Alyson Hannigan – Bitch Flicks

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Bisexual Representation

But the clearest example of the Buffyverse’s discomfort with bisexuality, in my opinion, appears in the character of Faith Lehane. … Despite what was at the time a groundbreaking portrayal of a loving lesbian relationship, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ still had many issues in its messaging surrounding queer sexualities, in particular bisexuality. In my opinion, a few material changes could have gone a long way in removing at least some of this negative messaging.

This guest post written by Lisa Ward appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired, it was considered to be a groundbreaking, feminist television show. Its nuanced portrayals of girls and women stood out in a genre where girls and women were generally portrayed as one-dimensional victims, not three-dimensional heroes (and villains). And for a generation of young people (myself included), this representation was vital and growing up with Buffy had a lasting positive impact on their lives.

However, from the perspective of intersectional feminist criticism, the series was far from unproblematic: its portrayals of people of color and in particular, women of color, were sparse, generally poorly handled, and all too often ended in untimely death; many of the underlying attitudes the show reinforced with regards to sexuality, in particular female sexuality, were deeply troubling; mental illness was portrayed in a very stigmatizing way (despite, in my opinion, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)’s Season 6 arc with depression being handled fairly well); and the show sends a very mixed message regarding its gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters.

It is this final topic — bisexuality and bisexual characters — that I want to explore. While bisexuality is also inclusive of people outside of the gender binary, I will be primarily using the term bisexual, rather than related terms, such as pansexual, as the Buffyverse does not seem to recognize the existence of more than two genders (except perhaps in its non-humanoid characters).

Willow Rosenberg

A piece on bisexuality in the Buffyverse cannot be written without discussing Willow Rosenberg.

There is a lot of debate from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans on whether Willow (Alyson Hannigan)’s character counts as a triumphant case of lesbian representation (at least until Tara’s murder which fulfills the classic Bury Your Gays trope and facilitates Willow’s, admittedly temporary, jump into the Psycho Lesbian trope), a sad case of bisexual erasure, or a nuanced example of sexual fluidity. I can see merits in all of these arguments.

Willow was deeply attracted to and formed physical relationships with men before meeting Tara (Amber Benson) and coming out as a lesbian. Even after coming out, Willow goes on to make comments that imply an ongoing attraction to men as well as women — for example, she describes both Dracula (Rudolf Martin) and Giles (Anthony Head) as “sexy” during Season 4. And Willow’s vampire self, as seen in “Doppelgangland” is quite clearly openly bisexual, making sexual overtures towards both men and women (and her own alternate universe self, because she is a Depraved Bisexual trope – a trope Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a very damaging relationship with indeed). It is these plot points that tend to lead to accusations of bisexual erasure for the character of Willow Rosenberg.

However, as is rightly pointed out by those who disagree, there are several in-universe of Watsonian explanations available for these plot points. For example, sexual identity is about more than just sexual attraction. It is known that many people who identify as straight have had same-sex fantasies or experiences, and for some, do not see these fantasies or experiences as changing their fundamental heterosexual identity. The same can apply for those who identify as gay or lesbian. Being queer is strongly correlated with behavior and attraction (as well as self-identification), but not strictly defined by these things. This explanation allows us to interpret Willow as a nuanced portrayal of a lesbian woman, not an erased bisexual woman.

Another in-universe explanation for Willow’s characterization is that sexuality is fluid and sexual identity can change over time. It’s not unusual for someone to identify as straight throughout their teen years and come to realize that they are queer later in life. Willow Rosenberg could be a nuanced example of this true to life scenario. Not everyone realizes their sexuality as a teen or even a young adult, and sexual fluidity is a perfectly acceptable explanation for her character.

Personally, I like both of these in-universe explanations. Sexual identity is complex and nuanced; if we explore Willow’s character from a real-world perspective, then it’s perfectly acceptable to say that she provides a realistic representation of a complex lesbian woman who at one point in her life identified as straight.

However, when we explore the character of Willow through an out-of-universe or Doylist lens, looking at the Buffyverse as a whole and how the writers choose to represent bisexuality in other characters, the accusations of bi erasure in the case of Willow gain a lot of validity.

Bisexuality and Evil in the Buffyverse

From the outset, bisexuality is regularly associated with evil in the Buffyverse.

Often one of the key signifiers that a human has been turned into a vampire is sudden hypersexual — and frequently bisexual — behavior. This is particularly true for female vampires, who quite often fit the Depraved Bisexual archetype.

Some key examples include, of course, vampire Willow — who aggressively flirts with human Willow, including groping and licking, while maintaining her hypersexual relationship with vamp Xander (Nicholas Brendon) — and Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters)’s lovers Darla (Julie Benz) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) — who, in a flashback scene, are shown in their underwear discussing a shared sexual encounter followed by bathing together and implied oral sex.

