Mohini Bhatt

AGE REPRESENTATION [YOUNG]

BLAIR WALDORF – ‘GOSSIP GIRL’

Blair Waldorf is played by Leighton Meester in the US hit series ‘Gossip Girl’. Blair is seen as a typical rich, spoilt, upper east sider of Manhattan, New York. The media usually focuses on stereotyping teenagers as Gangs, ASBO, Lazy, Rude, Druggies, Crime etc. But in ‘Gossip Girl’ the main focus is on the upper east siders of New York and to a certain degree the programme stereotypes them and also shows how ‘the other half’ really live.

Blair Waldorf is known for her wardrobe. She is elegant, classy and Leighton Messter portrays the character of Blair as a young Joan Collins or Audrey Hepburn. When we meet the character of Blair we see that she is spoilt, she lives in a penthouse apartment with her mother and she has a maid Dorota who organises things for Blair, brings her food and basically does anything she tells her to. In series 1 her and the other characters of ‘Gossip Girl’ attend the top school in Manhattan and she is the queen bee. She has to have everything perfect being the elegant person she is she looks down on people who attend her school who live in Brooklyn, she takes a limo everywhere – including school, she has to have the latest fashion and she does everything, innocent and cunning to maintain her reputation which means everything to her. Her main focus is to get into an Ivy League college and eventually when she doesn’t get into one she still does everything she can to remain the popular one.

BLAIR WALDORF- HOW WE SEE HER

According to Meester, some of Blair's biggest vices are her "insecurities" with regard to her social status, which often make her an overachiever. This is partly due to a certain degree of jealousy she feels toward her friend and occasional rival, Serena. In Meester's view, the true Blair is a "good girl" who possesses a sensitive and good-nature.

We do get a feeling that Blair doesn’t like all the scheming and planning she does because there are points where we really do see how good-hearted she is. You could be cliché and say under all that she is a good person but that would be way too cliché. She is a good person but her insecurities cause her to be destructive. Her maid isn’t just her maid, we see as the series’ progress that she is also one of her best friends and Blair is there for Dorota when she marries and also when she has a child. We learn that she has had a case of bulimia when she was younger which also adds to her list of insecurities along with her secret love for one of her rivals Charles Bass.

Blair is still a spoilt upper east sider who can’t control her need to be popular but there is another side to her which the programme allows us to see. At times you understand why she is how she is but at other times audiences would see her as an evil, cunning person who needs a taste of her own medicine.

BLAIR WALDORF- WHAT SHE’S REALLY LIKE