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How “Buffy” Changed the World of Lesbians on Television

Now that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has staked its last vampire, we can finally examine the series’ contribution to lesbian visibility in its totality – for despite some controversial storylines and consistently low ratings, there is no denying that Buffy has had a lasting impact on the way lesbians are portrayed on television.

Beginning in 1997 on the fledgling network The WB, the series about a high school girl who fought demons and vampires quickly developed a small but loyal fan base despite the fact that few believed a show organized around a female lead fighting evil could be successful; when the series end in 2003, there were a dozen shows trying to copy the formula.

Besides its contribution to the advancement of women in television overall, Buffy broke more television taboos around lesbianism than any other series on network television, and introduced American TV viewers to three sympathetic lesbian characters during its seven-year run.

It all started – and ended – with Willow, masterfully played for seven seasons by Alyson Hannigan.

Over the years, we watched Willow transform from a shy, insecure teenager to an assertive, self-confidant young woman, from a computer geek to a powerful witch – and from a straight teenage girl with a boyfriend to a lesbian.

Buffy (Sarah Michelle Geller), Willow, and Xander (Nicholas Brendan) were the backbone of the series, and Willow not only appeared in almost every one of the 144 episodes, but had the second greatest number of lines (after Buffy).

Willow became one of the most popular characters on the show almost immediately, a fact which was not lost on the writers who early on coined the acronym “PWIP” to describe the plot device most likely to emotionally engage viewers: Put Willow in Peril.

Willow’s popularity did not wane after she came out as a lesbian in the fourth season, either, when she fell in love with fellow wicca Tara shortly after ending her relationship with her high school boyfriend Oz (Seth Green).

The two women had a relationship for two and a half years (although technically they were broken up for awhile during that time, emotionally Willow and Tara were always together), during which time they became surrogate parents/big sisters of sorts to Buffy’s younger sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg).

Tara (played by Amber Benson) developed a strong following among lesbian and bisexual Buffy fans. Besides the fact that Tara was gay, fans were drawn to her because of her shy, humble, and introverted personality, which contrasted sharply with the more outgoing personalities of the other female characters on Buffy.

Not all Buffy fans liked her, of course – many viewers found her passive or whiney – but overall, most found Tara’s sweet nature to add an interesting dynamic to the Buffy mix.

Although it was revealed later that Tara’s death had long been planned as a catalyst to push Willow over to the dark side, most fans were caught off-guard when she was killed at the end of Season Six.

Buffy producers Joss Whedon and Marti Noxon had anticipated the usual number of complaints that follow the death of any regular character on a TV series, but they were wholly unprepared for the depth of anger expressed by many fans after Tara’s death. They were also clearly unaware of how this storyline played into what is commonly referred to as the “Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliche,” a phrase coined to describe the pattern in which lesbian and bisexual characters in movies and film are routinely killed off or made evil.

Willow did indeed become evil in the wake of Tara’s death, and was barely stopped by her friends from destroying the world at the end of Season Six. When the final season began, Willow was still in mourning over Tara and afraid to use magic for fear it would seduce her to the dark side again.

But in the middle of the final season, Willow met Kennedy (played by Iyari Limon), a lesbian slayer-in-training who was almost the polar opposite of Tara: aggressive, self-confidant, and comfortable with her sexuality. Kennedy more than Willow or Tara tended to inspire extreme reactions in fans; some saw her as a spoiled brat, others saw her as a young woman who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted.

Kennedy pursued Willow quite aggressively from the moment they met, and although Willow was initially caught off-guard and even dismayed and by her directness, Willow was eventually won over by Kennedy and the two women developed a relationship. (Almost everyone – even Kennedy fans – agreed that it was far too soon after Tara’s death for Willow to be in a relationship, but extended periods of mourning tend to make for boring television.)

When the series finally ended with the destruction of the Hellmouth and the town of Sunnydale along with it, Willow and Kennedy were among the survivors and still happily together.

In its last few years, the series achieved a number of milestones for lesbians on television, both in terms of physical displays of affection between lesbians and (more importantly) the normalizing of lesbians and lesbian relationships.

Willow’s relationship with Tara was (and still is) the longest-running lesbian relationship on network television (2.5 seasons), and the pair developed a dedicated following among lesbian and bisexual fans who felt overjoyed to finally see aspects of their lives and their relationships reflected back through Willow and Tara’s.

It is probably not an overstatement to say that Willow and Tara enjoyed a more loyal and dedicated fan base than any other lesbian couple on U.S. television.

Willow and Tara’s initial courtship period in Season Four was extremely chaste, however, especially when paired with explicit sex scenes between the heterosexual characters on the show. By Whedon’s own admission, this was due to restrictions imposed on the show by the WB, who worried it would be too controversial.