For male vampires, this is less explicit — most likely due to taboos concerning sexual behavior between two men on-screen versus sexual behavior between two women. On-screen, male characters’ sexuality tends to become more overtly predatory towards women in order to signal their change from good (human) to evil (vamp), but nonetheless we also get allusions to off-screen bisexual behavior. For example, Spike confirms he and Angel have slept together saying, “Angelus and I were never intimate, unless you count that one time…” Angel expresses a mutual interest claiming, “I love the ladies, but lately I’ve been wondering what it would be like, to share the slaughter of innocents with another man. You don’t think that makes me some kind of a deviant do you?”

Other evil characters are often portrayed as both bisexual and/or hypersexual as shorthand for evil, bad, or wrong throughout the series. Some examples include: Glory (Clare Kramer) licking Tara’s hand before mind-raping her and flirting with Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) before bleeding her; Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs)’s sexually charged dialogue with Giles (a relationship which writer/producer Jane Espenson confirmed did take place in their younger, “dark magic” days); Andrew (Tom Lenk)’s ambiguous attractions expressed towards men such as Warren (Adam Busch), Jonathan, and Spike, and women such as Buffy, Anya (Emma Caulfield), and a woman at a bar; and Forrest (Leonard Roberts)’s angry, possessive behavior towards Riley (Mark Blucas) and unreasonable jealousy of Buffy, even though he finds her “so hot.”

But the clearest example of the Buffyverse’s discomfort with bisexuality, in my opinion, appears in the character of Faith Lehane.

Faith Lehane

Despite never actually being referred to as bisexual or sharing any openly sexual moments with any women on-screen, many Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans consider Faith (Eliza Dushku) to be a bisexual woman who falls in unrequited love with Buffy. Personally, I think there is subtext in the television series that supports this view (and writer/producer Jane Espenson, writer/producer Doug Petrie, creator Joss Whedon, and actor Eliza Dushku all agree); this qualifies as both queerbaiting and bisexual erasure, all while playing into the Depraved Bisexual and Psycho Lesbian tropes.

Faith is, in the words of Andrew, “the dark slayer” and is supposed to represent a counterpart to Buffy’s lighter, more conservative nature. This means that, unlike Buffy, she is overtly sexual and open about her desires — and later, after her switch to the dark side, she becomes unacceptably sexually predatory.

When she first appears, it seems like Faith’s approach to sexuality might be positive – in fact, Faith’s pronouncement that slaying always makes her hungry and horny results in the other characters covertly shaming Buffy for being so repressed when she claims in return that sometimes slaying makes her “crave a non-fat yogurt afterwards.” However, as the series progresses, it’s made clear that Faith is a bad influence, and by the time she joins the forces of evil, Faith is slut-shamed by the main characters on a regular basis.

When Faith and Buffy first meet, there is a lot of tension between them, with Buffy in particular feeling threatened by Faith. But as their relationship progresses, this tension moves from rivalry into something more romantic in nature.

All of this culminates in what I would describe as the three key points in Faith’s character arc: Season 3’s “Bad Girls,” Season 4’s “Yesterday’s Girl / Who Are You,” and Season 7’s “Dirty Girls.”

In “Bad Girls” (an episode title that tells us a lot about the show’s attitude to Faith’s “deviant behavior”), the chemistry between Buffy and Faith reaches its climax. Faith is set up as “seducing” Buffy into her way of thinking and, despite herself, Buffy responds. The sexual tension between them is sizzling… until everything goes wrong, of course. Faith accidentally kills a man and doesn’t trust Buffy to protect her from the harsh punishment she knows will follow. Thus begins Faith’s descent into evil.

After this, Faith and Buffy behave more like scorned exes than nemeses (“Is that how you say the word?”) until their final showdown (which mirrors the previous season’s showdown with ex-turned-evil, Angel) where Buffy puts Faith in a coma.

Faith awakens from her coma in Season 4’s “Yesterday’s Girl / Who Are You,” and again, acts like a scorned lover when she finds out Buffy has “moved on” from her, grabbing her chance to finally possess Buffy, quite literally, by stealing her body using a body-swap spell. However, she discovers that even total possession of Buffy cannot heal the pain of her rejection. Faith leaves at the end of this episode to seek redemption and does not return to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although she does appear on Angel) until Season 7’s “Dirty Girls” (another interesting name choice for an episode focused on the return of Faith).

