The Duality of Blair Waldorf

Part Three of Three

[This profile contains discussion of eating disorders, abuse, and sexual assault.]

Season Four

In Paris, Blair moves from the sleek, architectural dresses of season three to frilly, romantic confections. Her love life, however, is at a standstill. She’s been spending time at museums, looking at her favorite artworks and hoping to find someone who’s feeling the same things she’s feeling.

That is, until Louis: he approaches her at the Louvre (4.1), as she stands in front of her favorite painting, Édouard Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass. Perhaps it’s the duality of the subjects that so appeals to the divided Blair: the nude female figures contrasting with the clothed male figures. Her dress is a cream-and-orange abstract floral, almost an Impressionist painting itself. She pairs it with a pearl choker and a brown leather watch—set to EST, which is how Louis knows she is an American.

Based on a passing reference, Blair believes Louis must be a prince of Monaco. But on a double date with Serena, Louis reveals that Serena’s date, Jean Michel, is royalty and Louis is his driver. This, of course, doesn’t go over well with Blair and her princess fantasies. She even wore her Audrey cosplay: a black dress with rhinestone embellishments and a silver necklace.

Just as Marcus pretended to be a commoner, Louis is only pretending to be a driver, testing Blair to see if she is genuinely interested in him, not his princedom. Though she fails the test, he gives her a second chance in episode two.

Chuck has also landed in Paris. He’s now dating a Frenchwoman, Eva, and living as the poor “Henry Prince.” Serena believes that only Blair can convince him to return to his life in Manhattan, but Blair isn’t interested. “I’d forgotten what it was like to just have fun with a guy,” she tells her friend. “I’ve been waiting all summer to feel sparkly again.”

Louis invites Blair to a Givenchy ball (Givenchy, fittingly, designed many of Audrey’s on-screen looks, including her iconic black dress). He sends over a rack of gowns, even directs her to Harry Winston to pick out a bit of sparkle. At Harry Winston, Blair runs into Serena and a French inspector, who tell her that Chuck was shot earlier that summer trying to protect the Winston engagement ring he bought for Blair. She’s finally convinced to stop Chuck and dashes to him in her red strapless ball gown and pink diamond necklace.

Though Blair, too, must return to New York, she gives Louis a glass slipper: one of her buckled Roger Viviers (not unlike Carrie’s Manolos in the Sex and the City movie, as I discussed in this post). Back in the city, Blair’s starting her first year at Columbia as a member of the exclusive Hamilton House, her membership bestowed with a silver Tiffany key necklace (4.3).

Interestingly enough, Blair regularly wore a very similar silver key necklace at the beginning of season three. Perhaps this new key is meant to call back to that period, when Blair was happy with Chuck and unhappy at NYU, or simply to show that Blair and her Tiffany tastes fit perfectly at Columbia, where she quickly acquires a new roster of minions. As queen again, Blair regresses to a less sleek and mature style—lots of brightly colored and patterned flippy skirts and tops, her minions in a similar bright palette.

After Blair sabotages Chuck’s relationship with Eva, she and Chuck go to war (4.5). By episode seven, they agree to a truce and hammer out a treaty with the help of Serena and Nate. Blair dons a headband for the first time this season: solid blue with a green tweed suit. The suit is typical serious, planful Blair, but the headband picks up Chuck’s blue palette, perhaps signaling the connection they still share, even as they divvy up the city.

Peace soon turns to hate sex, which then turns to genuine feelings. In episode nine, Blair meets with Nate’s mother, Anne, who wants her to become the new face of Girls Inc.—without Chuck by her side. “People may forgive the choices you’ve made in your past,” says Anne, “but if you want this foundation in your future, I’ll need some assurance that Charles won’t be a part of it.” Concurrently, the Empire’s publicist tells Chuck that he needs to embrace his hedonist image—and not a steady relationship with Blair—if he wants his hotel to bounce back.

