Princess Leia’s metal bikini, which is also known as the “Slave Leia”, is a controversial costume among some fans. Detractors say it takes away the character’s power, while supporters point out that she also used the bikini’s chain to kill her captor, thus reasserting her badass status. Either way, it’s an iconic outfit, but Disney may be willing to give it up when developing future products featuring Leia.

You may recall that Carrie Fisher recently gave some advice to the franchise’s new female lead, Daisy Ridley. Specifically, she said, “Don’t be a slave like I was,” in reference to having to wear that kind of sexualized attire. However, MakingStarWars picked up comments from artist J Scott Campbell saying that Ridley won’t have to face that problem because Disney wants the bikini and everything sexualized out of Star Wars entirely.


Campbell took to Facebook to say that Disney was "already well on its way to wiping out the 'slave' outfit from any future products period. You will NOT see and [sic] future merchandise featuring the slave outfit ever again. Trust me,” and went on to add “I’ve heard it from two sources. We can’t even draw Leia in a sexy pose at Marvel, let alone in that outfit!”

However, he then walked back his comments a bit on Twitter:

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/JScottCampbell/status/661345019001860096[/EMBED_TWITTER] [EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/JScottCampbell/status/661642665373470720[/EMBED_TWITTER]
[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/JScottCampbell/status/661643940483854336[/EMBED_TWITTER]

Slave Leia is a tough outfit because it does come with loaded connotations, and Jenna Busch, who runs the excellent website Legion of Leia, did a good job breaking down how we have to understand the difference between “something being sexual and something being sexualized.” I agree with Busch that while we don’t need to repeat history with Daisy Ridley, we also don’t need to pretend that the past never happened.

But Disney is a very “family friendly” company, and if they take Slave Leia out of circulation, I’m not really feeling the loss. Grown women who want to wear the metal bikini for cosplay because they enjoy it will have the resources to do so, and it’s not like those scenes will ever be cut from Return of the Jedi or erased from our collective memory. But when it comes to releasing new merchandise based on Princess Leia, there are already plenty of other and better outfits to choose from.


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Image via Lucasfilm