- Is Buffy really Pro-Women?...hmmmmmmm
by Vibes -6.01.04

  It's a question that has been nagging the hell out of me like Tiffany's writings nag anyone with an education higher then the 9th grade. Is Buffy really a show that helps establish the popular feminist viewpoint that everyone celerbrates or is it just another show that continues a certain media hold on the minds of our young females. Now hear me out, before you start to sharpen your knives and pull out the nooses ready for the weekly hanging session in the site feedback forum.

I didn't pull it out of my ass like most things I go on rants about, like the whole green beans are so much cooler than ships thing. I honestly had a real and concrete thought (yeah it scared the hell out of me too). So the whole thinking thing started when I got off my lazy butt and bought all the seasons that I could and resumed sitting on my ass to watch them. I noticed a few odd things that went completely against the whole 'I am woman hear me roar' thing.

A big thing that makes me question the true motives of our godly ME higher ups is the actual appearance of the actresses in the show. We have a show that is supposed to give new meaning to women in TV. Yet, we are watching a show that has actresses with bodies that most young females will never have. Extremely thin women that lack boobs because they have about 2% body fat. Before the sexy and curvy Tara (yes I said sexy) there were no females on the show with a 'real' body type. Well, actually that is not completely true. If you have ever seen the first Buffy pilot you will know this. The original actress that portrayed Willow was a frumpy chunky dark haired girl not the fiery beautiful red head that we have all come to know and love. The reasons behind changing actresses I do not know, perhaps that chick couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag.

The women of Buffy are extremely beautiful, as a male I will not deny this but, real chicks just don't look like that and the ME higher ups could be continuing that nasty little media cycle of damaging young females personal self image. Not to mention furthering the male mentality that the only type of beautiful woman is a skinny bony broad that looks like the stick figures my 8 year old sister draws for me.

This has caused me great distress. The other thing that hurt my poor wee little brain is the reaction from some fans who publicly voiced that Amber Benson was fat. Now I'm not wise in the way of the female clothing size so I had my other, 21 year old, sister help me out with this and she determined that Amber Benson was probably a size 8 maybe 10. This was like speaking Japanese to me so I needed a translation a point of reference if you will. So again, she hooked me up and said she was a size 8 so I was blown away because my sister is a skinny chick (granted she is close to 6 ft tall but skinny none the less) and she went on to tell me that the average chick is about a size 12. So these people were ragging on a chick and her shape because her silhouette didn't look like a lolli pop.

You know if this was any other show I don't think it would bother me as much and I am well aware of the fact that to have a hit show you cant have too many 'great' looking chicks because of the society stigmas of what is beautiful. But Buffy isn't just any regular type of show, it tackled so many different social taboos and that was amazing and commendable but throughout doing this I am afraid the execs have perpetuated the idea that an unhealthy skinny unobtainable body is what chicks should look like. It was a show that prided itself on giving females power and turning the tables on a male dominated genre yet continued the already old media induced idea of what society deems attractive.

I'm not taking anything away from some absolutely brilliant writing and addressing certain taboos that took really big balls. I just would have loved to see the execs and higher ups take on the one taboo that was in our faces every time we watched the show, the physical image of women. It just would have been cool to see if the writers were talented enough to make a chunky frumpy chick (like the original Willow) and some how make her attractive and cool through personality and the depth of the character not what her ass looked like in a pair of tight leather pants.

But god bless those tight leather pants. Hey!! I'm only human.