Turning Princess Leia Into a General Isn’t A Feminist Move

When toy aisles ignore women and girls, it influences children’s views of the world and their places within it. Play is the work of the child, as Maria Montessori famously argued. When we exclude girls from certain types of play and on-screen roles, children of both sexes internalize the idea that boys and their interests are more important than girls — that it’s still a man’s world.

Yes, yes and yes!

Why shouldn’t my son, in his hours of play with figures also have a woman or women as part of the re-enactment?

That said, getting to this place of equality is going to take steps. There are leaps here and there but with Star Wars and something at once very big (in its popularity) and very trite (it’s a movie, marketing behemoth yes, but a movie!) lets revel for a bit in the good of transitioning her Princess status to that of a general. Go Leia!

*Editor’s note: My daughter was just Princess Leia a few weeks ago for Halloween 2015. I wonder what she will say when I ask her later, would you like to be General Leia next year? Or would you have been General Leia this year? To be continued. . .