In “Dirty Girls,” we meet a reformed Faith, whose new-found maturity is almost immediately tested by a barb to her sorest spot – another rejection from Buffy, who failed to warn her that there’s a new evil afoot that specifically targets slayers. But Faith rises above and we start to believe that perhaps she has managed to move on. We even get to see her turn down an opportunity that the old Faith would never have been able to resist – a chance to try to seduce Buffy’s love interest (Spike). The audience gets to marvel at reformed Faith’s growth and maturity as a character, that is, until she utters this seemingly throwaway line, “I just spent a good stretch of time locked away with a mess of female-types. Kinda had my fill.”

The unfortunate implication becomes that Faith has quite literally “straightened out.” Faith no longer has “deviant” bisexual urges; Faith is no longer a “dirty girl”; Faith has reformed.

Conclusion

Despite what was at the time a groundbreaking portrayal of a loving lesbian relationship, Buffy the Vampire Slayer still had many issues in its messaging surrounding queer sexualities, in particular bisexuality. In my opinion, a few material changes could have gone a long way in removing at least some of this negative messaging.

The first crucial step would have been to remove the show’s tendency to use bisexuality as a shorthand for evil. The second step would have been to introduce some positive examples of bisexual people who fight on the side of good – here, the idea of Willow’s character identifying as bisexual (while Tara and Kennedy still identify as exclusively lesbian) feels like a hugely missed opportunity. However, this character wouldn’t necessarily have to be Willow. There were plenty of opportunities for other bisexual characters, male and female, within the show’s seven season run. And finally, bringing Faith’s sexuality and unrequited love arc from subtext to text, with the proviso that when she reforms, it’s not because she’s no longer bisexual, would work well, provided it wasn’t set to a backdrop that codes bisexuality as depraved. With better representation of bisexuality in the Buffyverse generally, Faith’s arc would be the story of an individual who happens to be bisexual, not a classic Depraved Bisexual stereotype.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Willow Rosenberg a Lesbian or Bisexual?
Exploring Bisexual Tension in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine

Lisa Ward is a Faith fangirl who works in PR, writes songs, and lives on a wind-blasted island in the North Sea. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a bunch of other places she’s probably forgotten about as @sheltielisa.

Exploring Bisexual Tension in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’

The possibility existed to use season 3 to explore the sexual identity of three very central female characters in this show. Buffy could have been questioning; Faith could have been explicitly bisexual rather than simply implying as much through very sexually-charged dialogue with Buffy; Willow could have started exploring her sexuality earlier to arrive at a more self-aware place, whether that was as a bisexual woman or a lesbian.

This guest post written by Audrey T. Carroll appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Nearly twenty years have passed since the beginning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we’re still having conversations about this TV show. The conversations range from the creepiest monsters to the most empowering moments of feminism the series has to offer. One of the staying discussions regarding Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been the queer identities of its characters. Certainly, the series invites this as it centralizes a same-sex romance in season 4 with Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson). The couple wasn’t even allowed to kiss until the season 5 episode “The Body.” There’s no doubt that having a same-sex couple was trail-blazing for a television series to tackle.

That said, we now have the benefit of a retrospective view of both the series and the fifteen intervening years of LGBTQ rights progress since “The Body” first aired. Viewers can now easily recognize that bisexuality is never overtly represented in the series, and is in fact never even brought up as a possibility. But the groundwork for bisexual/queer interpretation is present. This especially comes into play when people bring up the idea of bi erasure and Willow. The possibility of bisexuality in season 3 in particular could have enhanced an already tense triangle of Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Faith (Eliza Dushku), and Willow. In addition to the scrutiny of Willow’s sexuality in recent years, the obvious sexual tension between Buffy and Faith, especially originating from Faith, is never outright articulated in a consequential way. There’s, of course, the platonic friendship aspect to the tension of this triangle where Willow feels like she’s losing her best friend to Faith.

But these women present three angles on potential queerness that many viewers would have connected with:

1) Buffy must be “good” at all times, which includes being virginal (see: Angelus becoming a monster after they have sex). Potentially, this expectation of being the “good” slayer could include heteronormativity. But, in the comics, the slayer is willing to explore her sexuality.

2) Faith, in part, defines herself by using and ditching men as nothing more important than the sex they give her and the sense of power she feels with them.

3) At this stage in her life, Willow is in a committed relationship with Oz (Seth Green), but she clearly possessed an attraction to women that she had yet to discover.

