Expounding On All Things Female and Fannish

[lazypadawan]

Erika from Jawas Read Too posted the following on Club Jade (excerpted):

Back Off Guys, It's Our Turn

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You’ve all heard of Ashley Eckstein (the talented voice of “Clone Wars” character Ahsoka Tano) and her now famous and easily recognizable Her Universe Star Wars clothing line for women. Female fans. Female. Fans. Did you read that correctly? Female. As in, girls. Women-folk. Not male fans—female. Have I made myself clear yet?

Without fail, Ashley’s wonderful and beautiful line continues to release new pieces with regular input from fans (male and female alike) to create t-shirts, jewelry, and even an upcoming line of sleepwear. And without fail, every single time a new item is introduced several male fans step in with a comment similar to:

“Now we need something like that for guys!”

No. You don’t. And do you know why? Because if it hasn’t already been designed, made, and sold in some form over the past 30 years (THIRTY. YEARS.), it will be designed, made, and sold over the next few months to male Star Wars fans in the following stores: JCPenney, Target, Old Navy, Kohl’s, Walmart, Hot Topic, etc…Not to mention exclusive online stores, the Mark Ecko line for men, or the most recent Star Wars line of Adidas menswear (not including the shoes).

I’m not naming names. I don’t have to. There are any number of frighteningly similar comments and opinions that pop up from various sources regularly to prove to me that some male fans just don’t get it.

On her first blog entry for the Her Universe website, Ashley explains the situation with female fans eloquently. To put it simply: it has been very hard to find Star Wars clothing for females. When something is available, it’s usually at Hot Topic and only in such garish or stereotypically “girl” colors (pink, hot pink, baby blue, purple) as to render the effort disastrous. For every 10 Star Wars t-shirts there are for men (the typical t-shirt is designed to fit the male body), there are maybe one or two for women. Those odds don’t get much better when you want to consider aesthetics or, how great/ugly the shirt looks.

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Thanks to Her Universe, female fans finally have that for themselves. We are finally being recognized. We can proudly display our nerdism as fashion and let me tell you: that is the BEST feeling. I can, with a t-shirt, like any other male fan (who have been the “normal” customer for fandom merchandising across the board), and have people know, “hey, she likes Star Wars.”

And that’s my point. It has been beyond difficult for female fans to do this for the past thirty years. It’s not fun settling for unflattering t-shirt prints or being told to “just wear a guys’ shirt” or a “little boys’ t-shirt” because there is little to no other option. I still can’t walk into any of those stores to find Star Wars underwear, pajamas (my boyfriend has a pair of Vader pajama pants. Isn’t he lucky?), or much of anything that was tailored to fit MY body because as a female I have been largely ignored as a consumer of Star Wars products for so long.

It isn’t that we are “now” getting lots of awesome and extremely well thought out designs and merchandise. It’s that now we are finally getting those to begin with. We have never really had that before.

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You already have something “like that” for you and you don’t have to pay extravagant shipping fees to get it to you. With over 100 choices out there right now at this very minute, I’m sure there is bound to be something “like that” for you. And when expressed, jokingly in jealousy or otherwise, the “me too” attitude really reinforces the idea that you simply do not get it and frankly that makes me want to turn to each and every one of you even hesitating at this moment to mansplain the situation here to me and say, “BACK. OFF.”

But I am not going to do that. I am here today because I want you to understand why this line is so important for us and why you need to join us in just celebrating the milestone here, if you are not doing so already. You don’t have to look nerdy alone anymore. Because of Her Universe we can join you. And that’s the beauty of it.

Thank you, Erika for mentioning what has annoyed the bejeezus out of me whenever there are any updates on Her Universe's Facebook account. Inevitably, there's some DUDE who says, "When are you going to start making stuff for guys?" Did they not get the memo that there's a reason why somebody started this line in the first place? Because the female segment in fandom has been long underserved and to be honest, I think it's because the Powers That Be didn't quite understand how women connect to Star Wars. I've been buying SW merchandise a really long time and most of it is unisex or stuff I had to get in the men's department. It's great to find up-to-date designs that have meaning for me that are made for me.

By the way, Erika forgot about the whole slew of new stuff in the young men's and young boys' department at Bloomingdales. Or how Pottery Barn Kids' line of SW goodies is obviously aimed at boys. There's still far more being produced for the guys than for the chicks and that will likely be the case for a long time.

Granted, I can understand men being annoyed at the paucity of adult Clone Wars wear or anything having to do with the prequel films. Boy do I ever! I advise them to take it up with Howard Roffman.

In response to Erika's post, someone named Vivienne posted the following (excerpted):

I STILL don’t wear Star Wars franchise stuff because there is no way I can afford Her Universe. $30 for a TEE SHIRT? No. No no no. I’ll keep buying the $9.99 shirts for guys and sewing them to a better size, thanks.

Also, I do feel pretty alienated by the Her Universe stuff. You criticize the “girliness” of other Star Wars merch, yet Her Universe is ostensibly feminized above and beyond most anything else I’ve seen.

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After looking at Her Universe booths at a few cons, I came away with the feeling that Her Universe stuff is NOT for female fans. It’s for a very specific demographic of female fans of the extremely girly-girl persuasion, and they need to have deep wallets.

$30 isn't cheap but your average SW t-shirt from any other retailer aside from Target and Wal-Mart runs $20-25. When I was fatter, I used to cringe at all of the people who were oh so offended whenever someone tries to create and sell high-quality, well-designed plus-sized clothes because they weren't $10 apiece. HOW DARE THEY CHARGE MONEY!! If you want more bargain SW wear for women, take it up with Howard Roffman, Target, and Wal-Mart.

And I guess Viv missed the point with HU. The common complaint from female fans was that there wasn't anything specifically designed for women or with more feminine tastes in mind aside from the typical baby doll in pink and HU is there to fill that gap. Nobody said this was for the butch in all of us. I recognize there are female fans who are not interested in the romance stuff or other female characters, and love the villains, the hardware, and so forth. In fact, Her Universe previewed yesterday on its Facebook page a tank top with the Mandalorian skull. They are thinking about those fans. Just give them time; it's a small and young venture.

But while not all female fans want a Han/Leia or Anakin/Padmé t-shirt, there's absolutely no way one was going to be made by a licensee shooting for the unisex or the dude market and there ARE female fans who will want them. That's the whole point.

Changing gears, here's an interesting meta on Katie Lucas's writing for Clone Wars. She wrote the awesome "Assassins" and the upcoming episode(s?) on Savage Opress. What does this all mean?

http://fangirlblog.com/2010/11/heiress-to-the-throne/

I"m not so sure if Lucas is eluding SW's appeal to women or whatever. Obviously that's not the case. I am happy though to see someone who really knows how to write women for t.v..

Update 11/11: Ashley Eckstein responds here:

http://heruniverse.com/her-universe-speaks-out-about-prices-sizes-designs/

Comments

[nic]

Awesome post.

(And I got my HU stuff today!!! So excited!!!)

[sylviamaris.livejournal.com]

I've been wearing Star Wars t-shirts and accessories for the last twenty-seven years, and shopping in boys'/mens' departments has never bothered me. I guess I'm the weirdo now? No, wait, I'm not. A real fan is going to show she's a fan no matter who is or isn't pandering to her alleged demographic.