Women to Admire: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
She started as a rebuke to the horror genre’s helpless “little blonde girl.” Now Buffy is one of pop culture’s most recognizable symbols of female empowerment.
On the surface Buffy Summers seems like the antithesis of a superhero: she’s petite, feminine and occasionally ditzy. In fact, she appears to have more in common with a stock character from a horror movie. You know, the popular girl who gets killed off less than halfway through the film?
Well, as creator Joss Whedon has said, Buffy the Vampire Slayer came into being as a way to flip the script on horror tropes, especially sexist ones. And so Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) was allowed to be an incredibly strong, courageous, kick-ass teen who “saved the world — a lot.” But she was also allowed to be girly, talkative, funny, boy-crazy from time to time and mediocre in school most of the time.
Like Jessica Jones, a direct cultural descendant, Buffy is a mess of contradictions. She is simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. She’s a superhero who can physically dominate any foe, but she still gets her heart broken. She’s the Chosen One, but opts to forgo the Slayer’s standard life of isolation, depending instead on her non-supernaturally gifted friends and family. Her main job is literally to fight the forces of darkness, but Buffy herself is imbued with lightness, optimism and a wicked sense of humor.
Buffy also serves as a kind of cultural shorthand for female empowerment. She protects civilization from evil — something that is historically a very masculine endeavor — and resists the patriarchy on several different fronts. She refuses to follow the rules set by the Watchers’ Council, a group of middle-aged white dudes who tell the young female Slayers how they should live their lives and do their jobs. When she teams up with a demon-hunting military unit in season 4, Buffy chafes at the combat boots and fatigues. (You can’t really blame her. As she points out, she’s slain many a vampire while wearing halter tops.)
Most inspiring, however, is Buffy’s ultimate decision to upend the Slayer system. As she and the viewers are told over and over throughout Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s seven-season run, only one Slayer can live at a time and must serve until she dies. The next Slayer will only be called up when her predecessor is killed. (There is the odd exception, but it’s a long story.) However, with the help of her friends, Buffy figures out a way to spread the wealth. Using a spell, they equip every potential Slayer with a Slayer’s full powers. So by the series’ end, young women all over the world are as formidable as Buffy.
“From now on,” Buffy announces in the series finale, “every girl in the world who might be a Slayer will be a Slayer. Every girl who could have the power will have the power. Can stand up, will stand up.” It’s an incredibly moving sequence and a feminist call-to-action if I’ve ever heard one:
Of course, I’m far from the only person to tout Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Take a look around the modern cultural landscape and you’ll see strands of Buffy’s DNA anywhere. There’s the aforementioned unconventional superhero Jessica Jones. There’s the reference-heavy dialogue of Amy Sherman-Palladino, a longtime Buffy fan. There’s Black Panther and Killmonger, enemies who have more in common than they’d care to admit, much like Buffy and fellow Slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku). There’s the recent “Witches” episode of Broad City, which equates powerful women like Michelle Obama to well, witches. I could go on, but then this post would never end.
Buffy’s legacy is far-reaching, so much so that it’s a little hard to believe that her show debuted more than 20 years ago. Her reign as Queen of Feminist Pop Culture is even more impressive since she’s a superhero who didn’t originate as a comic book character. (She is a comic book character now, ironically.)
Next. Women to Admire: Betty Suarez. dark
When you get right down to it, Buffy Summers is a woman to admire because she fights demons both supernatural and sociocultural. Her main concern is defeating evil in all its forms — and if that means helping other women rise up along the way, so much the better.