While she’s otherwise dated, Buffy only had sexual experience with one person by season 3: Angel (David Boreanaz). In season 2, they had sex once, Angel turned into a soulless monster, and she eventually had to kill him. He’s resurrected, but they know they can’t fully be together. This sexual tension with Angel runs parallel to Buffy’s sexual tension with Faith. Buffy acknowledges, in season 3 and beyond, that her relationship with Faith can be perceived as more than simple friendship or fellow slayer-hood. In the season 3 episode “Revelations,” Buffy even draws attention to the fact that she “wouldn’t use the word ‘dating,’” for who she has plans with that night and, when Faith shows up as her partner for the evening, goes on to say, “Really, we’re just good friends.” In that same vein, Buffy claims in the season 7 episode “End of Days,” that “I am tired of defensiveness and — and weird mixed signals… I have Faith for that.”

In the comics, Buffy is, to quote creator Joss Whedon, “young and experimenting and… open-minded.” Even if this is a questioning moment of her sexuality, rather than an actual declaration of bisexuality, the possibility of this exploration earlier in the series could have ramped up the tension even further between Buffy and Faith and Willow, making the stakes all the more intense. It could also show that being the “good” slayer didn’t come with the implication of celibacy or heteronormativity as a requirement. If Buffy, the hero, the one who many girls aspired to be, could question her sexuality and explore her sexuality, that could create a connection to her, and a comfort for viewers who are inclined to do the same. It would, of course, have to be handled delicately, but if executed well it could have been a really revolutionary examination of identity and a fascinating aspect for the hero.

On Faith’s end, she infuses a lot of her words and actions with sexual innuendo. Often, her sexuality is tied to extracting from men what she wants — power, physical satisfaction, etc. The season 3 episode “Bad Girls” opens with Faith insisting that Buffy must have had sex with her friend Xander (Nicholas Brendon): “What are friends for? … It’s just, all this sweating nightly, side-by-side action, and you never put in for a little after-hours…” Faith insinuates that slaying together leads to sex, in the midst of her and Buffy slaying vampires together. One look at any number of Faith’s lines of dialogue with Buffy shows possibility for sexual interpretation (“Give us a kiss.”) if not outright mentions of sexual acts (“Bondage looks good on you, B.” or “So let’s have another go at it. See who lands on top.”). And this isn’t even to mention the very provocative dance scene the pair of slayers share at The Bronze during “Bad Girls.”

If Faith’s bisexuality were actively articulated, it could underscore an interesting layer to the eventual deterioration of their relationship. It seems that the path Buffy toys with in “Bad Girls” is not only one of (mostly harmless) rule-breaking. Buffy appears to be entertaining a very flirtatious and charged relationship with Faith. Faith is very lonely and wants acceptance and friendship. If you add to the pot that both of them were pursuing each other in a romantic or sexual sense, then Faith’s feeling of rejection (from the Scoobies in general, but Buffy in particular) feels like a more pointed one. In this framing, there’s even greater motivation for Faith to later hurt Buffy romantically by going after Angel and engaging in a twisted relationship with him merely to taunt the “good” slayer.

As mentioned already, Willow is often brought up in terms of bi erasure. If the possibility of her queerness is brought up in season 3, it lengthens the exploration of her sexuality and allows for her to deepen her understanding of it. By season 3, she’s only been sexually interested in Xander and her boyfriend Oz. If it were introduced that she may be sexually attracted to women, it would allow for a more fully fleshed-out representation of her sexuality over the course of the series. In fact, in the season 3 episode “Doppelgangland,” Willow thinks that the vampire alternate-dimension version of herself is “kinda gay.” Buffy assures her the vampire version of a person is nothing like the real person. Angel starts to correct her, but stops. All of this implies that, from at least season 3, Willow has her “kinda gay” self bubbling under the surface.

One of two things could’ve happened here: 1) Willow could have discovered she was bisexual, and maybe even been afraid this would cause Oz to reject her. That’s a fear that bisexual people in hetero relationships might be able to relate to. 2) Alternatively, Willow could have discovered that she was, in fact, a lesbian. This explicit exploration would have made how she self-identifies feel more genuine. Otherwise, her season five “Triangle” declaration of “gay now” feels like a tight clinging to a label rather than a genuine expression of her sexuality. If that exploration and determination happens earlier and more clearly, then the viewer can feel that conclusion is natural. It gives opportunity to address her sexuality in a more fully realized way.

One potential discrimination against bisexual people is the idea that they can’t be in a long-term committed relationship, rooted in the idea that they’ll pursue the opposite type of relationship than the one that they’re currently in (either same-sex or opposite-sex). If Willow is bisexual, and clearly so in the show, then the fight that she and Tara have in the season 5 episode “Tough Love” has more context. It’s possible, with a lesbian-identifying Willow, that Tara fears Willow may “turn straight” again. But a review of their history makes this implication during their fight feel strange. (Willow, after all, turned down Oz when he returned to town toward the end of season 4, actively choosing Tara over her first boyfriend.) But, with the idea that Willow is bisexual in mind, this fight with Tara could have tapped into an anxiety in the queer community — that bi people are more sexually deviant or less romantically loyal because they’re not monosexual.

