15 June 2010

Gossip Girl

Busy spreading lies

 

Chatty, catty, and rich: We’ll dig up your dirt and tell the whole school.

Chatty, catty, and rich: We’ll dig up your dirt and tell the whole school.

By Chester Pach

This essay is excerpted from Pop Culture versus Real America, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. A profile of a real teenager appears here.

“Gossip Girl here — your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite. And who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell.”

Nobody knows her identity, but everybody at the Constance Billard School, the oh-so-exclusive academy for girls on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, devours Gossip Girl’s blogs and text messages. They learned from Gossip Girl about “the biggest news ever” — the unexpected return of Serena van der Woodsen a year after she suddenly left New York for boarding school in Connecticut. Serena’s departure came without warning; she didn’t even tell her best friend, Blair Waldorf. What happened on her last night in New York, however, didn’t remain a secret. Serena had sex with Blair’s boyfriend, Nate Archibald. And to make matters worse, Nate had never slept with Blair.

Gossip Girl just loves a “catfight” between “hotties,” and Blair and Serena didn’t disappoint her. They became rivals in their snobby clique of privileged youth on the Upper East Side. Their nasty encounters occurred at lavish parties, designer fashion shows, and even at the dean’s home at Yale University when they made a campus visit. Eventually the two estranged friends reconciled, yet they still schemed over sex and status. “I just need to know that in this misbegotten corner of Manhattan, wealth, ambition, and moral laxity are still alive and well,” Blair declared.

Some adults Blair knew must have reassured her. Nate’s father, a cocaine addict, fled the country to avoid arrest. Catherine Mason Beaton, the stepmother of Blair’s new boyfriend, Marcus, had affairs both with Blair’s old boyfriend, Nate, and with her own stepson. “Do you ever feel like our whole lives have been planned out for us?” Nate asks his friend Chuck. “That we’re just gonna end up like our parents?”

“That’s a dark thought,” Chuck replies.

“You know you love me. XOXO. Gossip Girl.”

Chester Pach teaches history at Ohio University, where he holds the title of Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member. He is the author of three books on U.S. politics and foreign policy. His next book, which will soon be published by the University Press of Kansas, is The Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)