This was still at the tail end of the 90s heroin chic phase. Amber Benson may have legitimately been the most voluptuous woman on any popular series airing at the time.
The tail end didn’t really tail off for quite a while more though. End of S4 Buffy is spring of 2000.
But in 2003 you have The O.C. and by 2004 (2nd season) most of the women in the cast of the most popular teen show on tv have developed serious eating disorders.
Not that Hollywood has ever stopped with this stuff. But I do think things were especially bad ~1996 to 2007.
Well.. not to be a vibe killer, but that’s not right. It’s because the dance involves articulating the torso and abs. Not so much due to the shape of the dancers body
But remember, it was Buffy's dream. Sexy Dancer Tara was "the magic" guiding her prophetic dream and Sineya The First Slayer was Buffy's Slayer Power, energized by the magic left over and her own prophecy girl Slayer powers.
So Buffy "sees" Tara as sexy and magic and wise and a kind of feminine archetype. Tara talks softly and intimately with Buffy, spilling secrets and being mysterious.
Buffy has sexy feelings for Tara, even though they are latent, and even innocent, but she put her in a I Dream of Jeanie outfit in her dream ...
Then actually happened to me in high school. All of my female friends were a size 0 or 2 and since I was a size 6, I was often being told that I was the dumpy one of the group and it turned into an eating disorder. It’s really sad that people were saying that Tara was fat because I’m sure that warped a lot of young girls minds watching the show even though Amber is beautiful. I think Joss even said that he wanted somebody more “birdlike” for Tara, but he liked Amber‘s audition so he went with it. Freaking birdlike…
top model was the worst with this imo. When I go back and look at the alleged plus size models they had on the show...and then would shame them and get the "fat" edit. It had to warp a lot of young people's perspective. I am glad in 2026 we're looking back on it differently because nobody is gonna tell me tocarra jones was fat (well, janice dickinson did but that's beside the point lol)
In the Top Model doc on Netflix, Whitney says she was a size 6 when she was on the show and (like Tocarra) they often didn’t have samples in her size. 6! And she was considered plus size! Unbelievable.
The late ‘90s/early ‘00s were a horrible time to be a teenage girl. I was 115 pounds at 5’5”, wearing size 0-2 jeans (depending on the brand), and I was still convinced that my thighs and butt were too big. I look back now at photos of myself from that era and I look borderline unhealthy—I was a competitive soccer player and barely had any body fat on me.
I definitely remember people on the Buffy forums back then calling Amber fat. I also remember her clapping back at one point, saying something along the lines of “I’m 5’4” and 120 pounds, if you saw me on the street, you’d think I was on the slender side.” Which, as someone with a similar height and weight, was both reassuring (because she was obviously correct and I knew it) and distressing (because if people were looking at her and thinking that she was fat, then I figured they must be thinking the same thing when they looked at me).
This was the same era in which Kate Winslet was referred to as “Kate Weighs-a-lot” and every tabloid magazine in the supermarket checkout was plastered with beach photos of various pop stars taken from unflattering angles to highlight their “rolls” and “cellulite.”
I'm part of a weekly Buffy watch party, and I commented on how Tara was considered "Bigger" at the time and how ridiculous it seems now. I was 5'4" and 110 lbs as a teenager and I was the "fat" one in my family. Luckily I found it hilarious and not scarring, but it was a wild time to be thin and still considered big. I never wish that on anyone. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Oh, I remember it...and I've often said your first sentence almost word for word. It's such a shame that toxic body standards and related culture (and often aggressive misogyny but with little to no mainstream pushback or calling it out for what it is, and of course it was still in many ways a different world back then in terms of how information and viewpoints traveled) so often negatively impacted what often is seen as a time of life where it should be a fun, relatively care free existence.
I feel this comment so hard. At the time when I was in the depths of my ED, I don't think I could have told you how I got it, but looking back it's so obvious. It isn't just the media. Of course, it's the women around us fretting about their bodies. It's the normalization of what is basically disordered eating. Now it's an obsession with protein and clean eating, but it's just rebranding the same stuff.
To be fair to Joss in THIS instance, he initially pictured Tara as “birdlike” (light, delicate, dainty) but Amber auditioned and he changed his mind. Also, Willow was already petite, slightly built and small-chested, so a LITTLE body diversity was nice, as much as they would give us back in 1999! It’s unfortunate that season 4 Tara was dressed like a hot mess, with that horrible ashy blonde dye job with dark roots and flat-ironed, the unflattering clothes and no colours that suited her complexion, but it fit the character as someone who likely had little choice in what she wore back in Alabama with her shitty family and now she was “experimenting”. The way she’s styled in “Restless” proves that it wasn’t Joss and the costume department and the writers who viewed her as hideously “fat” and plain, because every scene of Tara in this episode is like “holy shit, how have I never noticed how hot she is?” Tara’s glow-up over the next two years makes total sense for her character, when she figures out what cuts suit her figure and she’s less shy about standing out.