This sexual identity questioning would also lend more tension to the whole Buffy/Faith/Willow triangle. In addition to the platonic threads there, Buffy and Faith already have an established, if not candidly articulated, sexual tension. Adding Willow’s sexual identity to the mix, she could have questioned whether her jealousy of the Buffy/Faith dynamic was platonic or romantic on her part. Buffy is her closest friend, except for maybe Xander, the latter of which she had a crush on for years and cheated on Oz with. Willow could reasonably fear that an attraction or possibility of attraction toward Buffy (akin to what she once felt for Xander) could jeopardize their friendship. On the other side, Willow might have been confused or unnerved if she thought she might be attracted to Faith, who was her opposite in many ways and with whom she had a very contentious relationship. She might not have thought about Buffy or Faith that way, but the questioning and anxieties there might have resonated with certain queer viewers and enhanced Willow’s aversion to Faith even further.

Using the context of future seasons, the possibility existed to use season 3 to explore the sexual identity of three very central female characters in this show. Buffy could have been questioning; Faith could have been explicitly bisexual rather than simply implying as much through very sexually-charged dialogue with Buffy; Willow could have started exploring her sexuality earlier to arrive at a more self-aware place, whether that was as a bisexual woman or a lesbian.

This all at least highlights an opportunity for future fiction. Allowing characters to be bisexual or to entertain the idea of not being heterosexual can add innovative layers to otherwise developed and intriguing characters. In the end, whether these characters are bisexual or simply open to questioning their heterosexuality, representation helps people feel less alone in their experiences, and ultimately guides people toward empathy.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine
Are You Ready to Be Strong? Power and Sisterhood in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Audrey T. Carroll is a Queens, NYC native whose obsessions include kittens, coffee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Rooster Teeth community. Her poetry collection, Queen of Pentacles, is available from Choose the Sword Press. She can be found on her site as well as Twitter and Facebook.

"Pregnancy Brain" in Sitcoms

Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin in “How I Met Your Mother”

Pregnancy brain. Momnesia. Preggo ladies be cray-cray. Call it what you want, but the idea that pregnant women lose their minds while their hormones go whack is a popular stereotype based on questionable evidence. Some mothers recall feeling forgetful during their pregnancy, while others don’t. (Wow, you’d think different women have different experiences with pregnancy, or something.)

Regardless of how true pregnancy brain is or isn’t, or how different women react to the changes in their bodies, sitcom writers have taken this idea and run with it. Last year, Lily Aldrin experienced an episode’s worth of pregnancy brain on How I Met Your Mother, and this year, Gloria Delgado-Pritchett struggled with her own pregnancy brain problems on Modern Family. The setups were similar: the women had short-term memory problems as a result of their pregnancy hormones. The results, however, were a little different.

On How I Met Your Mother, the characters first notice something different about Lily when she agreed to move to the suburbs, after years of insisting that she would never move to the suburbs and wanted to stay in New York. Marshall, suburban-born and raised, is thrilled that Lily has changed her mind, but Robin warns him that Lily only wants to move because of pregnancy brain. Marshall doubts that pregnancy brain is even a “thing,” and Robin insists that it is: “Her brain is marinating in a cocktail of hormones, mood swings, and jacked-up nesting instincts.” Then Marshall and Robin recall a few incidents of Lily acting strangely: putting her keys and wallet in the freezer and ice cubes in her purse, texting Robin to ask for directions back from the bathroom, and saying “fungus” instead of “fetus” and “metal factory” instead of “mental faculty.” Robin cautions Marshall against letting Lily make any major life choices while pregnant.

This is all just in the first five minutes of the episode, by the way. The point is clear: Lily, while pregnant, is completely incapable of making any decisions for herself and has a more impaired short-term memory than Dory from Finding Nemo. Robin doesn’t think “that moron” can do anything. (Sidebar: why is Robin “I never want kids and have no interest in ever being pregnant” Scherbatsky suddenly an expert in pregnancy brain, anyway?)

Fortunately, Lily has a man by her side! (Hannigan and Jason Segel)

A year later on Modern Family, Gloria experiences similar symptoms of pregnesia, at a much later stage at her pregnancy than Lily’s. She puts soap in the fridge and butter in the shower. Jay calls his daughter Claire to “babysit the stupid pregnant lady” (Gloria’s words), but he claims that Gloria called Claire and forgot, and she initially believes him. She drives with Claire to Costco and laments over her pregnesia: “I have two brains in my body and I’ve never been so dumb.” Claire tells her not to be too hard on herself: “You have another human being growing inside of you competing for resources.” Claire herself struggled with forgetfulness when pregnant with her daughter Alex (but not so much with her daughter Haley or son Luke). The women exchange a nice moment until Gloria tries to get out of a moving car.

