While Gossip Girl is on everyone's fashion radar, I can not help but notice a frightening lack of discussion on Isabel and Kati. Those names unfamiliar to you? Not surprising, they might better be known as Blair's sidekicks. Yes, the two minority characters on the show that rarely have a soundbite (and when they do it often is in unison) and are dressed to match.
These anonymous figures in the background call to mind the old theatre performances in "Blackface." Need it really be stated that blackface is no longer socially acceptable? How can the writers justify a homogeneous main cast with ethnic background eye candy? (And this is not an appropriate explanation.) Their matching costumes only serve to emphasize the point that they do not matter as characters (or people or individuals) but are merely present to fulfill some sort of multi-cultural quota.
"What out--there's only room for one of us on this show."It calls to mind the "Harajuku girls" of Gwen Stefani. I think there is something wrong when a group of people can be bought, re-named, and dressed to match. (Further, the Harajuku girls really fly in the face of the whole idea of originality and self-expression that harajuku street fashion strives for--nothing like being an individual with four miniature clones, no?)
I must admit that I do watch Gossip Girl (elsewise how would I be aware of this phenom?), but being a watcher does not mean one needs to passively accept the messages a show might (intentionally/unintentionally) eschew. Does anyone else find this, quite frankly, disturbing?
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