I Don't Like Gossip Girl, but I Love Me Some Blair Waldorf Style
My friend recently forwarded an article to me about Gossip Girl’s series finale, one of television’s most ritzy, provocative young adult dramas. Interestingly, the article didn’t focus on the actual show, rather on the flawless style of Blair Waldorf, one of Gossip Girl’s central characters.
To be honest, my knowledge of Gossip Girls is quite narrow. I only watched half of the 1st season in 12th grade (the first time I watched TV in 5 years—yes, I eventually succumbed to this unholy bait). However, I do possess a rather personal memory associated with Gossip Girl. Whenever this show is mentioned, I’m fondly reminded of the days my mother and I would battle over the remote.
You see, Gossip Girl and my mother’s all-time favorite show (a Korean soap-opera with English subtitles) aired at the exact same time. When my mom won control over the remote, I’d often exclaim“This is so unfair! Why do you like this silly Korean show anyways? Huh?!”
I’d yet to appreciate how cool my mom was back then – she became hooked on Korean culture long before the days of Gangnam Style. Take that! But, as ever, I digress.
When I won the “remote war,” I cozily settled in for an evening of scandal and “high-society teenage politics” a la Gossip Girl. Sure the show was famously juicy and entertaining, but it was also rampant with degrading morals and distorted values. I couldn’t get over the sheer irony that I was tuning into this show at 8:00 p.m. only to open up a Sefer Devarim and Rashi a mere twelve hours later. Irony can be rad…but not this kind of irony. I slowly weaned myself off the show.