Chuck throws a Saints and Sinners party, Blair attending as a sinner in a black mask and red slip trimmed with black lace; after all, lingerie almost always signals her “dark” side. There, Blair and Chuck are caught kissing, and Anne rescinds her offer, more of a “saint” in a buttoned-up trench and pearls. “The man you’re with may not be a reflection of you,” Anne says, “but you will always be a reflection of him.”

The Empire’s publicist loves the kiss; she says the romantic gesture was the “perfect balance” to Chuck’s hedonism. She’s even already thinking about photo ops for Blair: “Chuck Bass’s girlfriend at store openings, fashion shows, that kind of thing.”

As a man, Chuck doesn’t have to choose between being “good” and “bad,” saint and sinner, but as a woman, Blair does. She ends their fling: “I have to be Blair Waldorf before I can be Chuck Bass’s girlfriend,” she tells Chuck.

Thus begins Blair’s quest to become a “powerful woman” independent of Chuck. As she does, she also becomes close to Dan, both having realized that they share the same love for museums and art-house films. Their color palette and patterns start to merge—lots of black, white, gray, and red plaid. Dan even sparks the idea for Blair’s career path after she rejects an internship with Waldorf Designs (4.12). He tells Blair: “You care about fashion more than most people care about anything. You used to send girls home crying for wearing tights as pants. . . . You’re an evil dictator of taste, Blair. Why deny it just because it’s what your mother does?”

Through dogged persistence, Blair secures an internship at W magazine, her first step toward becoming an “evil dictator of taste”: an editor of a high-fashion magazine. She keeps her black, white, and gray color palette, incorporating touches of luxe metallics and sophisticated textures, strong-shouldered blazers and sheath dresses, even pants.

Many of Blair’s ideas about fashion come from Audrey movies, and I imagine she was inspired by the Diana Vreeland–esque editor in Funny Face, who proclaims that readers should “Think pink!” even as she sticks to her plain gray skirt suit. By episode fourteen, Blair accepts an assistant’s job at W, despite her full course load.

In episode fifteen, Blair attends Chuck’s Valentine’s Day party, hoping to procure an interview with Raina Thorpe for W. Raina is Chuck’s new girlfriend, the daughter of his real estate rival, Russell Thorpe, and a true “powerful woman” herself. Blair believes Chuck is only pretending to like Raina to take down Russell, but at the party, she and Dan overhear Raina breaking up with Chuck and know his feelings are true. Both Raina and Blair are wearing champagne dresses; while Raina’s is fully beaded, Blair’s metallic roses wear away at the bottom. Raina is Chuck’s focal point, and Blair is fading away.

When she can no longer balance her schoolwork and job, Blair is fired from W. She’s so exhausted she wears mismatched shoes (4.16), one of which is the sister to the buckled heel she gave Louis. It’s our first hint that Louis will return soon, glass slipper in hand. Before then, Blair and Dan must decide if they have feelings for each other. They’ve been hiding their friendship, sneaking to museums and movie theaters together, and both wonder if they’re suppressing something more.

They agree to one kiss (4.17), Blair in a black-and-pink floral dress and pearl pendant necklace—much like the romantic floral dress and pearl choker she wore the first time she met Louis at the Louvre. It’s another hint that Louis is returning, but perhaps also a sign that Dan is that person she was looking for in Paris, the kind of person who feels the same things she’s feeling when she looks at paintings.

For Dan, the kiss affirms his feelings for Blair, while for Blair, it confirms that she wants to be with Chuck now. She even plans to tell him in episode eighteen, after a shoot for the Modern Royalty photo book. Chuck is being photographed solo, and he can’t help but play a jealous trick on Dan. When Blair learns what Chuck has done, she realizes that he’s not ready for a serious relationship.

