Brittany Taylor
| Brittany Taylor | |
| |
| First appearance | Esteemsters |
| Last appearance | Is It College Yet? |
| Voiced by | Janie Mertz |
| Episode count | 54 (2 non-speaking) 2 TV movies |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 16-18 |
| Occupation | Student at Lawndale High Student at Great Prairie State University (by the end of the show) |
| Family | Steve Taylor (father) Vivian Taylor (mother) Ashley-Amber Taylor (stepmother) Brian Taylor (brother) |
| Significant other(s) | Kevin Thompson (boyfriend) |
Character Overview
Brittany Taylor is a fictional character on the MTV cartoon show Daria. She attends Lawndale High, where she is a cheerleader and the girlfriend of quarterback Kevin Thompson. The quintessential dumb blonde, she believes that a good cheer can solve pretty much anything. She is good at twirling her hair around her finger and looking vacant.
The Daria Diaries show that Brittany runs an advice column in the Lawndale Lowdown, called Ask Brittany. It also reveals she once tried to get the cheerleading team to do cheers for all the non-sports clubs at Lawndale, to show they cared about the whole school; cheers werre drafted for the chess club, AV club, and debate team.
Brittany and Daria are constantly interacting, partly because Brittany seems to seek Daria out; while the cheerleader annoys her, Daria has sometimes given Brittany help or advice ("The Invitation", "The Misery Chick") Brittany has also helped Daria or tried to - she once invited Daria to a party because Daria helped her in art class, and once tried to help Daria sound perky - and visited her in hospital in "Ill". She has made derogatory remarks about Daria's looks and popularity, but stating them more as if they're well-known facts rather than being malicious.
Brittany likes romance novels (per "Gifted") and shops at Cashman's, a store where all the popular girls in the series shop. Her motto is "Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. I just did my hair!"
Her appearance was modeled after MTV personality Jenny McCarthy.
The Issue of Brittany's Come-and-Go Intelligence
Though Brittany is no Einstein, she sometimes displays an unusual sensibility about things, and is certainly smarter than Kevin. In Malled when Kevin stole "a cute thingy with a cute thingy" she dragged him back to the store to return it while Kevin apparently didn't understand why. When Daria was having a crisis over wearing contact lenses in "Through a Lens Darkly," Brittany was able to console her and defuse the problem, perhaps repaying Daria for the help she gave Brittany in "The Misery Chick." She also displayed an uncanny knack for military tactics in the episode "The Daria Hunter," surprising many of the characters with her plan to win a paintball match. In several episodes, she displays an ability to manipulate males.
However, despite it all, it remains fair to say that Brittany is generally stupid.
Brittany and Violence
A running gag in the show, mainly in the first and second seasons, is that Brittany, when really irritated, thwacks Kevin (and sometimes others). While this was intended as a joke, when taken together Brittany comes off as having a hair-trigger temper and resorting to excessive violence without little cause. Her attack on Kevin in "Is It Fall Yet?" is quite brutal, as she carries on her assault for a long period and this after her first blow was a bad one.
In "The Daria Hunter", she also displays a surprising knowledge of squad-level military tactics and displays ruthlessness and close-quarters combat skills during the paintball match.
Brittany and Kevin
Brittany's relationship with Kevin is often turbulent. They break up frequently for a variety of reasons, as when he gave her a football for her birthday or thought her goldfish needed air. In "Daria Dance Party," she broke up with Kevin and shouted, "And this time, I mean it!" She is also prone to cheating on him, an issue that comes up in several episodes.
While they are together they're either very loving, calling each other "babe," or bickering. In "A Tree Grows in Lawndale", she was distraught when he broke up with her (thinking he was no good for her if he couldn't play football); even though she tearily agreed it was for the best as he wouldn't be in any yearbook photos, she was left upset for days afterwards and genuinely missed him.
Kevin's mother doesn't like Brittany, seeing the girl as a potential teen mother, derailing Kevin's plans. In other words, it is implied, another version of herself. It is strongly hinted at in My Night at Daria's that the two are already sexually active, so this seems to be a valid issue.
In the 2001 version of Kevin's MTV website, he mentions "football is kind of like dating: sometimes you choose the most obvious person under pressure and then you're stuck with them. At least that's what I heard Brittany telling the other cheerleaders. Then they all looked at me and shook their heads."
The Taylor Family
Brittany's father is Steve Taylor and her stepmother is Ashley-Amber Taylor; her biological mother is named Vivian Taylor, though she never appeared in the series. Brian Taylor is Brittany's troublesome younger brother, who enjoys torturing small animals. Their father appears to favor Brittany considerably over his rude and misbehaving son. Brittany is very fond of her stepmother, to whom she bears an uncanny and disturbing resemblance. Daria mistakes the former model for Brittany's sister at one point.
Future
At the end of the series, Brittany graduates from Lawndale High and is accepted into the freshman class at Great Prairie State University with the other Lawndale cheerleaders. She is still seeing Kevin, although it is strongly hinted that she will break up with him, as he is held back for a year at Lawndale High.
Brittany in Fanfic
Only fanfics in which Brittany is a main character are included.