The icon of Star Wars, Mark Hamill is actively present on social media, and he used this for the good and helped a young girl embrace her Star Wars fandom. Young adult author, N.J. Simmonds had sent out a tweet and revealed that her daughter was crying as she wanted to wear the Star Wars t-shirt to school and she thought her classmates would laugh at her for liking, “boy stuff.” She then asked the Star Wars fans to retweet to show her daughter, “how awesome girl Star Wars fans are.” The tweet went viral and got more than 46,000 retweets and over 130,000 likes and also a reply from Mark Hamill who said:
“Just tell her to feel free to use this gesture if her classmates give her any grief. ‘Boy stuff’? PLEASE! The Force is, & always will be strong with females here on Earth & in galaxies far, far away. – mh.”
The actor’s tweet had included a GIF of Luke Skywalker’s where he had brushed off his shoulder. After Hamill had responded, Simmonds received many wonderful responses, and a woman from NASA had tweeted a photo of her driving a Mars Rover, and she was dressed like Rey. Simmonds had released a statement to Romper and revealed her daughter’s reaction to Mark Hamill’s response:
“When Mark Hamill responded I showed her and she smiled, she then said ‘of course he said nice things, because he’s the good guy’ and she ran off to play. Like any normal kid should. We live abroad and are part of a small community, so my daughter’s only reference to Star Wars was the fact that she likes to watch it with her dad and a few boys at school, play Star Wars games in the playground. Therefore, when she decided to wear her T-shirt to school she was nervous about what her girlfriends would say as she’d never seen her friends wear Star Wars clothes (as they are always in the boy section of shops).”
Simmonds sent out many tweets thanking the fans for their support:
“Thank you, Luke Skywalker for your message.”
She then added that her daughter was “sheltered from the Internet and has no idea what she started.