Chuck was hoping to be photographed with Blair; he even bought her a black strapless gown to match his black suit and shirt. Blair notes that the gown looks like “the one Diana wore after becoming a princess,” and Chuck confirms it is. Based on the dress shown, I think it’s actually meant to be a gown Diana wore before she married Prince Charles, just after they became engaged. (She was nicknamed “Daring Di” for the low-cut neckline.)

No matter which era it’s from, the dress begs the question: Does Chuck know anything about Princess Diana’s marriage? Yes, there are the parallels between Blair and Diana—their complicated relationships with their mothers, their eating disorders, their skilled employment of fashion—but the princess spent years in an unhappy marriage and then died in a car crash! Quick, someone play Chuck season four of The Crown.

At the end of the episode, Louis arrives in the city with the Vivier heel, and Blair begins dressing even more like she did in Paris: ruffled, romantic, floral, with a bit of sparkle. She and Louis quickly become serious, and she tells him all about her past. Louis’s family wants him to marry, though his mother disapproves of a bride whose entire life is on Gossip Girl. Now that Blair has won over Louis, she must win over the court, too.

Louis gives her a blush beaded dress for the occasion, perfectly in line with her more romantic, sparkly wardrobe, the “joy” that her relationship with Louis brings her. She’s charming and composed until Chuck arrives and humiliates her in front of the court. Despite the scene, Louis still wants to marry Blair and proposes that evening; when she goes to tell Chuck, he punches a window and a shard cuts Blair’s cheek.

Ashamed, much like she was after the hotel setup, Blair tells Louis that her new engagement ring cut her face. When he discovers the real cause, he implores her to be open with him: “The only way [this marriage] will work is if you show me all the parts of yourself, even the ones you’re ashamed of.”

For the umpteenth time, Blair must reconcile her two sides: As she tells her stepfather, Cyrus: “It’s not all light and bright in here. There are some places devoid of even a hint of sparkle. . . . Chuck was the only one who ever loved [my dark side]. But he couldn’t see the rest. What kind of princess schemes and plays sex games and dreams herself into Hollywood movies?”

Blair’s engagement dress shows these two sides that she tells Cyrus about: her sparkly, light side, and her dark, depraved side. The top half is sparkly and frilly, silver embroidery and pink fabric flowers, evoking the blush gown that she wore to charm the court; the bottom half is simple, unembellished black, calling back to the Diana dress. Honestly, the whole thing is very Freudian: the light side is close to her head, her mind, while the dark side is her body, her sexuality.

After Chuck rescues her from Russell Thorpe, Blair and Chuck sleep together. She plans to break her engagement to Louis, but Chuck stops her, believing she will be happier with her prince. In this scene, a pink embellished coat covers most of the dress, “light” winning over “dark.”

Season Five

Newly engaged to a prince, Blair’s wardrobe inspiration shifts from Hollywood royalty (Audrey Hepburn) to real-life royalty (Princess Grace, Duchess Kate). Her headbands are replaced by “Kate Middleton–esque fascinators and hats” (“5 Years of Iconic Style”) and her more elaborate outfits by simpler printed day dresses or skirts and blouses, often paired with statement necklaces. In episode three, Blair even walks in a Jenny Packham fashion show; Packham is one of Kate’s go-to designers.

Most importantly, Blair wears a lot of blue, much like Kate. For Kate, blue is meant to symbolize Cambridge, to remind us of her sapphire engagement ring; for Blair, the color encompasses her monarchical fantasies: The Marie Antoinette mural in her childhood bedroom is all in blue. She wore blue frequently when she was queen of Constance and dreamed of marrying Nate. And, of course, there’s French blue. How can the color not evoke her engagement to Louis?

There’s just one crimp in the fantasy: Blair is pregnant and (in a callback to season one) she doesn’t know who the father is: Chuck or Louis. She hasn’t told Louis, and so she hides her morning sickness from him and his visiting sister, Princess Beatrice (5.2). Once Beatrice learns of Blair’s teenage bulimia, she believes that Blair’s constant nausea and bathroom breaks are the return of her eating disorder. Naturally, this is also the episode when Blair learns how constricted her fashion will be as a princess:

Blair: [I’ll wear] Wu for my welcome parade, short but regal, and Alaïa would put Charlene and her swimmer’s body to shame at Albert’s ball.

