Buffy is definitely a show I needed as a young girl. Well kind of, I still find it to be too gory and that’s the reason I didn’t watch when I was younger. It scared me. However recently it’s been coming on TV and I can close my eyes if it gets too gross (it hasn’t yet which is a surprise) and I was surprised to find I like it.

I get the hype now!

What I love the most about Buffy though is that she’s girly. Normally when female characters are badass, they have to be either a tom boy or sexy. With Buffy she’s a normal girl, super girly and she still kicks ass!

I mean how cool is that?

As a young girl I was neither a tom boy or a girly girl, I was both. So I found it hard to find my place. I ended up settling with tom boy because I found the tom boy aspects of my personality were more readily accepted than my girly side.

It took ages for me to admit that I was just as girly as I was a tom boy and when I did it was so freeing. But it took ages to get to that stage of life, for me and my friends. For some it took finishing secondary school, so when we were sixteen. For others it took becoming an adult. For me I made peace with my girly side in the middle of secondary school.

I think however if I had, had a stronger stomach and had watched Buffy as a kid I would have gotten to that place much quicker. It really does pay to have good role models on TV.

I also wish I’d watched Xena but that’s another post for another day.

Apart from that I like how Buffy doesn’t romanticise vampires. I mean she ends up dating two but both relationships end badly because they’re not human and they have lost their souls.

The show makes it very clear that they’re basically demons and unless they do a Spike (I can’t remember but didn’t he do something at the end that saved his soul?) there’s no saving them.

Also Angel wasn’t perfect either. He had issues on issues and having Buffy date him showed that even when you know something is wrong sometimes you have to go through it to really know it’s wrong.

I mean how many of us have been in a relationship we really had no business being in?

So again, she’s relatable and the vampires stay evil.

It’s so refreshing. I didn’t know I needed that until I watched Buffy.

I also like the weird villain of the week concept they have going. I mean some of them are really off the wall and honestly, it’s fun to watch. Even as the villains are weird they still manage to relate back to real issues. Which was interesting.

It’s not just Buffy who is realistic but the teenagers too. Even though there are stereotypes the characters are shown to be more than their stereotype and I liked that.

Buffy’s relationship with her mom, though, is very strained. I kind of wish the mom would back off and not be so harsh but then from the mom’s perspective Buffy is on a slippery slope to destruction and it’s not like Buffy can tell her mom what she does. But I mean why not? Xander and Willow are strangers when they find out, why can’t she tell her mom? It would probably make her mom safer. And she looks like she can handle the news. She’s tough like her daughter.

Anyway, I’m still in the early seasons. I’ve seen clips from later seasons which is why I know a little about Spike but since it’s on channel 4 at the moment I thought I’d go and watch it all properly from the beginning. If you’re in the UK watch it too! (Or just watch it on Netflix, apparently it’s on).

I’ll come back later when I’m done to sum up what I think.

I wonder if my opinions will change!