In Which We Defend the Honor of ‘Gossip Girl’Over at the Huffington Post today, children’s author Lesley M. M. Blume takes on Gossip Girl. Like, she really goes after it. “Gossip Girl represents nothing less than the soft death of youth culture and rebellion and self-determinism,” she writes. Sorry, what? Are you watching the same mind-shatteringly brilliant show that we are? Every week we pore over each episode and analyze it for our readers, who immediately tear apart our reasoning with their press-on nails and braced incisors. So we’re excited to finally have the chance to examine someone else’s reading of the show! (Not to mention examine what Blume herself looks like. She’s trying to tell us someone who looks like that doesn’t watch the show? She could practically star on it!) Let’s look at her argument, piece by piece.
• “Gossip Girl supposedly exposes the seamy underbelly of Manhattan’s Upper East Side overclass.”—Again, is she watching the same show we’re watching? Gossip Girl isn’t meant to expose anything more than Star Trek was supposed to teach you what space is really like. It’s a high-camp fantasy. Does Lesley think skinny women writers with only one regular freelance gig really drink multiple fishbowl-size martinis a night at fancy clubs and never look broke or hung-over? Then she must have really loved how Sex and the City “exposed” real New York life.