Beatrice: Those will never do.

Blair: Why? They only use children to sew the beading.

Beatrice: You cannot have bare shoulders, exposed knees, anything formfitting. Too much skin borders on Bruni.

Blair’s fantasy of outshining other women’s bodies with her own not only ties back to her eating disorder but also to her pregnancy. Her body is going to change as her pregnancy progresses, and while that doesn’t mean she can’t wear what she wants, Blair still seems to be imagining her thin, unpregnant self as princess.

With encouragement from Dan, Blair obtains a paternity test: Louis is the father (5.3). And yet, their happiness is haunted by Louis’s jealousy. He doesn’t trust Blair with Chuck or Dan, who recently published a novel in which “Clair Carlyle” is the star and love interest of “Dylan Hunter” (5.4)

Even Blair isn’t sure she can trust Chuck. He’s started going to therapy, participating in philanthropy; after years of whiplash between “good” and “bad” Chuck, she doesn’t know which one to believe. Her worries manifest in an Audrey movie dream, this time Sabrina (5.7). Blair imagines herself as Sabrina in a white-and-black dress inspired by Audrey’s Givenchy gown, Chuck as Humphrey Bogart in a white dinner jacket. He offers to help her down from a ladder. “How do I know I can trust you?” she asks and falls just as she wakes up.

In real life, Blair has traded her more formfitting day dresses for tentlike counterparts—perhaps to comply with the monarchy’s strict dress code, perhaps to disguise her growing pregnancy from the public eye. Still, I wonder if Blair has trouble dressing her changing body, favoring loose silhouettes to hide the foreign shape underneath. As her relationship with Louis continues to deteriorate, she also stops wearing fascinators, her princess fantasy turning to nightmare.

In episode nine, Blair insists on attending one of Chuck’s therapy sessions. She wants to know how Chuck became “good,” believing that she is the one who turned Louis “bad.” “All this time,” she tells Chuck, “I’ve blamed you for pulling me into the dark. It was me who brought out your dark side. And now that I’m with Louis, I’ve done the same to him.”

Chuck disagrees: “You never pulled me to the dark side, Blair. You were the lightest thing that ever came into my life.” While their conversation is sweet, it only serves to enforce the dichotomy in Blair’s mind: she is half-light and half-dark, rather than a whole, rounded being, full of all the kinds of contractions that make her human. 

With Dan’s help (5.10), Blair and Chuck run away, planning to raise Blair’s child together. On their way to the airport, their car crashes. Blair miscarries, and Chuck loses a lot of blood. Devastated, Blair begs God to save Chuck’s life, promising to marry Louis. When Chuck awakes almost immediately, Blair takes his recovery as a sign her prayer worked.

Blair tells only Dan about her promise to God, and they secretly attend church together as Blair tries to understand if she should keep her pledge (5.11). As she avoids Chuck, her wardrobe turns to Dan: a red plaid jacket, white vest, and black skirt—the color palette evocative of their season four friendship, the plaid and vest both Humphrey staples. Dan even accompanies Blair to her Vera Wang wedding dress fitting, the first of the show’s parallels between Dan and Blair and Dan’s father, Rufus, and his now wife, Lily.

In 5.13, the show’s hundredth episode, Blair and Louis marry. “Who would’ve thought,” Gossip Girl wonders, “that in just five short years, [Blair] could turn that headband into a tiara for real?”

Blair’s wedding dress is simple at first glance, a strapless ball gown with a little tulle bow at the waist. On closer look, the details come out: Daman describes the dress as “old world . . . a layer of lace on top of it . . . tiny little handcrafted buttons that go all the way down the back” (“5 Years”). The rest of the ensemble includes a diamond tiara, a veil, and a diamond necklace that looks like a poor man’s version of Chuck’s birthday present.