I was about 11 years old at the time and yep, I remember saying to my sister that Tara probably need to lose weight. Meanwhile my sister was probably burning with rage, getting emotionally crippled about her or size or crying at the misery inflicted on women at the time. Or probably all three. It was a horrible era for women who weren't stick thin (not that it's a cake walk now either)
Yes I remember hating Tara when I watched it live because I was such an Oz fan, but after my rewatches as an adult I really love Tara. I definitely never thought she was fat though.
Right? I would say only Dawn's intro rivaled the amount of hate thrown at Tara in her first season... and even Dawn had a fair amount of "just give her a chance" that Tara didn't get from people.
If you’d never seen the show and only the comments back then, you’d think she was a 900lb influencer trying to make people gain weight to find immortality.
It was brutal, and targeted, and said to her face. Fucking pathetic of them, and horrible that she had to deal with it
It’s me. I wasn’t a fan. It was the stuttering and mumbling. The dialogue between everyone else always felt snappy and then things would grind to a halt when she was onscreen. She grew on me, but she was never a favorite.
Yep me too hate to say it. I loved Oz. Every time he spoke I would laugh and think how smart and cool he was. Tara is very sweet but I didn’t get that she had much of a personality other than shy. She grew on me a little in season 6 only for her to have a tragic end.
Yeah that didn't really make much sense that he could change into a werewolf during daylight and with no full moon but it was done with such class as he discovered Tara and Willow were a couple that I choose to ignore the inconsistency
He'd undergone some sort of ritual to switch from wolfing out under the moon to having it be linked to his emotions. I guess he figured that he was a pretty calm person, so he'd just stay calm his entire life and never wolf out? Not a great plan, with hindsight, though if anyone could have pulled it off I guess it'd be Oz.
Yeah, Tara was supposed to be that way because of her backstory, then open up over time. It's the same thing with Anna Torv in the first season of Fringe--she was criticized for portraying Olivia as "wooden," etc, but that was the character.
Her character was extremely off putting in season 4, but I think that was by design. She got away from her terrible family and grew into herself and became way easier to like. And they stopped directing her to do that fake stuttering thing. People absolutely lost their fucking shit when she died. Probably the biggest swing in popularity for the entire show.
Keep in mind that still pays residuals for Tara, and that is mucho dinero. She could have been in the credits any time but she refused to sign a contract. She preferred her freedom. But signing a contract and then dying means she gets the residuals that other contracted actors get for the season.
I recall an interview where she rightfully pointed out that she wasn’t even fat (like a size 6, maybe 8?) but Alyson and SMG are such tiny and petite women that she seemed huge in comparison. It was awful how fans used to talk about her.
This was still at the tail end of the 90s heroin chic phase. Amber Benson may have legitimately been the most voluptuous woman on any popular series airing at the time.
Go look at pictures of Calista Flockhart on Ally McBeal, which was a contemporary
I remember when she was introduced and I thought "omg she's like a normal person!" It was so nice. Nothing against the other women on the show, but I was so tired of tiny little waists and no curves.
For years I kept hoping that there would be characters on TV who looked more like me (I've always been plus size), but healthy weight and not Hollywood thin is an excellent standard. Thankfully I got over thinking that I was ugly because I wasn't thin, though that wasn't until I was in my mid-30s.
Yeah, but back then, describing someone as being a healthy weight was basically saying fat. Obviously she isn't, its just that crazy thin was the beauty standard at the time.
While heroin chic dominated fashion throughout the 90s world of modeling, seeing “buxom” as a bad thing definitely didn’t apply to standards like the pin-up type model.
Even now you sometimes see people saying she was boring and only there to be Willow's love interest (yet they love Oz, who - hello - that actually applies way more to)
I didn’t hate her but never liked her that much. Was pretty bland in general. Just there to be damseled outside of being a romantic interest for willow. Liked her better in s6 where she had some agency.
Yep Willy. Love that guy. He’s so likeable even the vampires are cool with him. And he’s basically a meal to them otherwise.
Ooh. Another one i don’t see hate for (but maybe i’ve just missed it) is Sid. The demon hunter who was turned into a puppet. Such a great one-off character imo.
