Cecily Von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl

In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of

Gossip Girl, an American teen drama television show created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage released on September 19, 2007 on The CW, is based on teens life from the Upper East Side of Manhattan that are friends that occasionally betray each other's trust throughout the episodes. Their wardrobes are full of designer clothes, they drink cocktails at New York City’s coolest bars, dabble in drugs, all while still in high school. The drama that these young and spoiled people have to deal with differs from many other people’s lives. Their parents are known to being the greatest in New York. Either the manager of great empires, business manager, designer in clothes and much more. The lives of these residents of Manhattans Upper East Side is a big scandal.

This paper will provide a sociological analysis of Mean Girls broken down into two sections. Section one will explain why a sociologist would find the movie interesting, examining the movie from a functionalist perspective, providing an example of private troubles and public issues, and comparing the movie to North American culture. Section two will discuss the themes of socialization and culture by explaining terms related to each section and applying them to the movie.

Television networks are continually expanding their programming slates, and many in the past have switched to a year-round programming schedule that makes the phrase “summer return” basically absolute. On every channel, in every magazine, every darken theater, we see the way pop culture limits women’s role- girlfriends, victims, hookers, corpses, sex bombs, and “teases,” but why? Television, for most women, was the first place where they were able to visually see themselves represented. And for quite a while, they didn’t see much besides the loving wife, the dutiful daughter, gossiping girlfriends, fashion models, and the occasional maid, granny, or nanny. In Where the Girls Are: Growing Up

On the same cable networks that act as the home for gay and lesbian television series, America finds its new woman for the new millenium: she’s smart, independent, gainfully employed, sexually confident, and, usually, she’s single. Television finally has room for a woman to fly on her own, without her minivan, Cub Scout den-mother meetings, or workaholic husband to feed and clean up after. The prime example for TV’s new “wonder woman,” is found in the four women of HBO’s Emmy Award winning series, “Sex & The City.” These

According to Sociologist Craig Calhoun, socialization is “the process through which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a society and learn to function as its members”(Calhoun, 2013). With that in mind, media, particularly the music video and advertisement industry, are essential parts of contemporary socialization, especially involving the perpetuation of gender roles in our culture. At a very young age, children learn, without difficulty, the differences between boys and girls, and what standards they are held to. Women are often objectified, systematically demoralized, and dehumanized in the music video industry and mainstream advertisement. External forces, such as the media, not only guide children to understand the norms of each gender, but these forces also shape children and adolescent’s perception of the self. The documentaries Killing Us Softly 4 directed by Jean Kilbourne and Dream World 3 directed by Sut Jhally explore the distorted and fallacious ideals of femininity and sexuality expressed in contemporary media.

Mean Girls (2004), is a humourist teen film that is well known throughout the younger generations and is often quoted in the media. This film captures the lives of four teenage girls throughout their junior year of high school, targeting younger viewers who are in high school or soon to be in high school, who might look up to these girls as a role models or use this film for advice however, Mean Girls displays a lot of stereotypical and feminist behaviours about social class and social status, power and control and body image of high school teenagers which sets a poor example for young teens.

In Miss Representation, many female actresses, news anchors, politicians, directors and producers talk about how females suffer a lot of social, political and economic inequalities in today’s society. There are double standards against women in magazines, on TV, in movies, the news, politics, and the workplace. The media is an influential part of modern culture. When women are portrayed as objects for men to use -- never as the protagonist or president -- and when female news anchors are objectified, this will cause girls of all ages to begin viewing themselves as objects. Girls grow up in a world where their voice does not count; where our culture does not embrace them in all of their diversities, where

The television series Gossip Girl encompasses many aspects of current day society. Based off the popular book series, the show follows Manhattan's elite, and showcases the lives of the upperclassmen teens, focusing on their relationships, school lives and careers. When looking at Gossip Girl from a sociological perspective, there's many hidden themes that are brought to light. While also showcasing some controversial issues, Gossip Girl reflects many themes that can been seen in society. Contrary to some belief this series displays a substantial amount of feminism, with the use of powerful female characters, but lacks the accurate representation of social class and contains numerous gender stereotypes.

