Tag: buffy summers

buffyboleyn:

^{BTVS Hair Meta: Buffy, Season 7}

^{“…It’s my hair. I have mom hair,” worries Buffy in the season 7 opener. That’s a subjective aesthetic criticism. Objectively, however, Buffy is thrust into a matriarchal roles this season and her hair reflects this peak of maturity. Buffy’s not done growing, but her hair makes it clear that childhood is officially at an end. In her new job as a counselor, Buffy affects tidy ponytails, buns, or polished waves, evoking both professionalism and a certain maternal-come-stylish-drill-sergeant capacity to her students and slayers.}  

^{On one hand, Buffy’s new do suggests a forward move from her traumas; like washed away blood, the reddish highlights of her season 6  hair are gone and she has grown it out from its cropped look. Alternatively, there is much of early seasons Buffy in her hair too: the bright golden hue is back; the renewal of interests in accessories like flower ties and sunglasses; the return of the side-swept bangs not seen since season 1. Buffy is returning to school and her hair does too; Buffy is not bogged down by her past, but informed by it. Reflected in her hair, she neither forsakes nor ignores traumatic histories, but reforms them and makes them her own.}

^{In the final scene, Buffy looks over the site of her successes, failures, all her sex, friendships, and traumas (hair-related and otherwise) which is now just a big hole. She has entered and left the battle with nothing but the clothes and companions on her back and the hairs on her head. Buffy’s life has always been perilous, but her hair wasn’t always “practical”; whether long or short, silver or gold or strawberry-blonde or in an alternative universe, it was hers and the last shot shows this. As yellow as a sun on the horizon, Buffy’s wind-streaked hair blows into the direction of her friends, streaming like the endless road before them.}