Gossip Girl. Probably one of the most influential and popular shows of the century. Whether you watched it every week it aired on TV, or binge watched it during your finals week, being a Gossip Girl fan runs through the veins of millions of millennials around the world. The characters and plots were crafted by the writers and shot by the directors in such a way that the entire series became iconic and universal. Once you belong to this particular fandom, every time you pass the steps of the MET in New York City, all you will start to imagine is Blair and her possé sitting there eating their yogurt and icing out Serena during the early episodes of Season 1. Every time someone asks who the most iconic couple on television is, instead of saying Monica and Chandler, Gossip Girl fanatics say Chuck and Blair.
The show was so wildly popular for its time, and even after being off air, that even the infamous Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, guest starred during Season 4, Episode 6. Which brings us to our next topic: Ivanka Trump.
The media has a habit of trying to connect fictional, often times iconic, characters to real world individuals who portray similar characteristics but are far from being identical. Lately, Ivanka has been referred to as the original Serena van der Woodsen, one of the leads of Gossip Girl. Serena van der Woodsen is a blonde, ambitious, rich, New Yorker whose massive heart often gets her into trouble, but has friends who are always there for her. Ivanka Trump is also a blonde, ambitious, rich, New Yorker, but for her, her father keeps getting her into trouble. Not in the way that Serena's friends often got her into trouble, but in the way that her lack of coming forward and publicly defending women's rights and freedoms in front of her father and the media has.
This, by all means, is not an attack on Ivanka saying that she, herself, does not have a massive heart or care for the people around her. Typically, when comparing anybody to iconic characters, they usually have more in common and the fanbase has usually found these similarities first. In this instance, nobody in the fan base really compared Ivanka to Serena, until popular media outlets started comparing the two. But even then, there is not much evidence for these claims.
During an interview with InStyle in 2010, after the release of her cameo episode, Ivanka Trump said, "I think I'm a cross between Blair Waldorf and Lily van der Woodsen when it comes to style."
Currently, the biggest similarities between Serena and Ivanka would be that both of these strong women had [fake] fathers played by a Baldwin. They are also both Upper East Side It Girl's from powerful old-money families whose morals are questionable at times, and who frequent the tabloids.
But honestly, fictional characters, albeit some are crafted and written so well they might as well be real people, are entirely fictional. The world of Gossip Girl may be the Upper East Side of New York City, but those lavish lifestyles and that plot is not entirely accurate to the dot. It does not do justice to the character or to the real-life individual being compared to the character, and not just because one is real and one is not.