The setup here is slightly different: Gloria is forgetful and scattered, but self-aware enough to know when people are pandering to her. Still, she’s not at her best.

Back on How I Met Your Mother, the plot continues with Lily acting even more ridiculous. She tries to make waffles using a laptop, and Marshall takes advantage of her lapse in judgment by convincing her to buy things for the apartment that she doesn’t really want. Soon, though, she turns the tables on him. She tricks him into thinking that she called a broker to sell her grandparents’ house in the suburbs. Instead, she’s led him to the suburbs on Halloween so they can hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. She’s trying to manipulate him with cute children to convince him to move to the suburbs. It looks like the silly pregnant lady has more “metal factories” than meets the eye.

Meanwhile, on Modern Family, Claire and Gloria go shopping at Costco. Claire has to run to a different part of the store to find a sweater to wear, because Gloria’s been standing in the frozen food aisle for half an hour and can’t remember what she wanted to buy. When the two women finally go to the parking lot after their shop, Gloria accidentally almost closes the door of the minivan on Claire’s head – after all that time, she forgot the eggs. Claire lectures Gloria: “You are purposely turning your brain off!” Then Claire is interrupted by a store’s security guard: she forgot to return the sweater she wore while Gloria stood in the frozen food aisle, and accidentally stole the sweater. Claire tries to plead her case, but the security guard takes her back inside the building.

Sofia Vergara as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on “Modern Family”

In the third act of the Marshall/Lily plot on HIMYM, Lily has convinced Marshall to move to the suburbs. Then a few trick-or-treaters come to her door, and she hands them a stapler, scissors, and a bottle of pinot noir. She doesn’t realize what she’s done until Marshall points it out to her, and then she cries because she’s going to miss the stapler. Lily admits that she can’t make any big decisions right now, at least not until she’s done being affected by hormones.

On Modern Family, Claire argues with an overly vigilant store detective. Gloria stands, panicked, and announces that her water broke. Claire and the store detective rush her to the car. As Claire drives, Gloria reveals that she dumped a water bottle on the floor and pretended to go into labor in order to help Claire: “I couldn’t sit there and watch you suffer just because you turned your brain off.” Claire apologizes for pandering to Gloria and doubting her abilities.

Two sitcom episodes, less than a year apart from each other, both dealing with forgetful pregnant women who don’t know how to manage their lives without help, but the message of each episode is very different. The How I Met Your Mother episode is sexist and cliched, while the Modern Family episode attempts to treat the pregnant character with humanity, and mostly succeeds.

Look at the way the other characters talk about Lily and Gloria. Lily is “marinating in a cocktail of hormones,” a “moron,” and acting like the “drunk girl at the bar” – descriptors that would be perfect for a pregnant character on a darker or more satirical comedy, but seem out of place and mean-spirited on a feel-good show like How I Met Your Mother. Claire, on the other hand, initially sympathizes with Gloria, pointing out that pregnancy is draining and of course her memory would be on the fritz.

Lily is also treated like an infant during this pregnancy. She’s not just forgetful – she can’t make any major decisions while these hormones are affecting her brain. SHE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED. Gloria, meanwhile, is forgetful and scattered, but she hasn’t completely lost her mind, and cleverly saves Claire from the repercussions of her own brain fart.

More similar than you might think (Vergara and Julie Bowen)

But I think the biggest reason that the Modern Family storyline mostly succeeds and the How I Met Your Mother episode doesn’t is because the first show remembers to show the female perspective on a woman’s issue (imagine that). The episode of How I Met Your Mother isn’t about how Lily deals with pregnancy brain; it’s about how Marshall deals with Lily’s pregnancy brain. Let’s empathize with the poor, long-suffering husband while he deals with the changes in his wife’s body (yawn). Modern Family at least shows us pregnancy-related forgetfulness from the perspective of the female characters. I liked seeing two women bond over their different pregnancies, and I especially liked that Claire didn’t have the exact same experience with every pregnancy.

I don’t know if pregnancy brain is a real thing or not. I’m skeptical, but I’ve had at least two currently pregnant or formerly pregnant friends tell me that they were constantly forgetful during their pregnancies. My impression is that it’s true for some women and not true for others. Both shows exaggerate the concept for for comic effect, but How I Met Your Mother reduces the pregnant woman to an infant and Modern Family remembers that Gloria is still an adult. I know which episode I prefer.

