Gossip Girl explores the world of upper class society through fashion and consumerist taste of young affluent women. Jennifer craik argues that fashion has the ability to convey disparate messages about society and economics. It has a message about cultural identity and distinctiveness. It also is an integral part of local inflections, shared knowledge, cultural sophistications, traditions and societal revolutions. Most of all, fashion sends messages about an individual’s social or economic wellbeing. One is able to easily discern that an individual works in a corporate or entertainment world by how they dress together with other cues like ways of dressing. It is in popular culture that fashion finds its way to the heart of society and tells us what we need to know about particular groups of individuals. In television shows, fictional characters are given the best real life characterization. Gossip Girl is a television show that reflects on class and wealth issues.
The popular expression, you are what you wear mirrors insight about the effect of fashion on identity and belonging. The complicatedness or sophistication of an individual’s fashion design goes a long way in defining how particular strands of society treats that individual. It is argued that dress as a form of material culture is particularly suited to express the relationship between personal values and those assigned to material goods, because of the relationship with the perceptions of the Self. Gossip Girl depicts the life of a matriarchy whose teen children navigates the world of class through a complicated mix of fashion and individual guile.
The depiction of life in private schools is not just an exploration of teen life but upper class life and it is in the realm of fashion that individual expression gets a realization. Fashion when mixed with gender issues become a critical component of social commentary. Berry observed that at the turn of the 21st century, the integration of women into the workplace created some conflict between individuals and groups that wanted to continue the domination of female bodies with those who wanted to grant women more freedom.
Gossip Girl has been defined as a “millennial female-oriented, marketing-suffesed, franschise-first domain, often reviled as being overly consumerist oriented and lacking in high art value”. This characterization of the fashion statement in Gossip Girl is misplaced since Gossip Girl is not only about consumerism but analysis of class and culture through fashion and a deeper revulsion of consumerism. Stein provides a more complete observation of Gossip Girl. She argues that the show manages to provide a perspective on women power that is deeply enmeshed in the visual economy. Dressing and fashion constitutes a critical part of this visual economy. It is an empowerment of women titles. The TV show is based on the premise of gossip thereby playing to the stereotypes about women. The show however cascades beyond this flimsy characterization.
The best characterization of class and fashion in Gossip Girl is not the main characters but the supporting cast of Dan and his sister Jenny. Dan and Jenny come from a middle class background and are outsiders to the upper class life of the Upper east Side. Their clothing also resemble this outside persona. Dan and Jenny are well aware of their social and economic background and have to contend with the new glamourous world. While Dan resists the urge to see himself as an upper class young man or a pretender, Jenny is ready to embrace the culture of the new upper class world. Jenny fights so hard for acceptance into the upper class but it is her sense of dressing and conduct that makes it possible for society to try and exclude her at every opportunity. The world of fashion and class is further complicated by Vanessa who is conscious of the uber consumerist culture of Dan and Serena’s world. Vanessa voices her concern and disapproval of Serena’s fashion shows and never ending fundraising missions. Most of all she disapproves the way, Serena has utterly changed Dan’s world view.
Gossip Girl has been subjected to criticism due to what is perceived to be the show’s unrealistic portrayal of American lives and society. The young affluent females with an avaricious consumption of clothing and all upper class goods is seen as a misrepresentation of society. Research by Vodern and Kinally revealed that TV shows like Gossip Girl, do have a huge effect on the way young people view themselves.
Fashion statements and body images from Gossip Girl do affect how young people especially those who are not from the well to do communities conduct themselves. This shows that the concept of fashion and class is not related to the fictional world only but has a bearing on the real world. Girls want to be like Serena but without the means to create a sense of being that matches Serena’s levels of consumption. This leads to a conflict within young people on societal expectations and what they aspire to me. They aspire to dress and act like Serena which in the end leads to disappointment and in extreme cases self-hatred.
Bibliography
Berry, Sarah. Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood.
Craik, Jennifer. “Fashion, Tourism and Global Culture”. Print Out.
Louisa Ellen Stein, Millennial Fandom” Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2015.
Wheelan, Charles. Naked Economics: Understanding the Dismal Science. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2010.
