A word about that Princess Leia bikini costume…

In recent years, nothing has said geek louder and clearer than the Princess Leia slave girl bikini outfit. 


We even saw some guy wearing one during his audition for American Idol, which was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.

Forget the FBI flagging library books to hunt down serial killers like they did in the movie Seven. I hope the FBI is tracking costume stores for any males buying a Princess Leia bikini, because we may be seeing one of these people getting hauled away on the news soon.

So anyways, with Comic Con upon us, Kaley Cuoco from the show The Big Bang is starring in this humorous public service announcement  about wearing something different to a sci-fi convention, because chances are pretty good there’s already gonna be tons of girls wearing the Princess Leia bikini.

Yes, as funny as this may seem, girls do geek these days, which shows how far Star Wars has come because back in its initial run it wasn’t popular with the ladies at all.

When Lucas was casting Star Wars, he knew he was gearing the movie towards kids, and Princess Leia was dressed very chaste, wearing a very unsexy, formless white dress. Carrie Fisher even recalled in the Lucas biography Skywalking her breasts were strapped down with gaffers tape. “No breasts bounce in space,” said Fisher. “There’s no jiggling in the Empire.”

By the time of Return of the Jedi, the princess was obviously much more liberated, even if she was chained to Jabba the Hut, with the sexy Jedi swimwear we see so many geek girls wearing at the conventions today. And indeed, Fisher, who was then about 26, looked hot in the outfit, which according to Wookieepedia, “the Star Wars Wiki,” was designed by Aggie Guerard Rodgers (American Graffiti, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and Nilo Rodis-Jamero (Empire, Raiders).

Also according to Wookie, the costume was inspired by the work of the late fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, who like Boris Vallejo and Richard Corben, certainly knew the power of beautiful slave girls in art. As improbable as it may seem, Princess Leia’s iron slave girl bikini today is a big part of Star Wars iconography, and it definitely brought some much needed sexiness to the proceedings.