Gossip Girl

For my blog assignment I have analyzed an episode of Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl is a show on primetime televisions, which follows the lives of several rich Manhattan teens. The common assumption in the television industry is that sex sells, and sexual representation floods Gossip Girl. Episode fifteen titled “The Sixteen Year Old Virgin” from season three draws upon a minoritizing discourse. I have used Judith Mayne’s Women, Representation and Culture, Lull’s discussion of norms and hegemony, Douglas Kellner’s piece on media culture and several PowerPoints.

The episode begins by recapping the past episode then cuts to the present time. Jenny, age sixteen is grounded by her father for hanging out with Damien, an older guy who was caught selling drugs. The entire show revolves around compulsory heterosexuality. As the storyline plays out scenes change to show several different characters participating in sexual activities. When sex is represented so freely, it is likely that sex could be interpreted as a carefree activity, with little consequence. None of the characters who are engaging in sexual activity are married, and are often never in a relationship. Dan and Vanessa’s morning sex scene involves them talking about how they are just friends with benefits and that there are rules to causal sex. Blair and Chuck are seen just finishing sex, they too are not in a relationship. Next, Serena and Nate are shown finishing up having sex. Serena tries to talk to Jenny and explain to her how she would have liked to wait for someone special to lose her virginity to, but Jenny continues to be rebellious and stubborn. Nate, Jenny’s father and many other characters try to talk to Jenny about how important loosing your virginity is. Out of the eight characters six are engaging in sex within the first fifteen minutes of the show, seven of them have already lost their virginities years prior, and Jenny stands alone as the virgin at sixteen. Throughout the episode Damien tries to have sex with Jenny, she is hesitant at first because she is a virgin. Finally, at the end of the episode after all his pushing and already knowing this fact, Jenny lets Damien know that she’s a virgin. He says it’s “really not a big deal,” and Jenny pulls back and tries to reiterate that is actually is a big deal. “I chose you,” she says. He ends up leaving her and as he walks out of the room he says that she’s “just a kid.”

Minoritizing discourse on sexuality states that “heterosexuality is understood to be the norm of society. This means that an individual is straight unless they say otherwise.” All of the couples are heterosexual and I believe that this norm also leads to the representation of women as sexual beings. “Representations rely on various forms of cultural understanding.”(Mayne 162) The hegemonic notion that virginity is lost at an early age is how the female characters in Gossip Girl are represented. Normally women are represented by two opposing categories, the madonna versus the whore. Mayne states that the madonna is perfect, while the whore is sexually promiscuous or evil. Several characters can represent the madonna and Jenny represents the whore. However, Jenny is the virgin, but she is punished in the end for being rebellious and sexually active with Damien. Since social class plays a role in the madonna versus whore, it is often the poor or working class as the whore. Jenny does come from a working class family, while Serena and Blair are upper class.

 “Representation can function both to reinforce oppressive standards of feminine behavior and to imagine possibilities not typically available to women. Representation, then, is both a form of socialization and a form of utopia, representation can contribute to enforcing patriarchal stereotypes, but it can also envisage other possibilities, other ways of being.”(Mayne 163)

While Jenny’s brother Dan is telling her that she is only sixteen, Jenny turns around and says “everyone thought it was cute when you lost yours at sixteen with Serena”. This shows how double standards are enforced. Jenny is then seen as bad and wrong for wanting to lose her virginity to Damien. “Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil.”(Kellner 7) Shows like Gossip Girl perpetuate hegemonic norms and creates categories of exclusion.