Gossip Girl interrupts the ceremony with a blast: a video of Blair proclaiming her love for Chuck before the wedding. Blair and Louis still make their vows, but Louis reveals at the reception that their marriage will be loveless, only for show. Blair escapes with Dan, hoping to get a quickie divorce in the Dominican Republic; Louis’s mother tracks her down first (5.14). The Grimaldis had waived Blair’s dowry, but if she defaults on the marriage now, the Waldorfs will have to sell Eleanor’s company to pay the enormous debt.

Resigned to her fate, Blair embarks on her honeymoon with Louis. She’s changed into her princess uniform, a pale blue dress with a blue fascinator—the color that once symbolized her fantasies now heavy with sadness and disappointment.

Her own romantic dreams dashed, Blair schemes to reunite Serena and Dan—wearing, naturally, a dress with a built-in tweed vest (5.15). Dan, however, wants only Blair; he kisses her again, but this time she feels something. “Dan loves me for me,” she realizes (5.16)—not for only her “light” or “dark” parts but her whole self. Dan has seen the worst of her schemes—he and his sister were the targets of a few—but also her most beautiful, intimate thoughts and dreams. He is motivated by her happiness, even if it means sacrificing his own. When Blair discovers that Dan sent the video of her confession to Gossip Girl, she is quick to forgive him because she knows he cares for her well-being: “I couldn’t stand to see you so unhappy,” he tells her.

Blair secures her divorce in episode nineteen; as she soon learns, Chuck secretly paid her dowry. Though Blair is happy to be free, she mourns the loss of her fantasy: “My whole life I wanted to be a princess,” she tells Dan. “I may have married a prince, but I never got to be a princess.”

Dan wants Blair to have her chance: He brings her to the Met steps in a fluffy pink ball gown and white tweed jacket; he even places a tiara on her head—cubic zirconia, much to her chagrin. There, she is flocked by a group of Constance girls, dressed much like Blair in season one. Though she may no longer be a princess on paper, the girls treat her like one.

Blair continues to favor printed day dresses, often in vibrant, romantic florals, and statement necklaces. In her relationship with Louis, the dresses evoked Duchess Kate, but in her relationship with Dan, they evoke Lily. She even wears them with her hair in a bun, Lily’s signature style. Like Lily and Rufus, Blair and Dan must navigate the union of their two worlds, Upper East Side and Williamsburg. In episode twenty, for example, they decide to throw a salon together, Blair in an appropriately artsy van Gogh–like dress.

Blair, too, must rediscover herself: “Somewhere between being traded for a hotel and selling out for a tiara, I lost my true self,” she says (5.21). Dan, however, says he fell for Blair right in the middle of that time line, when they interned at W: “That girl is fiercely strong, independent, outspoken, beautiful, capable of anything, and no man or magazine should be able to take that away from her.”

And yet, Blair is quickly swept back into Chuck’s schemes. Dan wants her to accompany him to a writer’s retreat in Italy, but she misses their interview, sending Serena in her place (5.23). Serena still harbors feelings for Dan and pretends to be Blair in a blue-and-yellow floral day dress, yellow coat, and chunky necklaces. She even throws on a blue headband, though Blair hasn’t worn one in a season. Considering how much Blair has been dressing like Lily, you have to wonder if Serena pulled the pieces from Lily’s closet, the color choices inspired by Blair’s van Gogh dress.

Both Blair’s friendship with Serena and her relationship with Dan implode when Gossip Girl begins blasting scans from Blair’s diaries (which are, I should note, all Tiffany blue). As Blair tells her mother, she doesn’t know which love to choose: Dan, who makes her feel “strong and safe,” or Chuck, who makes her feel “vulnerable . . . devastated . . . [and] happier than [she’s] ever been.” Instead of pointing out that a relationship filled with euphoric highs and shattering lows is probably abusive, Eleanor offers her daughter Waldorf Designs upon her imminent retirement. Blair, despite having rejected such a career path in season four, accepts.

