Gossip Girl

In a short clip of the pilot of gossip girl, we see an automatic representation of girls. Firstly, we see the representation of the popular blonde girl who everyone wants to be like. We understand that she is popular because when she was spotted in Grand central station by Melanie 91, it was the ‘goss’ and was sent to gossip girl to spread. We see that she’s popular because of everybody’s reactions to receiving a message about her return. We also understand that she is popular because she is referred to as the ‘it girl.’ When her best friend Blaire finds out she’s coming back, she tries to rush her relationship with her boyfriend because people thought that Blaire’s boyfriend Nate had a thing for Serena. This also give us an understanding of how popular Serena is, causing her best friends boyfriend to forget Blaire. Serena demonstrates a typical stereotype of the world. She is the popular girl with the long, beautiful, blonde hair and the pink lip gloss. She’s the one that all of the boys want and fall for, for example in the scene when she walks through Grand Central Station and the boy looks at her and there is romantic, sweet music playing behind the alternating shots of him and her, showing he likes her. The popular blonde is a very common representation used in the media. Gossip girl also creates a general representation of teenage girls that they are beauty driven, boy obsessed and put their beauty before their brains. 

In the picture above, we see Blaire (on the left) and Serena (on the right) and this picture demonstrates the different representations of the two girls that we see in the clip of the pilot. We see Blaire as the more controlling, catty, slutty girl of the two in the clip. When we see her in the opening, she is wearing fully black and in this picture she is also wearing a dark brown. The dark colours have connotations of having power, being mysterious and yet maintaining elegance which is also shown by her dark hair. This use of connotations helps create a stereotype of her to help us understand her character from the very beginning. In contrast to this, Serena is wearing lighter colours and beige-brown in the beginning of the movie and white in this picture. The white of her dress and the blonde of her hair has connotations of success, purity and goodness which we sort of see in her along with her being popular in that first clip. Also the background also enhances this with Blaire's side having brown and orange colours and Serena's side with just white. In the picture, Serena is squatting in an almost unnatural position which complements her best features such as her long legs and her body's curves. Her face isn't as pure and innocent as we associate with the colour white but is more seductive. This engrosses us immediately because she isn't standing with power but is lower and more on our level which makes her look more equal to us and more vulnerable. The simplicity of her white, bland dress, simple heels and minimal make up expresses her natural beauty and fresh skin. In the first 3 and a half minutes of the trailer, it was almost as if there were omissions on different looking people because all of the characters we saw had this typical perfection to them. This has an effect on teenage girls because the difference between reality and T.V programmes is that in reality, not everybody has this perfection because it is unattainable.

 The representations of teenage girls in Gossip Girl are made by the series creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz. Josh Schwartz is a 37 year old man who has been involved in a very large range of T.V shows and movies such as ‘The Carrie Diaries’, ‘The OC’ and ‘Chuck’. He is a writer, producer and director and is from Providence, Rhode Island, USA. This middle age male figure has control over the representation of the teenage girls in the media which says a lot because he creates a representation of girls which isn’t entirely accurate. In the first 3 and a half minutes of the pilot, I understand that the girls are boy crazed, catty and willing to forget about their values to get ‘the guy’ (shown mostly by Blaire). In reality, in our society there are few girls like this, a very large amount have good morals and are focused on more important things in their life than just being ‘loved’. Josh Schwartz isn’t the only one who created this very stereotypical teenage girl image, working alongside him, was Stephane Savage, a 44-45 year old women who is a producer and a writer known for 'Charlie's Angels: Full throttle', 'Hart of Dixie' and many more. Both of them were obviously a bit younger when they created Gossip girl as those are their ages now. The values and ideas of these two people are what is shown through the representation of girls. The representation that they create of teenage girls cannot be accurate because they create a precise image that you can't differentiate from much which makes it really unrealistic because not everyone looks the same. They also only highlight certain qualities in the teenage girls, for example, they aren't intelligent, sporty or arty but tend to just be popular. 

The representation that they have created has an affect on all members of society. It affects the teenage girls because they feel that in order to be popular they have to be the 'pretty blonde with pink lipstick and all of the boys love her'. It also affects girls because they see girls such as Blaire drop all of their morals and values just so that she can have the boy instead of Serena. Teenage girls live their lives thinking it will be like a movie such as 'the first kiss' or 'the kiss at the door at the end of your date'. In reality, this doesn't necessarily happen but we still do tend to take what we see as an example, so it's likely that there are girls out there who would see Blaire and act like her. It affects the teenage males in the community because an idea in their head might be formed that girls will drop their morals and values if you pressure them into it. It also creates the idea that teenage girls might all be interested in sex (as males tend to be), when in reality, a very large amount of younger teenage girls are not ready. It affects the parents and older members of the community because I feel they automatically judge teenage girls to be slutty when they have boyfriends. In our everyday lives, yes there are teenage girls who sleep around with guys, but I think this a generalisation that some parents see. But in saying this, a large amount of the girls are not even in relationships. 

The representation of teenage girls in gossip girl takes a social role in our modern society because (like previously stated) it sets and example of how teenage girls should act. It acts as a guide to teach girls what to do in certain situations when they haven't yet experienced similar situations. This is a very negative thing because girls may start feeling pressurised to act accordingly to what they are seeing. 

Another negative thing that occurs not only in Gossip Girl but in widespread media is that the teenage characters are played by older girls who are no longer in their teens. One reason for this is because they will be more experienced with their filming, but I think having older people playing younger parts makes creates this idea that we need to look older and need to behave as if we are older too. When we think of older people, we tend to think that they have already learnt from their mistakes. This means that when we think of older people playing teens, some people may associate them being older with not making mistakes. This is a bad representation for teenage girls because it creates the idea that teenage girls don't make mistakes so in our society, when teenage girls do make mistakes they are badly judged which may make some of them very self conscious. This should never be how people should feel because no one is perfect and people always makes mistakes. It is our mistakes that we learn form.

The overall representation of teenage girls in Gossip Girl is negative and has a negative affect on teenage girls today. This is because we take movies as example to how we behave, look and feel that we need to live our lives. We judge ourselves and compare ourselves to those in the movies which is why it is a negative representation.