Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) – Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

Buffy was not the first woman who literally kicked ass on television, but it would be easy to say that she was a strong foundation for many of the female roles that came after her. If we had to pick the toughest female character ever, Buffy would probably fit the bill and that’s not just because she’s probably kicked more actual ass than every other female character combined.

It might be cheating to say that Buffy deserves top honors considering she was gifted with supernatural powers, but that would be missing the point of the entire show. The vampires and other demons were really metaphors for highschool and life. Buffy was the quintessential teenage girl for most of the early years, Slayer duties notwithstanding. She just wanted to fit in, she liked shopping, she loved her boyfriend and she hated her bratty younger sister. But it’s the very fact that when push came to shove Buffy was able to transcend her own wants and desires to do what was right (like send the man she loved to Hell in order to save the world) that made her strong.

Buffy wasn’t perfect. She could be selfish and whiney, or annoying and petulant. She could also be self-destructive, as her relationship with Spike can attest. But, when the chips were down, Buffy could always be counted on to pull through for her friends and for strangers. In the end, that makes her not only a kick-ass woman, but a true hero as well.