Elaine Benes - Personality

Personality

Elaine is normally intelligent and assertive, but also quite superficial. She is one of the boys, and despite the troubles they go through as a group, she remains the closest female friend to the main male cast throughout the entire series. Her traits are usually edgy and neurotic and she has a tendency to easily get angry with almost everyone. She has ruined her friends' ambitions, like throwing George's toupee out the window after trying to explain the irony behind it in "The Beard" or revealing what Jerry said in "The Cheever Letters" about the "panties her mother laid out for her".

Elaine is a serial dater, a trait lampooned in Season 7's "The Sponge", where she is desperate to buy a cache of discontinued contraceptive sponges before they are all bought up. She coins the word "spongeworthy" debating her then-boyfriend's prospects of intimacy at the expense of her inventory. Her neuroses often interfere with her relationships, leading to the premature end of a blossoming relationship. For example, in "The Stall", Elaine is dating Tony, a very good-looking athletic type. After a rock climbing accident mangles Tony's face, Elaine admits to Jerry that she can't date someone who isn't attractive and wonders how long she is obligated to stay with him post-accident. Later, in "The Couch" after proclaiming her love for new boyfriend Carl, she immediately ends the relationship upon learning that he does not share her opinions on abortion. Elaine also is attracted to men with lucrative jobs, particularly doctors.

Generally, her hair was long with curls or waves, but underwent changes since Season 4. By Season 7, her hairstyle had matured and had a more modern look for the rest of the series. It was shoulder length again by "The Little Kicks", and straightened once more from Season 8's "The Summer of George" to Season 9's "The Betrayal". There were a few episodes in which her hair had an effect on mostly her boyfriends. In Season 9's "The Strike", it was damaged when affected by steam. In "The Smelly Car" a valet made Jerry's car and Elaine's hair smell like body odor. In "The Movie" George describes Elaine as having "a big wall o' hair".

Her clothing is normally quite conservative. She usually wears formal dresses and whenever she's not at work, she'll wear her usual casual clothes. It is revealed by Peter Mehlman on audio commentary in "The Sponge" and "The Betrayal" that female fans favor the brown leather jacket that she wears from Season 7 on. Occasionally she is entirely out of her usual attire, as in "The Betrayal" (when she wears an Indian outfit and hairstyle) and "The Millennium" (in which she dons Mayan dress). Elaine also wears glasses at times, usually during work hours.

Although she is friends with George, Elaine tends to be combative with him. Still, Elaine does see him as a good friend: in "The Wife", he argues with Elaine over her love interest, who is threatening to kick him out of the health club. The depiction of Elaine as smarter and more successful than George was occasionally reversed for comic effect: In "The Opposite", George finds success and happiness doing the opposite of whatever his instincts tell him, while the normally successful Elaine falls on hard times. In "The Abstinence", George becomes smarter while not having sex, but Elaine gets dumber. In a few episodes Elaine and George work together, most notably in "The Revenge" and "The Cadillac".

She does sometimes go to Kramer for help. She asks him and Newman to help her get rid of a neighbor's dog in "The Engagement". In "The Slicer", she asks him first to lose power at her neighbors' house and also to feed the cat with meat. In "The Watch" she asks him to pose as her boyfriend so she can dump Dr. Reston, her controlling psychiatrist boyfriend. In "The Soup Nazi", she asks him to watch an armoire for her on the street until she can move it in the following day. The only conflict is in "The Seven" over a girl's bike in which Newman is the judge over the dispute.

Elaine is the only main character who does not own a car. In "The Busboy" (off camera) and "The Pothole" she borrows Jerry's, and in "The Wait Out" she borrows her friend Elise's car. In "The Burning" she borrows then-boyfriend David Puddy's. Also, it's revealed that she is a horrible driver who slams on the brakes and wildly steers the car.

Elaine also has a very refined taste in film, citing many movies, plays, and characters throughout the series. She has a particular affection for the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire, revealed first in "The Fusilli Jerry" the episode where Elaine first begins to see David Puddy and an utter dislike for The English Patient. She remarks sarcastically to Jerry (after he expresses surprise that she would date Puddy, who is a mechanic) that it's "such a huge turn off" for her when Puddy comes home "dripping with animal sexuality like Stanley Kowalski". In "The Pen", Elaine shows her love for the movie when she becomes unintentionally high on muscle relaxers and repeatedly screams "Stella" at a fancy awards dinner for Morty Seinfeld in Florida. (See also: Vincent's Picks and Sack Lunch)

In "The Boyfriend", Elaine reveals her disgust for smokers, which helps lead to a breakup with Keith Hernandez. Her dislike of smoking also leads to an argument with a fortune-teller in "The Suicide". However, in "The Calzone" and "The Foundation" she is seen smoking with a Cuban cigar. She is also seen smoking a cigar in "The Blood", but only to make herself look bad in front of the mother of the child she's babysitting.