Growing up as a female in the nineties had its ups and downs. Being a female who was interested in typically ‘masculine’ activities was ten times harder.
Ignoring the fact that I didn’t really play with barbies so much as pretend I was batman or a power ranger most of the time, I grew up with the standard belief that women in television were only good as a plot device to make the male lead look like the hero when rescuing the damsel in distress.
My view of the world was flipped on its head with the introduction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Finally a show that gave women the upper hand in a fictional world. What was even better than seeing a girl kicking ass and taking names? The lore of the Slayer is that this hero is only ever a woman and they’ve been keeping the world safe from demons and the like for centuries.
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Those kinds of characters gave me hope that growing up I could be anything and do anything I put my mind to. Buffy opened the door to female empowerment for a lot of people my age, I have been lucky to fall in love with shows later on in life that follow on from that sentiment.
In a world where feminism is widely discussed on every source of media, many feel that having a woman who can do everything is all we should be asking for, but that’s simply not true. We as a generation need to be exposed to women who can not only take back the power they had lost in their lives and do something real with it, but also to potentially take power from a man who let his power go to his head.
Back to my point about this not being an attack on male characters; Again, I’m not saying that men are inferior in any way, shape or form. One thing that gives female characters substance is having a support group consisting of both males and