By the beginning of Season Six, Buffy had switched networks to UPN, and began making up for lost time; by the end of the series, images of lesbians kissing were no longer a rarity on the show. The musical episode “Once More With Feeling” included scenes of Willow and Tara proclaiming their love for one another through song, along with a metaphorical sex scene, and in the controversial episode “Seeing Red,” Willow and Tara were shown naked in bed together post-sex – something which had never been shown on network television before.

Buffy pushed the envelope of sexual expression between women even further, however, in one of the last episodes of the series, “Touched,” when it showed Willow and Kennedy in the first lesbian sex scene on network television.

The character of Kennedy challenged convention as well, as she became only the second regular Latina lesbian character on TV (the first was Lisa Vidal’s character on ER) and the first lesbian “action hero” on television. She was also one of the only regular lesbian characters on television whom we didn’t see in the tentative, struggling-with-her-sexuality phase.

Kennedy was refreshingly out and proud from the moment she was introduced, an image we still rarely see on network TV.

Willow, along with Dr. Kerry Weaver on ER, is also one of the longest-running lesbian characters on network television (3.5 seasons). Although Weaver will surpass this record when she returns on ER next season, Willow has had far more screen time devoted to her and her relationships than Weaver will probably ever have (if last season on ER was any indication).

But perhaps Buffy‘s greatest contribution to lesbian visibility was to expose viewers over a long period of time to the lives of three very different women who were all lesbians.

By sharing the joys and sorrows of these characters, viewers grew accustomed to seeing lesbians as a regular part of the series rather than as just a novelty in a special “lesbian episode” designed to spike the ratings. Furthermore, television portrayals of lesbians are few and far between in general, and to have three fully fleshed-out lesbian characters on one series is almost unheard of.

The series wasn’t afraid to expose the flaws of its lesbian characters, either, as they did with Willow: we saw her at her best (sacrificing herself for her friends) and at her worst (flaying a man alive). In this way Buffy humanized its lesbian characters and didn’t fall into the trap of making them too perfect – yet all three characters remained likeable, or at least sympathetic.

Of course, Buffy wasn’t perfect, and Joss Whedon has been criticized for some of his decisions over the years.

Many fans felt that killing Tara off, for example, and subsequently turning Willow evil reinforced the dead/evil lesbian cliche to such a degree that it canceled out all other positive contributions the show made to lesbian visibility.

I disagree, because I believe the Buffy writers were treating Tara just like the other characters on the show (since main characters frequently die on Buffy, as Anya did in the finale). But nonetheless, they should have thought through Tara’s murder a little better, and perhaps handled that storyline differently, even if Tara still ultimately had to die to drive Willow’s character development.

Willow’s relationship with Kennedy also felt rushed, which strained its credibility somewhat. On the other hand, no one wanted to see Willow end up sad and alone at the end of the series, and the writers didn’t have much time to work with with the end of the series approaching.

The decision to make Willow a lesbian instead of bisexual was problematic, as well, since Willow was clearly attracted to her boyfriend Oz in high school. It would have been more realistic and more groundbreaking if Willow had come out as bisexual (since that is never done on television), or at least had a discussion with Tara or Buffy about whether she was bisexual or a lesbian, instead of just pretending bisexuality didn’t even exist.

But these are minor complaints about a series that overall has done more for lesbian visibility on television than any other show since Ellen came out in 1997.

We might argue within the gay community about the good or bad of a specific storyline or character on Buffy, but I am grateful the series gave us so much rich material to argue over in the first place.

Many of us, however, probably won’t truly appreciate the extent of Buffy‘s contribution until a few years from now, when we’re back to settling for only the occasional lesbian character on network TV. We are already seeing the impact of Buffy‘s departure in next season’s lineup: there are only two regular lesbian characters on primetime network TV so far for the entire 2003-2004 season (Weaver on ER and a bisexual ex-wife on the new sitcom Two and a Half Men) and neither are likely to get much screen time.

In losing Buffy, we lost some of the best (and only) lesbian characters on network TV, and we’re not likely to see anything like it again anytime soon.

But Buffy has normalized and de-sensitized lesbian relationships to such an extent that network television will never be the same. Individual series may revert back to old practices of ignoring or stereotyping lesbians and lesbian relationships, but network television as a whole will never be able to stuff the lesbian genie back into the bottle and pretend that lesbians don’t exist.

Buffy‘s contribution to lesbian visibility on television can perhaps be summed up best through its own dialogue in the last few moments of the series: “We saved the world!” Dawn said, to which Willow replied “We changed the world.”

Thank you, Buffy, for changing the world of television into a better place for women of all sexual orientations.

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