‘Kicking Ass is Comfort Food’: Buffy as Third Wave Feminist Icon

Abstract

What accounts for the extraordinary feminist appeal of the hit television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and how has its ex-cheerleading, demon-hunting heroine become the new poster girl for third wave feminist popular culture?1 In this chapter I examine Buffy through the problematic of third wave feminism, situating the series as part of a larger cultural project that seeks to reconcile the political agenda of second wave feminism with the critique of white racial privilege articulated by women of colour and the theoretical insights afforded by poststructural analysis. I suggest that if one of the primary goals of third wave feminism is to question our inherited models of feminist agency and political efficacy, without acceding to the defeatism implicit in the notion of ‘postfeminism,’ then Buffy provides us with modes of oppositional praxis, of resistant femininity and, in its final season, of collective feminist activism that are unparalleled in mainstream television. At the same time, the series’ emphasis on individual empowerment, its celebration of the exceptional woman, and its problematic politics of racial representation remain important concerns for feminist analysis. Focusing primarily on the final season of the series, I argue that season seven of Buffy offers a more straightforward and decisive feminist message than the show has previously attempted, and that in doing so it paints a compelling picture of the promises and predicaments that attend third wave feminism as it negotiates both its second wave antecedents and its traditional patriarchal nemeses.