"Fake, fake, fake, fake." 6 moments that prove Seinfeld's Elaine is the hero we need.

Last week marked 30 years since Seinfeld’s very first episode ‘The Seinfeld Chronicles’ aired. The pilot featured everything we would come to love about ‘the show about nothing’, except for one very important missing piece: Elaine.

Elaine Benes, played by the brilliant Julia Louis-Dreyfus, was added after the pilot episode was shot as NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and needed a woman as part of the main cast.

This was 1989, and female characters like Elaine – flawed, loud, apologetically sex positive and progressive – were not on TV. She was all of these and more, you know, like a fully rounded human being should be.

Sidenote: Here are some sexist ways your favourite female characters were introduced in screenplays. Insert eyeroll here. Post continues below video.

These days women like Elaine are in so many of the shows we watch, but Elaine is the OG, so to celebrate 30 years of her we’ve taken a look back at some of her best moments.

‘Difficult’: The Package, season 8, episode 5.

When women know what we want – when we’re assertive and confident and not willing to take any sh*t – others love to label us as difficult.

During a visit to the doctor, Elaine finds that her medical file says she’s a ‘difficult’ patient and Elaine is not here for it.

She confronts her doctor, naturally telling him it was absolutely not her fault she was ‘difficult’. The doctor says he’ll erase it from her file… but as Elaine points out, it was written in pen.

“You fake erased,” she says while looking him dead in the eye.

Birth control: The Virgin, season 4, episode 10 and The Sponge, season 7, episode 9.

Elaine was open about contraception more than once over the course of Seinfeld – a topic that, in the 90s, was not exactly considered dinner party chat.

In The Virgin, Elaine tells Jerry and his new girlfriend a story about her diaphragm flying out of her bag while talking to a man.

“So I carry around my diaphragm – who doesn’t? You never know when you’re going to need it.”

In The Sponge, Elaine hoards contraceptive sponges which have become very valuable after being discontinued and well, she’s very selective over when she uses one, going so far as to coin the phrase “sponge-worthy”.

To find out if a man is “sponge-worthy”, Elaine puts them through a tough interrogation. She’s not going to waste a sponge on a dud.

Masturbation: The Contest, season 4, episode 10.

In 1992… female masturbation was 110 per cent not prime time ~appropriate~ until our sex positive favourite Elaine came along. Well, technically the word “masturbation” was still not deemed appropriate, so this episode (often cited as the best ever) hilariously avoided using it explicitly… but there sure are a lot of euphemisms.

When her friends challenge one another to not masturbate, Elaine forces her way into the competition which uh, confuses the men.

They assume she’ll win easily because she’s a woman and women don’t do that, right? Except of course we do and Elaine definitely does not win the challenge: All thanks to a John F. Kennedy Jr. look-a-like at her gym.

Motherhood… Or not: The Soul Mate, season 8, episode 2.

Elaine was constantly smashing 90s stereotypes of what a woman should be, especially in her approach to children.

When everyone is going gaga over a baby – which Elaine reckons is actually pretty ugly – her friends insist she should have a baby: “Elaine, ya gotta have a baby!”

Elaine ignores their insistence and then mocks them to her friends.

“You want to have a baby,” Jerry assumes.

“Why? Because I can?” she says.

Faking it: The Mango, season 5, episode 1.

When Elaine tells Jerry that when they were dating she used to fake all her orgasms, his ego takes a serious hit.

“What about the breathing, the panting, the moaning, the screaming?” he asks.

“Fake, fake, fake, fake,” she replies.

Elaine doesn’t see the big deal and she’s not about to stroke his ego to make him feel better.

The pro-lifer: The Couch, season 6, episode 5.

When Elaine meets a man she believes is ‘the one’, she is forced to weigh up two things that are very important to her: Her feminist beliefs and her love of having sex with good looking men. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“What is his stand on abortion?” Jerry asks about the man, jokingly.

“Well, I’m sure he’s pro-choice,” Elaine responds. “Because… well, he’s just so good looking.”

When she meets up with him afterwards, she drops hints to find out his stance and oh… Spoiler alert: he’s anti-abortion.

She dumps him because no matter how good looking, Elaine ain’t compromising her beliefs about body autonomy.

Bless you, Elaine Benes.

If you want to relive these and more great Elaine moments, Seinfeld is available to watch in Australia on Stan.