Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains an excellent role model for young girls

We all know that there are issues with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There were issues at the time of filming, and not everything has aged well. That doesn’t completely take away from the positives of the series, though, and it is certainly one to watch with the kids.

Buffy Summer is an excellent role model for young girls. This isn’t just because she’s the slayer. She’s also a high school (then college) girl who wants friends and wishes sometimes for a normal life.

Buffy bends rules in a positive way

The whole lore of the Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that this is a girl who takes down the vampires, demons, and monsters of the world alone. She isn’t supposed to have friends. In fact, a lot of Slayers didn’t have family once they got their powers.

Buffy breaks the mold. She doesn’t always break the rules, but when she does, she does it for the right reasons. She realizes that a Slayer is only as strong as the people around her. She leans on her friendship group, listening to her Watcher, Giles, turning to her friends when she needs advice, and accepting their help when she sees that they are the better people for a job.

At the same time, she makes final decisions. She knows that the weight of the world is on her shoulders, and she doesn’t put it on her friends if she can help it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows its okay to make mistakes

Buffy isn’t perfect. Sometimes she can be a terrible friend. There are times that she’s awful as someone’s partner.

At first, she’s young and easily influenced. She wants to fit in, and that can lead to her making some bad mistakes. As she gets older, the weight of the world gets on top of her. As she fails against villains, she struggles with what it means for her and those around her. She can push people away thinking that it’s better for them.

We get to see that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be human and learn life lessons. Learning the lessons is the important part, though.

Buffy Summer faces her problems

There are times that we’ve seen Buffy try to run away from her duties. At the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2, she just ran away. What she realized was that she couldn’t just do that. There are other problems out there, and eventually, she returned and faced the consequences of her actions.

In the final season, she stepped back and ran away. Spike was the one to bring her back into that fight. Sure, everyone else turned their backs on her thinking that she was wrong, but Spike was by her side to help her see that this was her fight. This was all her responsibility.

As much as she didn’t want to do it, she faced her problems. She killed Angel when she had to despite loving him. She sacrificed her own life to save her sister and the world. She faced each problem, and she did it with humility and strength. While those problems were mostly supernatural, it’s a lesson that we can all learn in life.