7 Videos That Explain Why I Don’t Feel Guilty For Loving “Gossip Girl”
Blair and Serena’s friendship contains all the lessons
These two pretty much did every horrible thing to each other that two friends can, accentuated by the fact that they lived in a fictional world of endless financial resources, so they basically had nothing but money and free time to overthink their friendship and figure out ways to be awful to each other. I can’t say for sure, but I assume this is actually what super rich, pretty girls do, and to a less cinematic degree, it’s what most adolescent BFF relationships are like. So it definitely didn’t do us any harm to watch Blair and Serena navigate their many, many dramatic issues, and grow to be simultaneously less dependent on each other, but also more genuinely loving and accepting of each other.
Chuck and Blair are a great example of loving yourself first
Clearly, Chuck and Blair did more than their share of game playing and emotional manipulation, both with each other and with the other people in their lives. They cheated and lied and were by all accounts horrible, immoral human beings. I mean, Chuck literally tried to rape someone in the first season and didn’t lose a single friend or really face any consequences at all. In fact, the attack was later used by Blair as a challenge to the victim as to whether or not she could handle life “in their world”. Point being: Chuck and Blair started out the series as destructive people with a mutually destructive relationship.
But then a cool thing happened. They stopped being super shitty, at least to each other. They recognized that they brought out the worst in each other, took space accordingly, nurtured their own personal development into better people, and focused on achieving their goals before putting their energy into their relationship together. And in the end, they evolved into somewhat function, way less sociopathic people who understand, loved, and supported one another and went on to have what appeared to be a surprisingly healthy marriage.
For any of us who have a natural inclination to get involved in relationships that make us miserable and bring out our worst traits, to see this progression and growth in these characters over the course of the series…it was kinda game changing as far as what we saw thought was possible for our potential to have healthy, functional relationships, and what it took to get there. That’s embarrassing but true.
Jenny shows that it’s all downhill once you start wearing that much eyeliner
Seriously, she was doing mostly okay before that. But really, even though she was by far the most annoying character on the show/on any show ever, she wasn’t an entirely bad role model: Going your own way, fighting for yourself when you feel like your talent and opportunities are being wasted by an assumption that you should do life according the rules that were decided for you by people who don’t know you, and dipping the fuck out of a bad scene. Once the mean girls started to turn her into a shitty person, she bailed on the whole toxic environment. All told, she was super annoying, but kinda knew how to live life.
We all need a Nate
I’ve always had a tendency to demand a lot from my friends. Sometimes I ask too much, and I can be overly critical when they are imperfect. To be fair, I’m just as hard on myself. It’s an ongoing personal project to become more accepting of people, flaws and all. So it’s nice to have a reminder that sometimes a person can be kinda dumb but if they’re sweet, loyal, would give you the shirt off their back, and look like that with their shirt off, like, that’s enough for a human to be.
Only evil bitches out their closeted gay friends
Seriously, was there any moment where we all wanted to murder Georgina more than when she outed Eric? Here’s why this moment makes me think there is real merit in this show: For a lot of people, even if they “knew” that outing people was a bad thing, this was the first time they saw the actual pain and awkwardness and powerlessness of that moment. You already loved that little frosted-tipped brother, and when Georgie announced his gayness over breakfast, for a lot of young viewers, it might’ve been the first time they really understand exactly why that’s such a shitty thing to do.
There’s nothing wrong with a little escapism
I’m sorry, but people who hate on GG for how unrealistic its depiction of life is, or it’s questionable moral underpinnings, or the completely illogical ascension of its characters to incredible professional success despite being teenagers with almost no qualifications to do what they were doing – you can all calm down, and try to remember what TV is for. It’s a fantasy. Anyone who needs TV to be legitimately reflective of reality probably needs to focus on getting an actual life. For those of us with a reasonable understanding of the role TV should play in a well-balanced life, it’s fine if a show is utterly insane – because we’re really just using it to take a fun break in a fantasy world for an hour before going back to real life. It’s not actually that big of a deal. If we’re already wasting an hour of the day watching TV then what’s wrong with it being wasted staring at beautiful people who never wear the same outfit twice, get naked with equally beautiful people, and live in a world where this is all they have to do to be successful? Like, let’s be clear – TV is almost always a waste of time, no matter what you watch, so maybe we should stop hating on ourselves for just wanting to look at hollow, shiny bobble-heads for a while.
Rufus ends up with Lisa Loeb?!
I can never feel bad about a show who drops a bomb of randomness like that in literally the last scene of the series. This show did not give a fuck. Respect.