Xoxo, The Lower Class

Television shows are consistently enforcing norms about social classes. “Gossip Girl” is no exception when it comes to stereotyping social classes. There are few television shows that do accurately portray class and “Gossip Girl” fails to show truth. In the pilot episode, the show reinforces the cultural norm that lower class people face rejection and have more struggles.
Within the first scene of the episode, viewers can tell the difference between social classes. The scene is in the train station where the high class character, Serena Vanderwoodsen, is being picked up by her driver. While lower class, Dan and Jenny Humphrey, are picked up by there dad. The mysterious Gossip Girl is talking in the background and refer to Dan as “lonely boy” due to his crush on Serena that will never be attainable because they are from such different social classes. The viewer now already is forced to reject characters like Dan and Jenny because they are not accepted in the upper east side society in “Gossip Girl”.
Now maybe you watch that first scene and did not catch the division between social classes. The next scene lower class character Jenny Humphrey is in she is addressing envelopes for the famous “kiss on the lips party”. A girl in Jenny’s art class liked her penmanship and told her if she addresses all the invitations then she would earn an invitation for herself. Viewers now have the impression that Jenny is not very popular or else should would not need to do something to get invited. Meanwhile, upper class character Blair Waldorf is able to use Jenny’s want to be invited to this upper class party as a way to get the invites done. Viewer are pushed this idea that characters of Jenny’s social class in television shows face the struggle of needing to do something to get anything in return.
As the show goes on viewers are continuously supposed to feel bad for characters that are of lower class. One example of this was when Jenny is in a very expensive store shopping around for a dress that would be good enough for the “kiss on the lips party”. When she runs into Serena who helps direct Jenny into a dress that fits this calabre of a party. After Jenny has an idea of what the dress looks likes she mentions how she could never afford it and the only reason she came to this store was to get an idea of how she could make the identical dress at home. This scene shows the extreme struggle that lower class people are faced with and shows how they need to hide it in order to be accepted. In comparison to Serena who does not have to worry about how expensive the dress is because her family is so wealthy.
Due to how “Gossip Girl” decided to portray the only poor family, the Humphrey’s, viewers are led to reject these characters because the struggles they face based on their social class. If television shows keep creating characters like these our society will think rejection is the only way to handle people who come from a lower class than you. This is a very negative way to act towards people and will continue to push us back into the cave. Another issue this creates is people who maybe relate to the lower class characters will now want to hide their social class so they will not be treated differently like Dan and Jenny are.
