Girl Power

(Part of the Article from the July/August issue of Cinescape)

Buffy true to the WB network's unofficial mission, is a 12 step program to adolescent angst. But unlike the pink faced longings of slutty ol' Dawson's Creek, it has a definite empowerment motif. "The first time I had to break a broom over some guys head, I was shaking and crying," Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar has said. "I didn't want to do it. But now it's like, ‘Give me the broom. Let me hit somebody.'"
And Gellar's taken that in-your-face, give-me-the-broom ‘tude to the big screen as well in teen horror films that self-conciously turn the tables on the traditional hero/damsel dynamic. While the boys are off searching for their inner selves and wondering why they deserve to be targeted by a serial killer, the girls are scissor-kicking evil back to hell. Says Gellar: "It's not just a bunch of big breasted babes running away from a slasher and getting decapitated."