5 Justifications for Why I (and a Disturbing Number of Fellow Intelligent Adults) Love Gossip Girl

Posted at 5:00 AM Oct 23, 2008

By Bonnie Ruberg

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love Gossip Girl. I love how, despite all my elitist ideas about what makes good television, it lulls me into a catty, teenage daze of pure guilty pleasure. What I didn't know until recently, however, is that I'm not alone in my love.

My little brother first got me into the show, so I figured it was a high school craze that had been passed on, like some sort of communicable disease, to poor adult me. While covering a blogging workshop the other night though -- a Tuesday night, to be precise, the night after guess which show airs -- during the pre-workshop small talk, I found myself surrounded by fellow twenty- and thirty-something women, all intelligent and informed about the world in general, who just couldn't stop blabbing about what they'd seen the night before on Gossip Girl. It was like suddenly realizing that the weird birthmark you thought you were the only who had, is actually totally normal -- or that everyone else is just as weird as you. I was not alone in my freak-dom.

This all got me thinking: if I'm not the only one who loves Gossip Girl, despite the fact that I'm totally outside their target demographic of flighty preteens, despite the fact that I don't aspire to part of Manhattan's elite, and despite the fact that every fiber of my over-educated being shouts, "Why are you watching this?!", then there must be something going on here, a phenomenon of sorts. So here are the five best reasons I can think of that people like me -- strong, smart women and the brothers and boyfriends they love -- would be hooked on the show.

5. It lets us live out the fantasy of being not only rich but also freakin' gorgeous.

Both the gals and the guys on Gossip Girl are downright beautiful -- even the ones who are supposed to be homely (as indicated by the fact that they live in Brooklyn). Forget living vicariously though their inheritances, I want to live vicariously through Blair Waldorf's sheer hotness.

4. Its catty tone makes us feel more at home with our inner bitches.

By nature, Gossip Girl is about girls being jerks. They spot each other doing questionable things, then they report it to an anonymous blogger who blabs to the whole Upper East Side world. That the show makes no apologies for its catfighting ways leaves us ladies less worried about the bitchy things we say in day to day life -- because whatever they are, they're a hell of a lot less bitchy than the shit those private school girls are apparently saying.

3. It's flat-out addictive, like a soap opera, but easier to stomach.

This is the simple answer: Gossip Girl is horrible, but in a wonderful way. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyways, once you start watching it's hard to stop. Thanks to all its twists and turns, along with its uncanny ability to start a new love triangle each episode, the show is pretty much a soap with a budget and production value so high it goes down smooth as a newly facialed cheek.