First-Grade Girl Bullied for Liking Star Wars?!

It's bad enough that bullying and gender-norming starts as early as kindergarten, if not before. But gender-shaming a first-grade girl for liking Star Wars? That's just sick and wrong:

At summer's end, Katie and I went to Target to pick out her backpack, lunchbox and water bottle for the new school year. After great deliberation, she chose a Star Wars water bottle to match her Star Wars backpack.

Katie loves Star Wars, and she was very excited about her new items. For the first few months of school, she proudly filled her water bottle herself and helped me pack her lunch each morning.

. . .

She wailed, "The first grade boys are teasing me at lunch because I have a Star Wars water bottle. They say it's only for boys. Every day they make fun of me for drinking out of it. I want them to stop, so I'll just bring a pink water bottle."

This is bananas. As Bonnie Burton notes on the StarWars.com blog, __anybody __can be a *Star Wars *fan. Here's an off-the-top-of-her-head list of well-known female fans:

And not only are there millions of women who love Star Wars, there famous, talented women who love Star Wars like pop star Lady Gaga, country/pop singer Taylor Swift, actress Megan Fox, actress/producer Drew Barrymore, actress/producer/writer Tina Fey, actress Michelle Ryan, comedian/actress Margaret Cho, award-winning actress Helen Mirren, MTV’s own Liz Lee, 90210 actress AnnaLynne McCord, supermodel & reality TV star Adrianne Curry, actress & gamer goddess__ Felicia Day__, Jane Wiedlin from The Go-Go’s, singer Tanya Donelly,__ Jenny Conlee__ from The Decemberists, MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow, not to mention all the cool gamer gals in Team Unicorn! And that’s just to name only a few!

I'll just mention, too, that in both of the recent interviews I've done with cast members, Catherine Taber and James Arnold Taylor have specifically spoken up for the many young female fans of Star Wars.

This has struck home for me a bit, because one of my seven-year-old's good friends at school the past couple of years has been a girl who's mad for Star Wars. She was almost as excited about the arrival of his new rocket-firing Boba Fett figure as my son was. And while my kid takes it as read that girls naturally like Star Wars, we'll probably have a chat this weekend about sticking up for one's friends.

The good folks at EPBOT are organizing a comment drive on Katie's behalf (which, her mom reports, she is reading, so do comment!), and Bonnie has suggested using the hashtag #MayTheForceBeWithKatie on Twitter. In addition, it's probably never too early to start paying attention for signs of depression or alienation from school.