She chooses Chuck, but he rejects her. He’s just been ousted at Bass Industries, thanks to his recently resurrected father, and has no interest in being “Mr. Blair Waldorf.” “The only reason Waldorf Designs has a future is because I gave mine up for it,” Chuck says. “I always put you first and you bet against me every time.” Okay, bud!

And so, Blair travels to Paris with Eleanor, back in a big, silly blue bow to “reign over a new kingdom.” Chuck and his uncle Jack head to a Monaco casino, the first step in their plan to win back Bass Industries. During the game, Blair unexpectedly arrives. “You fought for me all year,” she tells Chuck, Leighton Meester delivering the lines like she’s about to be executed. “I’ve come to fight for you. You’ve always said I bet against you. But this time, I’m all in.”

Blair’s gown reminds me of the Matthew Williamson dress from season three: though the color is orange, not cream, the neckline and swirled gold beading are similar. She even has a turquoise cuff on one wrist. Blair rarely wears this kind of neckline, or gold beading or turquoise for that matter, so the parallels feel intentional, especially considering that Jack told Blair that they were at the casino. Once again, Blair is called upon to win back Chuck’s property, even if it means sacrificing herself.

Season Six

Blair and Chuck separate to accomplish their goals: Blair, successfully taking over Waldorf Designs, and Chuck, defeating his father. Blair wears the Harry Winston engagement ring on a chain around her neck; when Chuck conquers his “bad dad” (to quote Dorota), he’ll put it on her finger.

Like many fashion designers, Blair settles into a uniform: a two-piece set, consisting of a peplum-waist top and a knee-length A-line skirt. In episode three, when she stages her debut runway show, her two-piece set is in power red, her headband in the same shade.  

The show seems to think it’s bringing back a nostalgic Blair—all the headbands and disordered eating and snide, sometimes racist comments of seasons one and two—but in reality, Blair just seems lost and frenzied. She hasn’t been eating or sleeping while she prepares for the show, and it’s unclear if she even wants to be a successful designer, or if she just wants to win Chuck and impress her mother. “This business is my family,” she yells at Dorota. “It is the family jewel. It is what Chuck paid my dowry to save! If I’m not successful at this, we might not even end up together!”

Chuck, meanwhile, has become the supportive boyfriend that Dan was in season five, setting up the runway while Blair is on bed rest. Dan, therefore, must become Chuck, scheming and skeevy. Dan encourages Blair to go “dirty” for the cotillion dress she’s designing, and so she does: a loose, conservative wrap strips away to reveal a tight gown with a stomach cutout (6.5).

Blair, still enamored with Audrey, wears a black sequined dress, diamond earrings, and pearl headband to cotillion. There, she learns that Dan and Serena slept together when he thought she was back with Chuck. Dan tries to explain how Serena manipulated him, plied him with drinks, but the furious Blair snaps back: “In order to claim date rape, you have to say no.” And as fucked up as that statement is, I think it really summarizes how Blair feels about sex and assault. She thinks because she agreed to sleep with Jack, because she didn’t say no to his proposal, that she has no right to claim the trade as rape. She blames herself equally, when Chuck set her up with an impossible choice.

Though the “dirty” cotillion dress is a huge success, Eleanor is not happy with the direction in which Blair has taken her company and flies back to New York to fix her daughter’s “decorum disaster.” The problem, Eleanor tells Blair (6.6), is “you and your split personality . . . your dark and scheming and frankly sexually inappropriate side. . . . The deviant half has to go.” In this meeting, Blair is without her headband, her power. Again, she’s being told that she must sacrifice her “dark” side for the “light,” her sexual desires confused with her scheming and bullying.

