliens to do battle with behind the greater backdrop of intergalatic war - so take it for what it's worth.