Many of the feminist debates surrounding Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the series’ potential for a transgressive reading center on Buffy’s body.  Can Buffy be a feminist hero in a body that typifies patriarchal beauty standards?  At the crux of this debate are definitions of what it means to be a female body and what it means to be “normal.”  Buffy complicates these questions by interrogating simple definitions of physical embodiment or normality.  In the Buffyverse, no body goes unquestioned: identity swaps, invisibility, possession by demon, and temporary death are as common as puns and pop culture references.  With its exploration of mutable bodies, the series eschews simple binaries of male/female, normal/freakish, and emotional/physical.   The series’ genre work in camp, pastiche and horror also work to corrode too simplistic definitions of what it means to be a girl-body in the world.  Utilizing Julia Kristeva’s definition of abject bodies along with close readings of “Who Are You?” “I Was Made to Love You,” and “The Killer in Me,” I would like to examine how Buffy complicates interpretations of the body, giving way to a feminist revisioning of the bodily world.

Bibliography

Fudge, Rachel. "The Buffy Effect or, a Tale of Cleavage and Marketing." Bitch 4.1 (1999): 18-21.

Helford, Elyce.  “‘My Emotions Give me Power’: The Containment of Girls' Anger on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Fighting the Forces, ed. Rhonda V. Wilcox, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: New York: 2002.

Kristeva, Julia.  Powers of Horror.  Columbia University Press, New York, 1982.

Pender, Patricia. “‘I’m Buffy and You’re . . . History’: The Postmodern Politics of Buffy.”  Fighting the Forces, ed. Rhonda V. Wilcox, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: New York: 2002.

Wilcox, Rhonda. “‘Who Died and Made Her the Boss?’ Patterns of Mortality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fighting the Forces, ed. Rhonda V. Wilcox, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: New York: 2002.