At first, Blair attempts to blackmail her old classmate, Nelly, into writing a positive profile for Women’s Wear Daily. Only through a conversation with Nelly does Blair realize that her dark side is her “talent.” Everyone dressed like her in high school, she says, because they were “fascinated by [her] ferocity” (or, you know, kept hostage by her insecurity). Blair is arriving at the exact same conclusion drawn in season four: she is an evil dictator of taste. This time, however, instead of moving forward, trying to start an independent career in magazines, she moves backward: launching “a line for high school girls inspired by [her] Constance uniform,” B for Waldorf. Though her “bad” side may suddenly be framed as beneficial, it’s still kept separate from her “good.”

For the opening of her Barneys CO-OP pop-up shop (6.7), Blair, again, is in a black dress, silver necklace, and power-red headband. The line itself seems to consist of pinstripe blazers, ties, and vests, and other uniform staples—Serena calls the clothes “beautiful and original” while standing in front of racks of plain black skirts and white blouses, creating an unintentionally hilarious juxtaposition. The imagery promoting the line is especially interesting: a headless shot of a white girl wearing a uniform created from the pieces, “B for Waldorf” and “XO” for “Exclusively Ours” printed across her body. It looks like the cover of a 2010 YA novel.

The line is a great success; its target audience—private school teen girls—love it. One of them is even wearing a mini version of Blair’s two-piece red set as she shops. Unfortunately, Blair’s achievement is dampened by Chuck’s sad dad issues. He’s failed to defeat Bart, and therefore, they can never be together; Blair’s success is not enough for both of them.         

Rather than say, “Get stuffed, you big baby,” Blair encourages Chuck to try again. (For some reason, this involves her wearing a god-awful Pocahontas stripper costume on Thanksgiving (6.8). Again, really leaning into the racism this season!)

After Bart falls off a building in front of Blair and Chuck, they get married to testifying against each other (6.10). For her second wedding, Blair eschews white for a pale blue beaded gown and diamond headband, Chuck in a matching pale-blue-and-white tux.

Five years later, Blair and Chuck have a toddler, Henry, and Blair is still running Waldorf Designs, even adding a capsule collection with her old rival, Jenny. For Serena and Dan’s wedding, Blair chooses a beaded bronze dress, a bow on each strap. Chuck’s boutonniere matches her dress, but there’s no connection between her and Henry, in wardrobe or name or interaction. For in truth, Blair’s arc was all in service of Chuck’s: her success with Waldorf Designs to fulfill her end of the bargain; their child to correct Bart’s wrongs, instead of Eleanor’s.

I do wonder if the show really understood why viewers connected with Blair: Yes, it was fun to watch her dictate school uniforms and toss around catty comments, but it was also refreshing to see a girl who was so outwardly assured and so inwardly insecure, to hope that she would one day find true confidence. Yes, it was fun to see Blair and Chuck play their sexual games, but it was also refreshing to see a girl who so obviously enjoyed sex, to hope that she would one day learn that being sexual does not make her “dark” or “dirty.” In the end, I think, we were given the superficial trappings—a fashion line for high school girls, a marriage to Chuck—without the deep work. Blair is still “good” and “bad,” and never quite do the two meet.

[Next Thursday, 6/10, I’ll reveal what I think these characters would wear now and which teen soap I’ll be covering for volume two.]

DP on GG

My partner, Daniel, spent 2020 overhearing episodes of Gossip Girl from various rooms of our apartment. This is his birthday week (Happy birthday, Daniel!), so let’s honor him with his best rant:

CL: [These characters] have no self-restraint.

DP: Of course they don’t have any self-restraint; they’ve never wanted for anything in their lives. I want these people to have the same experience I had in high school: being super stressed-out and waiting an hour for the Q85 bus and three Q4 buses show up within that hour and you don’t know where the Q4 goes, but it doesn’t go where you need to go.