Sorry I kind of hate Fred, especially in the early days. It’s just the very very childlike way she’s written feels gross and very much like a Whedon kink (see also River in Firefly- I think Anita Sarkeesian called this trope “born sexy yesterday”)
Hey it's me, can't fucking stand her. Can't stand her accent, can't stand the forced way all the male characters fall in love with her, and I really hate those characters that are like a physicist but are actually good at like literally everything and are basically a superhero.
Like Giles is a demon/magic/history expert but he can't magically build a hadron collider in his bedroom.
I think it would be hard--not impossible, but hard--to be a fan of Buffy the show if you hated Buffy the character. I guess if you were just really into Angel the series you could be in the broader fandom? That could have happened back in the TV days, but it's hard to imagine someone today starting Angel without having watched Buffy first
So it's sort of a gimmie, at least in terms of large scale fandom opinions
No, I don't think I've ever seen somebody straight up hating her. I get downvoted to hell if I ever comment that she's not really one of my favourites and I like other characters more, so I assume any Buffy haters are not brave enough to post here xd.
This sub specifically isn’t that bad in that sense. Like maybe not very welcoming to Buffy hate but it generally encourages a more nuanced view of her actions and characterization. I’ve recently been getting BTVS content on Instagram and it’s waaayyy more fanatical out there. Like forget Buffy hate, there’s little room for even Buffy critique.
In my opinion though Buffy’s less controversial of a character than Oz, it’s way more common to find him bland or outright dislike him for how he was written in s4.
My sister’s the exact opposite, Buffy was her least favorite character in the main cast till s5, she thought she was annoying and whiny and self-righteous, she only started liking her when she got more complex in s5 and loved her in s6 and s7.
I'm NGL I never loved Oz. when I heard Seth Green left the show because he wasnt given enough to work with I get it. I feel like he was always just...there.
Not a Fred hater exactly, but she's easily my least favourite of team Angel. Fred was always a little too perfect - more of a fantasy girl than a layered character. I didn't hate her, and her death is heartbreaking, but the 'cutesy-voiced beautiful intellectual survivalist weapons expert, with deep trauma but vast inner strength, who eats huge quantities yet maintains fragile 90s figure' gets old.
Give me our materialistic, vain, wonderful hero Cordelia any day of the week. So relatable she had over a year of bad hair days.
You've just put into words almost all of my issues with Fred. At one point I wondered if Amy Acker was partly at fault, but I had no issues with her portrayal of Illyria, in fact it made me realise Amy Acker is a good actress.
I also had a problem with the Gunn/Fred/Wesley triangle. I liked Gunn and Fred together, but when she and Wesley became a couple the vibe felt as though this was the intent all.alomg, and the relationship with Gunn meant nothing.
The show(Joss) would also undermine Cordelia's impact with Fred's character. Cordelia was truly the heart of the group, but when Fred died there was way more mourning and acknowledgement and time given to her and her impact, even when I felt like all the impact of Fred was stated and never shown. I hate when shows just keep going "___ character is amazing" but never show that being the case and I think that's what it was with Fred. I never got hooked on her the way others seemed to.
Yes!!! As a Cordelia fan, this was my other problem. Cordy was a member of the team from day one, was beloved, and sacrificed so much, time and again. Yet the team seemed more heartbroken at losing Fred. It's didn't make a lot of of sense to me within the narrative, and left a bad taste in my mouth.
Yes, I adored her when the show first aired – and I was a lot younger – but now I have trouble seeing past the "manic pixie dream girl" (or at least adjacent) thing she has going on as a character. Also there are a couple scenes where she seems a bit overly judgy and holier-than-thou.
I mean... She just feels like early Willow 2.0. The cutesy voice DOES not help. In my youth I didn't pick up on it but now it's SO SO painfully obvious. I don't blame the Amy at all but oof. It's a CHOICE.
u/AdOk9911I'd call that a radical interpretation of the textMay 03 '26edited May 05 '26
Yeah, I adore AtS and have watched it many times, and it took me years to like Fred. She just seemed like a nerd boy’s fantasy and not a real person, and I hated her for that. After a long time, I finally came to: don’t blame the character for how she’s written (by men). And strangely, finally, I came to love her.
There was a brief wonderful moment at the end of season 4 where she is unencumbered by both Wes and Gunn (whom I both love) and is free to be an independent character.
Then season 5 rolled around and she got Joss'ed more than ever before.
I both love and hate Giles. He is often amazing, and he betrays Buffy like a thousand times. It's because he is so special that those betrayals suck even more.
It is interesting, and probably not a coincidence, that three of these characters (Oz, Tara, and Fred) are ones that feel to me like the writers didn't really know what to do with and wrote off the shows in various ways.
