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) |
| “ | You could show me how to twirl hair around my little finger and look vacant. | „ |
—Daria, | ||
| “ | (twirls hair) I don't know if that's something you can teach. | „ |
—Brittany, "The Invitation", | ||
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 considers Jodie Landon to be her best friend and is almost always seen interacting with her, seemingly oblivious to how annoyed Jodie is with her. Usually Jodie expresses her annoyance with a subtle jab but twice it resulted in Jodie making very clear that she didn't want Brittany around. In "Gifted" where she insulted Brittany with her "rent a brain" remark and in "Partner's Complaint" where she quickly enlisted Daria to work together on the Economics project with, to avoid having to work with Brittany.
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.
She is often friendly, optimistic, and generous.Awell as 'helping' Daria out, she tried to create cheers for all the sports teams and clubs - up to and including chess - so they wouldn't be left out ("The Daria Diaries"), and her websites (see below) show her trying to help other cheerleaders deal with problems.
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 and can prove shockingly ignorant and gullible, she sometimes displays an unusual sensibility about things. 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.
While it would be easy for many to say that Brittany is generally stupid, several facts must also be taken into consideration: that Brittany had her own advice column in the Lawndale Lowdown, that she got some favourable comments on Creative Writing assignments for Timothy O'Neill (both seen in the The Daria Diaries), she has an interest in some Shakespeare plays and was able to perform lines from Romeo and Juliet ([[and that despite any outward appearance, she did not only manage to graduate but she also was accepted into Great Prairie State University - regardless of the level of academic gravitas the institution possesses, the fact remains that between her academic and extracurricular achievements, she did manage to get accepted on her own merits. Being the head cheerleader would also require some degree of leadership and organisational skills.
She 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. (A few episodes have showed Kevin to be smarter - "Road Worrier" has Kevin stunned that Brittany doesn't know you sit on the ground at a concert - but they're the minority)
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
"The Daria Diaries" showed us that the two used to send each other romantic letters (sort of) and that Kevin was the one who asked Brittany out: his first letter ("PS I hope this is the right locker") said he'd saw her at tryouts, thought she looked cool, and asked if she wanted to go out. "I have a car. And I'm the QB." This worked on Brittany, and they kept dating (even though Kevin took her to a gory film instead of the new Julia Roberts on their first date); on their first date, they either made out or had sex in Kevin's jeep. (Whichever it is, she'd done it with another boy who owns a sports car; she says they had smaller backseats, "I've heard") They very quickly broke up but got back together again.
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. "College Bored" shows her fantasising about Kevin declaring she's the only woman he ever loved... and then ignoring him.
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. In Monster she's also seen rushing to Kevin's aid when he was about to be beaten up by the leader of the strikers of the supermarket, jumping on his shoulders and pounding in on 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 episodes like Malled ("Do you want to do what we do with your team mates?"), This Year's Model ("I'll always be his first!"), The Lab Brat ("But Kevin and I broke up that week."), Monster ("Kevin and I wore each other's underwear") and of course My Night at Daria's ("Now we can have womanly talks.") 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."
Brittany's Website
To our surprise, Brittany can actually make websites!
Her first one (The World Wide Wow!) was used to socialise (and reveals she does cybersex in chat rooms when Kevin isn't looking), defends cheerleading as a sport, gives tips to other cheerleaders about how to do better ("Just ignore those guys who make comments when you're doing spread eagle jumps"), and a "World Cheer" for global harmony. She also has a special page for guys that advises them on what gifts they should buy their girlfriends.
In 2000, she set up the Cheerleader Support Forum. "I realized that cheerleaders needed a place to talk about painful topics like self-image and pulling muscles in certain places. So I started one. Now I really like helping people and talking to cheerleaders from all over who don't go to my school so they won't start spreading rumors about how I got those grass stains on the back of my uniform. I mean, the front. I mean, oh, never mind."
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.
The "future ego" for Brittany is a slasher film actress - this was intended to be a joke, but is one of the more plausible of the egos.
Brittany in Fanfic
Only fanfics in which Brittany is a main character are included.
- Brave New World by The Angst Guy
- The Impossible by The Angst Guy
- In the Beginning by The Angst Guy
- No One Lives Forever The Angst Guy
- Making the Breast of It by The Angst Guy
- Suite for Cello, Two-Part Invention by The Angst Guy
- A Slice of Pizza, Crusts of Pizza and Piano Practice by Brother Grimace
- Legion of Lawndale Heroes by Roentgen and Brother Grimace