Final thought: if walking into a room with a specific purpose, and then immediately forgetting said purpose for being in that room, is a sign of pregnancy brain, I have been pregnant for the last twenty-eight years. I do this at least twice a day. Maybe pregnant women and scatterbrained artist-writer types are cut from the same cloth.

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

"Pregnancy Brain" in Sitcoms

Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin in “How I Met Your Mother”

Fortunately, Lily has a man by her side! (Hannigan and Jason Segel)

The setup here is slightly different: Gloria is forgetful and scattered, but self-aware enough to know when people are pandering to her. Still, she’s not at her best.

Sofia Vergara as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on “Modern Family”

More similar than you might think (Vergara and Julie Bowen)

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted

This piece by Lady T previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on July 24, 2012 as part of our Women in Science Fiction Theme Week.

Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Joss Whedon is known for creating and writing about strong female characters in his science fiction shows. One of the most popular and complex of these characters is Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow speaks to many people and quite a few have named her their favorite character on the show, from Mark at Mark Watches to Joss Whedon himself, who put the most Willow-centric episode of the series (“Doppelgangland”) on his list of favorite episodes.

Another thing that makes Willow so appealing is the fact that her character arc over seven seasons can’t be described in only one way. Some see Willow’s story as a shy, brainy computer geek embracing her supernatural power in becoming a witch.Others relate to her arc as one of a repressed wallflower who explores her sexuality and finds more confidence in coming out as a lesbian. Still others are fascinated with the different ways she handles magic, and her recovery after drifting too far to the dark side.

What story is told when those three arcs are put together? For me, the story of Willow Rosenberg is the story of a woman who spends years defining and re-defining herself, rejecting roles that other people have chosen for her – for better and for worse.

From the very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has been presented as a shy, sweet, helpful friend to the titular heroine– and from the very second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has shown herself not to be as sweet or innocent as everyone thinks she is. When she meets Buffy for the first time, she’s eager and friendly, bubbling over with information, in awe that this mysterious, cool new girl is talking to her, but also wanting to help in any way she can.

Willow (Alyson Hannigan) talks to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)

This eager beaver persona is the one that Willow adopts for most of seasons one and two.She becomes the Hermione to Buffy’s Harry, using her computer hacking skills to assist whenever Buffy needs more research for demon-fighting and she can’t find the answers in one of Giles’s books. And for these two years, Willow is notonly content in this role, but she thrives in it. Like her best friend Xander (my favorite character on Buffy), she’s found a place where she belongs. She’s found a purpose in fighting the good fight against the forces of evil, and she doesn’t seem to mind that she’s a second banana to Buffy. As long as she can put her skills to use and she’s fighting the bad guys, she’s happy.

This changes when Willow discovers magic.

Near the end of season two, Willow begins exploring supernatural arts. She doesn’t do much beyond research and reading, but despite her lack of practice, she thinks that she has what it takes to perform a spell that will restore Angel’s soul.

Watching the season two finale with the perspective of hindsight is more than a little uncomfortable, because we know how much Giles turns out to be right when he tells Willow, “Challenging such potent magics through yourself…it could open a door that you might not be able to close.” It’s also uncomfortable because we can see that Willow is more interested in proving her skills in magic than doing the right thing. She wants to help Buffy, obviously, but she also wants to prove to everyone – and to herself – that she can do the spell.

And she does.

Willow possessed as she performs the spell

Angel’s spell is restored several minutes too late, and Buffy has to kill him anyway. But Willow doesn’t think about this potential consequence. She excitedly tells her friends, “I think the spell worked. I felt something go through me.”

After that,Willow becomes less meek, less shy, and more risky with her use of magic. She tries to use magic to make her and Xander fall out of lust with each other (in a plotline that I hate and always will hate, by the way), and is angry with him when he confronts her for resorting to spells. She becomes even angrier in season four when she, Oz,Buffy, and Xander are trapped in a haunted house and Buffy criticizes her aptitude in magic, saying that Willow’s spells have a 50% success rate. Willow responds with a flustered, “Oh yeah? Well – so’s your face!” but then follows up with a bitter, “I’m not your sidekick!”

Shortly afterwards, Willow tries to perform a spell that winds up failing. This is in an episode entitled “Fear, Itself,” where each major character confronts his/her major fear. Oz is afraid of the werewolf inside him, Xander is afraid of being invisible to his friends, Buffy is afraid of abandonment, and Willow…seems to be afraid of her spell going wrong?

Willow’s spell goes wrong

Compared to her friends’ worries, Willow’s fear seems a little superficial. At the end of the season, though, we learn that Willow’s fears are about much more than simple experiments going wrong.

