WHERE DID BO PEEP GO

WHERE DID BO PEEP GO

That was the question and topic of a lot of conversations and well, to be honest, it did suck that, for as much as I love Jessie and her Calico Jane sort of style, she wasn't Bo Peep and Bo's role in Toy Story 2 was tiny as all hell which turned to "who dis?' in Toy Story 3. With Jessie in the picture Bo Peep, while not even Woody's love interest, was the center stage of the new only 1 female lead required. And it sucked. It was like since they partnered up Buzz, they couldn't have room for another relationship and wrote off Bo Peep as just being sold in a yard sale - which, wow. Talk about fridging a female character so easily.

A couple weeks back there was some leaked promotion art where it did show Bo Peep being back to some degree, her arms wrapped and what looked like the potential of pants instead of a skirt.

Disney Bounding is dressing up in homage or, at least to the best of your ability to skirt the "no costumes" that the park has but come as a character. It can be done just by putting together a line up of colors that mirror the character, and honestly, it's whatever you want it to be for yourself.

Then there's a twice a year event called Dapper Day in the Parks. It's where you dress up your basic sunday best as seen in the original concept art for the construction of the park. I guess Walt just assumed that everyone would come in their most impressive clothing at the time and you wouldn't have swollen feet from the shoe choices.

Well, upon seeing this mock-up of Toy Story 4's Bo Peep, I immediately started thinking a Bo Peep bound would be, but more to the point, I was trying to come up with ways to make it a gender-bending bound. The way I see it, there's a lot of male characters that get a female version of a bound happening. I mean, it's generally accepted that a woman can dress up as their take of Woody, Buzz and just about anyone they wanted to. I mean, more power to them and I actually really appreciate how they come out.

But I seldom, if ever, see the opposite happen. It's very rare to see a male bound as a female Disney character. And I'm not sure if it's because of some sort of insecurity thing or what, but it's a little bit of an annoyance to me. Just because you're bounding as a princess or other female character doesn't take anything away from your own identity.

Bounding, to me, is just showing enjoyment and wanting to highlight your own love for the character who brought you some amount of entertainment or hey, you wanted to dress as like you would on Halloween. So to me, the idea of flipping the genders and being a male Bo Peep bounder was an interesting one that got me even more invested in this sort of stand to highlight how much Toy Story 3 did a disservice to the character. But the bounding idea appealed for another reason, since, well, in the case of my own ethnic background of being a Spanish-Basque, there is a rich long history of Shepherds.

When the official photo came out, I had a strange feeling because it was almost to the essence of what I was trying to come up with my bound of her. Though I had the idea of putting pink polka dots on the pants instead of having the cape be made out of her previous skirt. I even did the whole "grab a bunch of pictures for references instead of sucking it up and starting a printrest account" route for source material and inspiration;

Will I still do it? Probably. At this point I have had this conversation about what happened to Bo Peep for the better part of a year even before the teaser for the new movie has come out. I would want to follow though on this bounding. It's a far cry from my old days of bounding in very low key styles.