Cordelia Chase, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"Woah, wait," I can hear some of you saying. "You're doing a list on teenage girls you wish you could be more like and you choose Cordy, not Buffy? What the heck, Rebecca?!"

Guys. At no point did I want my life to be more like Buffy's. She had to stay out late and kill vampires on top of doing normal things like homework. She had to kill her first boyfriend, and it was all up to her to prevent the apocalypse. That's a lot of responsibility, and high school is stressful enough. She's awesome, but she had a crappy life, and that's a package deal when you're the Slayer.

But Cordelia? I'll admit, when I watched the show the first time I had a knee-jerk reaction against her, because she was popular and mean to nerdy kids, and I was sensitive to both those things. But I rewatched it recently, and wouldn't you know it, Cordy is freaking awesome.

She doesn't take crap from anyone, including her friends. For all she's the stereotypical ditz, she has more common sense than the rest of the Scooby Gang. And the clincher: In season three Xander cheats on her with Willow (which, if memory serves, he actually implies she bears some responsibility for), so Cordelia dumps him. She's emotionally affected by the breakup, like one would expect, but she has her self-respect too, darnit.

I can take or leave the popularity and the awful '90s clothes (OK, I can leave those). But the confidence and the blunt attitude? Sign me up.