By the end of season four, Willow has gone through a few pretty significant changes. She’s become more focused on magic and less focused on her scientific, “nerdy”pursuits. She’s farther apart from Buffy and Xander than ever, despite loving both of them. She’s entered a romantic relationship with a woman. Most significantly of all, Willow is confident. She has a life that is fully her own, where she has two things (Tara and magic) that are hers. She’s entered a new phase in her life.

Or has she? After watching Willow’s dream in “Restless,” we can’t say that this new Willow is any more confident or self-assured than the old one who couldn’t stand up for herself when Cordelia Chase insulted her by the water fountain.

Joss Whedon’s writing for Willow’s dream is clever and filled with misdirection. Characters talk about Willow and her “secret,” a secret that she only seems comfortable discussing with Tara. Dream-Buffy constantly comments on Willow’s “costume,”telling her to change out of it because “everyone already knows.” We’re led to believe that Willow is afraid that her friends will judge her for being gay and being a relationship with another woman…but this isn’t the case at all.

Instead, when Dream-Buffy rips off Willow’s costume, we see a version of Willow that is eerily reminiscent of season one Willow: a geek with pretensions of being cool.

Dream-Willow delivering a book report

In her dream,Willow is dressed in schoolgirl clothes, delivering a book report on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.Anya and Harmony are snarking at her from the audience, Buffy is bored, Xander is shouting, “Who cares?!” and Tara and Oz are mocking her and flirting wit heach other.

This sequence is haunting, heartbreaking, and foreboding. Those of us who watched Buffy for the first four years know that Willow’s perceptions are far from accurate. Buffy was supportive of Willow far more often than not and Xander defended Willow against anyone who threatened her. As for her love interests, well, Tara practically worshiped the ground Willow walked on, and Oz admitted that Willow was the only thing in his life that he ever loved.

But none of that changes the way Willow feels. Despite the friends she’s made, despite thechanges she’s had, she still thinks that everyone will eventually discover her secret: that she’s an uncool, childish, awkward geek.

I think that this fear, more than anything else, is what motivates Willow’s actions over the second half of the series. The show talks about magic addiction and getting high off of power, but ultimately, Willow wants to change who she is. She doesn’t want to be the nerdy, lonely bookworm that defined so much of her childhood and adolescence. She jokes to Tara, “Hard to believe such a hot mama-yama came from humble, geek-infested roots?” and she might as well be pleading, “I’m not that geek anymore, am I? Tell me I’m not.” She says to Buffy, “If you could be, you know, plain old Willow or super Willow, who would you be?…Buffy, who was I? Just some girl. Tara didn’t even know that girl.”

Willow talks to Buffy after coming down from a high

Eventually, Willow confronts her addiction and power issues with magic. Her arc in the last season of the show is largely about the way she learns to be more careful with magic, her steps forward and her steps back, until she handles her power more responsibly. But one thing she never does is confront her deepest issue: her fear of being an unlovable geek.

I could write for another two thousand words about how Willow’s insecurities made her dangerous to people around her, and how her arc paralleled the arc of the three misogynistic sci-fi geeks who provoked terror all throughout season six, and how her fear of abandonment turned her into the abuser in a controlling relationship, but that’s an essay for another day. I will probably write that essay in the future, but for now, I want to talk about how Willow’s insecurities affected Willow.

A part of me feels truly sad that Willow could never find it in her to reclaim the geek label. I look back at the cute, eager computer nerd from the first two seasons and feel nostalgic for her Hermione Granger-like enthusiasm. I wish she had felt comfortable enough in her own skin to realize that being smart and knowing a lot about computers is a good thing, dammit!

At the same time, I wonder if there’s another lesson in Willow’s story. Audience members like me might yearn for the days when Willow was more interested in computers than she was in magic, but who’s to say that hacking and breaking into government files was the best way for Willow to spend her life? Sure, she was good with computers, but did she had to let that skill define the rest of her life? Isn’t it positive for her to branch out and explore that she has talent in other things in more than one area? After all, even if we’re nostalgic for Willow’s nerdier days, doesn’t she have the right to explore other sides of herself, even if she makes mistakes along the way?

To this day, I still don’t know how I feel about Willow’s arc. I’m glad she discovered another side to her personality, but I’m disappointed that she couldn’t reclaim her geeky days and make it a source of power instead of embarrassment and loneliness. Ultimately, I would have liked to see the show address Willow’s “geek-infested roots” in the last season of Buffy,so we could have seen her make a choice about that part of her life and her identity, instead of seeing that part of her character fall to the wayside.

Women in Science Fiction Week: ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted

Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hanigan) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Written by Lady T.