On social media, the girls aren’t just living through fall; it’s a season-long, themed celebration. Are you having an academic weapon Gilmore Girls fall, full of chunky sweaters and niche pop culture references because you’re not like other girls? Or perhaps a peacoat-sporting, cocktail-sipping Upper East Side WWBWD (What Would Blair Waldorf Do?) Gossip Girl autumn (because autumn sounds so much more upper-class, obviously). Maybe you’ve been frantically searching Depop for vintage Victoria’s Secret and edgy Aria Mongomery fits, fantasizing about faking your own death Pretty Little Liars style to avoid your incomplete assignments.
Like many of teen classics of the 2000s and 2010s, these shows are beloved, and while their cyclical relevancy is what makes them stand out, it’s important to note that while the distinct versions of fall they present to us might persevere on our Pinterest and TikTok feeds, these shows are far from timeless.
Pretty Little Liars premiered in 2010, Gossip Girl in 2007, and Gilmore Girls in 2000s. With still over a decade and a half since the most recent of the three, progress has been made in the entertainment industry in terms of the diversification of voices and representation onscreen and increasing awareness of how certain issues are presented. When viewed through the lens of criticism, not comfort, it’s easy to look with horror at some of what was being presented to the majority young and female audiences of these shows in their prime.
I’ll give a shortlist of examples. Starting with one of the most well-known and controversial examples, Pretty Little Liars glorified a student-teacher relationship between 16-year-old main character Aria Montgomery and her 22-year-old English teacher. It gets worse when we discover that Ezra, who Aria seemingly met at a one-off hookup in a bar, apparently knew the entire time who she was and how old, and had targeted her specifically in order to gather information for a book he was writing about Aria’s missing best friend, who he had also dated when she was a minor. Aria finds out, and, naturally, they get married in the end. Romance, right?
Gossip Girl similarly has a penchant for glorifying toxic relationships. The most glaring issue is that of Chuck Bass, a character the writers set up to be the villain in the pilot by showing him to attempt to rape not one, but two female characters; one being 14 years old. The writers then tried to backtrack, seeing potential for Chuck as more of a charming antihero than a monster figure, but viewers were, obviously, unable to forgive and forget Chuck’s initial direction. The show also seems to, at times, take the words of character Blair Waldorf, “some people are simply better than others,” a little too seriously, as the privileged protagonists constantly abuse characters not born into that world, like Vanessa Abrams, Jenny Humphrey, and the not-so-tactfully described “help.”
Gilmore Girls has also been the subject of recent discourse, particularly around the seemingly antifeminist (or, more simply, not girl’s-girl) behaviors of the main characters, and the mishandling or stereotyping of many POC side characters. Rory Gilmore, while romanticized as “study inspo” for her cozy girl-next-door styling and Ivy League determination, is particularly a character that has come under fire for her elitism and internalized misogyny. It’s especially hard to forget one particularly painful moment in a therapy session wherein Rory attempts to downplay her own arrest for stealing a yacht by mentioning that Martin Luther King Jr. had also been arrested during his fight for equal rights.
So why constantly go back to these shows every fall if they are so outdated, and so easy to criticize? If you’re a student, there’s an easy reason to see. I believe that the teen drama element has a lot to do with it: what’s a really easy way to drop a bunch of teenagers into the same setting at the beginning of a conflict? A new school year, of course. While these shows come from the era (which many of us long for today) of 20-episode seasons spanning entire years in TV time, it makes sense for us to so strongly associate the settings with fall because it was always the easiest place to start off; call it the primacy effect, or maybe it’s the fact that pilot episodes are always so much more iconic.
The versions of fall they present to us are so distinct, with curated aesthetics and all types of layering, yet they all elicit the same nostalgia and comfort that are so needed with our own academic years kicking off. When you’re back at school, and maybe the workload feels overwhelming, there’s a comfort in the familiarity of these old shows. Often, we don’t have to wonder what will happen next, because these shows held a place in our youth; I, for one, can explain the entire plot of Gossip Girl in chronological order, if challenged.
No show, especially when examined in the context of changing times, is perfect. The point is not to belabor all the aspects of these shows that (hopefully) would not have been the same today, but rather to acknowledge these issues and the belief systems behind them.
These shows are excellent for teaching us how to layer, reminding us to lock in and study in a cute academic-weapon-era outfit, and overall romanticizing the colder, busier months to come. Viewing critically does not mean rejecting flawed media but rather considering the shortcomings. Let your aesthetic be influenced, but not your values, and certainly not your standards (if the cold gets lonely, I recommend looking literally anywhere else for advice on interpersonal relationships, especially).
Examining harmful messaging and poor representation, even in works we love most, allows for greater awareness of how media consumption affects us, and how future works can do better. I hope one day soon there will be a renaissance of new fall shows from fresh voices; shows that are hopefully just as crazy, melodramatic, twisty and gripping as this era.
Just maybe no more student-teacher relationships. Please. Literally all three shows had them and I just don’t understand it.