What Would Buffy Do?
By Aoife Broad
When I was fourteen years old, I ordered a t-shirt online.
What would Buffy do?
The internet was relatively new to me back then, and my family had only just caved into getting a dial-up connection - so we weren’t sure if it would arrive. But two months later it appeared, as if by magic, in the mailbox.
The shirt had "Sunnydale High" emblazoned across the front in bold, yellow letters. To the outside eye, it would’ve looked like a very normal, slightly cringey high school leavers’ shirt. But to me, it was one of the first pieces of clothing that not only signified my aesthetic tastes, but hinted at who I believed myself to be as a person. Above all else, the shirt referenced the show that centered my identity for much of my teenage life in a cool, but mysterious way (at least in the mind of my fourteen-year-old self).
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a seven-season cult franchise, that tackled everything from the intricacies of female power to the purpose of death itself, all while its titular character and accompanying ‘Scooby’ gang kick ass, take names, and pump out very reference-worthy one-liners.
One of those one-liners that’s stuck with me over the years is: “What would Buffy do?” It’s something that would float across my brain whenever anything a little bit fried would happen in my life.
A jerk harassing me on the street… What would Buffy do?
A car crashes into mine at a busy intersection… What would Buffy do?
A plague ravaging the planet… What would Buffy do?
More often than not, she wouldn’t know what to do, but she’d kick-ass anyway.
More than 20 years after its debut, Buffy is still renowned for its kick-ass, girl power legacy. But now, I wonder what I learned from the show, and its creator: Joss Whedon.
While the show will always have a place in my heart, I can’t continue to approach it with the same doe-eyed ignorance as my fourteen-year-old self. For one, Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on the show, released a statement claiming Whedon had mistreated and eventually fired her from Angel (Buffy’s spinoff) after the birth of her first child in the early 2000s.
The principal cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), center.
She wrote that Whedon had “created hostile and toxic work environments since his early career. I know because I experienced it firsthand. Repeatedly.” She reported that Whedon called her “too fat” for the role in the early months of her pregnancy, and asked her if she was “going to keep it” [the baby].
Carpenter’s statements paint a mentality that’s a far cry from the character Whedon created. Buffy was all about challenging the way that women are presented on screen, so it was really disappointing for me to learn that the creator of one of my all-time favorite characters is a gobshite.
Whedon has a career-long history of building female narratives structured around young women whose primary strengths lie in their physical abilities, but in real life, most (if not all) of the women I look up to don’t have superhuman powers passed down unto them by the powers that be.
They don’t slay vampires, demons, or save the world on a semi-regular basis.
Their strengths lie in other places.
Whedon created some of the most complex female characters to grace 1990s TV: gay-witch Willow, point-blank former vengeance demon Anya, and overburdened slayer Buffy. But they’re characters. They’re confined to a screen and a 50-minute-per-episode time slot.
The amazing women in my life aren’t.
I look up to my mum a lot. She was born in Ireland and moved her life to New Zealand for love. She’s ridiculously kind, never swears, and drinks far too much tea. She spends her free time walking the dog, or gardening. I love watching how excited she gets when new life springs from the soil. She’s strong, too. She lifts barrows of dirt and fertilizer, fixes things around the house, and looks after lost birds.
My friend Eleanor has a lot of Mum’s traits, which I think is why I respect her so much. She has a garden too (but she kills all of her plants with kindness). Her monsteras are under-watered but live in gorgeous pots with plenty of climbing room in a sun-deprived flat. She collects seashells and pretty rocks from the beach. She gives them away to people she loves. We always fight over who pays for things, we’re both wanting to shout (pay for) the other. Sometimes I think she’s a witch.
Another friend, Tanya, has an insane creative streak. She can make or paint anything given enough time. She’s funny, thoughtful, and uncompromisingly warm. She makes people feel welcome anywhere. We kayaked across a massive lake together last week, capsized once, and laughed in the sun, soaked and covered in algae. She has a great laugh.
The women in my life are amazing, and they’re nothing like Buffy.
Over the last 8 years, I’ve begun to realize that Whedon’s vision of powerful women and on-screen feminism compound into a reductive, and violent conception of what it means to be a forceful woman.
Strong women kick-ass, sure. But they also knit, and give each other hugs, and laugh. They’re emotionally intelligent, have their own interests, and care: about anything and everything.
When I was younger, I didn’t understand this. I joined a kickboxing gym, practiced karate and aikido. I wanted to be tough. I wanted to be Buffy.
Now, I don’t know who I want to be. But I like who I am.
The one-liner has changed a little too. When there’s a problem in my life I don’t ask: What would Buffy do?
Instead, I ask: What would mum, El, or Tanya do?
They’re a phone call away, after all.
Aoife Broad is a crappy vegetarian and artist based in Wellington, NZ. Follow her on Instagram @aoifebroad.