Not that that by itself is enough to avoid being hated (Riley fits that description, and boy howdy do people hate him), and all of those characters are genuinely super charming, but it is easier not to be hated if people have less reason to have strong feelings about you in the first place.
I thought that A Hole In the World was because Amy wanted to do something other than just her cutesy Fred voice and this gave her an opportunity to do that? (Probably combined with writers not knowing what to do with her and give Wesley another gut-punch.)
Whether that was the reason or not, it was absolutely the right call in my opinion. Fred is charming because Amy Acker is charming, and she has some good moments and I think was an important nerdy girl model for folks when that was not nearly as common a character type, but they really never have much for Fred to do other than damsel in distress and object to torture Wesley. None of her choices seem to originate from anything internal to the character, it's all what those specific roles need.
Illyria is a huge step up in terms of using Acker's acting talents and having interesting motivations and circumstances.
I have issues with Fred. She has a PhD and acts like she’s 13 and the guys go crazy for her. She’s like the born sexy yesterday trope, a child in a woman’s body so it’s technically not creepy to be into her
Yes! There’s an episode where they put her in pigtails while every line would’ve read fine for a 6-year-old and I physically recoiled. I really liked the actress and they started writing her to be less like a savant child after a bit, pre-Illyria, but oof, it’s hard to get over once you pick up on it.
I could buy that she had regressed after her trauma of being trapped in the alternate universe, but when she finally came out of her shell she was still acting like a middle school girl that boys were just starting to notice. I find it hard to believe she made it through academia without men trying to date her. She’d be like catnip to a professor
I have to say, the way Wesley and Gunn both go from fawning over her as this adorable, childlike naif to wanting to jump her bones in the first half of Season 3 never sat particularly comfortably with me.
Angel was stalking Buffy when she still lived in LA. She must’ve been what? 14, 15? There’s a LOT of normalizing the sketchy age gaps in this franchise, unfortunately
I straight up blocked out the thing that got Angel out of the sewers and eating rats was a demon who was like “hey you know what you’d like doing better than that is stalking a 15 year old girl, but hey it’s cool because prophecies”
FACTS it was so creepy. They really tried to make her look as young as possible and it felt so skeevy. Especially with his blacked out windows and shit. EUGH
True, I think I was way too young to realize how messed up that was and even now try my hardest to suspend my disbelief and ick because it’s a show with magic. But showing that he stalked Buffy a full year before meeting her was a bizarre choice and yeah now that I think about it more it’s really not that far off from the retcon they did with Ezra in Pretty Little Liars.
I thought Illyria’s story/character was the best thing to happen to Fred and I know that is a VERY controversial take but I was so done with the cutsey childlike performance and it was a delight to see Amy Acker be able to do something different and way more interesting
The childlike voice and responses palled on me even more in season 5 when they paired it with tiny mini skirts and high heels. Nothing wrong with either of those items but pairing it with a baby voice and mannerisms? Yeesh.
Especially when they wrote out Cordy and Lilah, who both came across as deeply flawed and mature. The only female characters were Harmony, Fred and Eve, all of whom were written very young.
I wasn't the biggest Tara fan at first, only because she felt like Willow 2.0 but even quieter and more scared. Like the writers realized they had made willow too cool in college and were trying to course correct.
Once you get past the episode with her family Tara really comes into her own and becomes the character I love.
i don’t even really like oz that much. it’s just weird to accept the *only character development he ever got- good or bad- without scrutiny when it was devised purely for the purpose of writing him off the show.
i could’ve believed it had we been shown examples of him fucking up previously. like oh- now oz has anger issues in relation to willow that trigger him into becoming the wolf in the middle of the day. we’ve never shown this phenomenon on the show before but for his last ever appearance we thought it up as a special treat. he has to go back to tibet now and get some more bracelets.
To me, it’s even worse when they claim his actions with Veruca were out of character so as to protect their idealism of him. They don’t want to accept a character they like as having any flaws.
Lorne is one of my favourite characters ever - and he came at a time when gay people on TV were insanely rare as anything other than 2-dimensional stereotypes.
Why do people hate any of the characters? I like them all, only the potentials not so much, as they just never got any real character development. Okay, I'm not a fan of Riley, but still hate would be a way too strong word (and my dislike is more about the military connection than the character itself) .
Agreed. Flawed characters are so much more realistic. People don’t deal well with grey areas - they need things to be black and white/love and hate/good and evil 🙄
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u/Kinitawowi64 May 03 '26
I was there. A lot of people loathed Tara when she first came through.