The media, particularly the film industry, has been both confirming and challenging social constructs since its beginnings and has the capability to influence its point-of-view its viewers in ways that other sources of media simply cannot. After all, many of us remember during our childhood re-enacting our favorite scenes from our favorite movies with our friends. While many may not give this a second thought, some of the movie characters we strive to be like behave in a way that is misogynistic, violent, or disreputable. Furthermore, some films produced are confirming conservative gender ideologies which can also be dangerous because the viewer may then believe that adhering to these ideologies is acceptable and rebelling against it may prove

Hegemony is the term for how one group gains and maintains power over other groups of people, they accomplish this by using media as an agent to normalize their power, so even the subaltern groups deem it the norm (Hegemony, slide #). How groups are represented in mainstream media and even if and when they are represented shapes the way the viewers, and thus the public, view different groups (Critical Media Literacy part I, slide #). The way these groups are portrayed is for the most part a conscious choice on the part of the creators, each portrayal is carefully crafted to send the audience a certain message about ideology and societal norms (Kenner, 6). MTV’s Girl Code and Guy Code are set up very similarly and it would be easy to brush off their differences, but in comparison these texts say a great deal about the way contemporary culture perceives gender. Gender refers to the way society expects one to act depending on where they adhere to the gender binary, men or women (Categorical Thinking, #). Even with the very premise of the shows it say a great deal about gender as it implies a rigid and absolute correlation –or categorical way of thinking- that gender and sex are the same, while it also excludes those who do not fall into the categories laid out (Categorical Thinking, slide 3). Girl Code and Guy Code very much so are set up to reinforce the hegemonic views of gender in society.

Gossip Girl started out as a series of fiction novels but became one of the most provocative and influential American teen drama television show. The show first aired on The CW Network in 2007 and has maintained one of the highest viewing rates for six consecutive seasons. The show takes place in New York at the Upper East Side of Manhattan and revolves around the lives of six privileged young adults. In the show, the representation of the elites upper class is a dramatized fabrication. This representation of the elite upper class contributes to the influences of various post-modernism attributes that are reflected in the cultural norms currently existing within our society.

If these dismissive depictions of women existed purely within fiction, they might not be so worrisome. (Miller,2015) But outside of books and movies, women’s rights in the United States are constantly under siege. In fact, looking at popular films, television shows, music, and books seems to reveal that we are living in a culture where images of women as assertive heroines coexist with depictions of women as passive entities. (Miller,2015) Because of the control of the TV networks back in the 60’s, there was limited audience to TV shows that were broadcasted.

Popular culture has an undeniable influence on how society perceives itself. When examining mass culture, one must keep in mind the equilibrium between how much we, as a society, affect the way popular culture is constructed and to what extent popular culture influences the way we view ourselves and shapes our ideologies. An aspect of popular culture that may serve to greatly exemplify this theory of society as both the affecter and the affected is the genre of magazines targeted at young women. Though these publications are targeted as the representation of our society’s adolescent females, they actually have a great influence over the ways in which teens view and construct

The CW television show Gossip Girl, created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage first aired in 2007 and is now available in its entirety on Netflix, is about privileged teenagers who live on the Upper East Side, Manhattan, who like to party and who live their lives around a mysterious website known as “Gossip Girl.” The anonymous website dishes on secrets and lies that surround nine characters who attended a preparatory school. Each episode is suspense-filled entertainment leaving the audience wanting more, especially its young female fan base. Like many teen-filled dramas, Gossip Girl’s target female audience is often easily influenced by what happens in the show. The title “Gossip Girl” contextually suggest the part of modern woman culture. A feminist definition of gossip is “a way of talking between women, intimate in style, personal and domestic in scope and setting, a female cultural event which springs from and perpetuates the restrictions of the female role, but also gives the comfort of validation” (Jones). Popular television shows today promote cultural values for the audience and are instrumental in shaping how people think and act. Because of this, it is important to analyze ideas such as gender or economics/class structure for deeper meaning. In the show Gossip Girl, the characters Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen, and Chuck Bass work to reinforce/reject traditional gender stereotypes throughout the film.