Pippi Longstocking

Her full name: Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim’s Daughter Longstocking (in the original Swedish: Pippilotta Viktualia Rullgardina Krusmynta Efraimsdotter Långstrump). She’s only nine, as her theme song says, and lives alone in a giant house with a polka-dotted horse and a monkey who wears a sweater. She’s so strong and smart that she needs no adult protection. (She can lift her horse over her head, for instance.) She doesn’t have to go to school. Her hair’s crazy, her clothes are mismatched, and she wears funny old boots several sizes too big for her. She sleeps with her feet on the pillow and her head under the covers. She can fight pirates, chase away nosy schoolmarms, terrify policemen, terrorize shopkeepers, and scandalize parents. She can fly a hot-air balloon and drive a car that runs on glue. She’s got a trunk full of gold coins for when she needs to buy anything and a tree in her yard dispenses delicious lemonade in glass bottles.

Astrid Lindgren’s 1945 creation exists outside of societal norms—her very existence is a big fuck-you to society. Her mamma’s in heaven, and her papa is a sea captain who must live on his ship; and thus, she’s on her own. Her table manners are atrocious, she picks her nose, doesn’t care if her underwear shows, and, it has to be said, sometimes has a chip on her shoulder. But she’s made of good stuff, is our Pippi. She can’t abide bullies, meanies, or baddies. She’ll always come to the rescue of anyone who’s being picked on. She’s generous that way, and in other ways: sometimes she buys candy for all the children of her village. Other times she shares fistfuls of gold coins with them. She sincerely loves her loyal companions, Tommy and Annika, and is fiercely protective of them (so much so that, weirdly, their parents once went on vacation and left them with her). Pippi lives her life following her heart, unafraid to be herself. Her coolness is legion.

“Please help us, before we perish! Without snuff for two days
we wither away on this island.” – Pippi, in Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard