Gossip Girl, and the eating disorder that never was

Do you remember Gossip Girl's bulimia storyline? The writer's room never really did.

On March 22nd 2021, a 3-minute, 21 second video simply entitled, ‘blair bulimia moments’ was uploaded to YouTube. The video contains essentially every single moment in the original Gossip Girl series where principal character Blair Waldorf’s struggles with her eating disorder were depicted. A list of media longer than this video includes: the music video for Leighton Meester and Cobra Starship’s 2009 collaboration Good Girls Go Bad. Kendall Roy’s rendition of Honesty on the Succession season 3 soundtrack. That one YouTube video where Aubrey Plaza does ASMR.

Blair’s eating disorder was a thing in the same way that Chuck’s attempted assault on Jenny Humphrey was a thing, or Dan being Gossip Girl was a thing - it definitely happened within the text of the show, but the implications of it were never fully addressed, and it was sort of tiptoed around in a way that makes you wonder what you, as a viewer, were really supposed to make of it. At the time the show was airing, some audience members didn’t even fully pick up on what was happening - commenting on the aforementioned ‘bulimia moments’ YouTube video, one audience member notes that ‘I watched this show like 4 times before I ever noticed these parts.’ The word ‘bulimia’ isn’t actually used until in season 5, and that’s the only time it’s ever used on the show - in the earlier seasons, they refer to it as Blair’s ‘problem’, like she’s an unmarried pregnant woman in the Victorian era, or a housewife with a shoplifting habit.

To spare you the trouble of watching all three and a half minutes of ‘blair bulimia moments’, I’ll summarise essentially every mention of her eating disorder here: it first comes up in season 1 episode 9, an episode tastefully entitled ‘Blair Waldorf Must Pie’. We see flashbacks to a previous Thanksgiving when Blair’s now-seperated parents were still together - Blair is implied to be in ED recovery at this point, with her dad referencing the fact that she’s seen a doctor for her ED, and has been ‘fine’ for two months. However, when her mother offers her food, she rejects it, perhaps implying that the Thanksgiving period is one which she finds difficult to manage when it comes to her eating. 

Flash-forward a year to the events of 1x09 and Blair’s parents have broken up, meaning the holiday season is going to be even harder on her than before. When she learns that her dad isn’t flying back to New York for Thanksgiving, she becomes increasingly upset, and ends up eating a whole apple pie. As she eats the pie, we’re shown flashbacks to her eating throughout the series, then previously unseen clips of her purging immediately afterwards, recontextualising previous scenes for viewers who, up until this point, weren’t aware of her struggles with bulimia. The sequence ends with her back in the present, staring dejectedly at her reflection. We do not see what she does next.

Later on in the episode, she makes an emotional phone call to Serena, who immediately rushes to her aid; Blair is tear-stained, and tells her that she ‘didn’t mean for it to happen’. She does not specify what ‘it’  is, but the implication is clear. Serena, clearly distraught for her friend, comforts her, kissing her head and suggesting they go for a walk. They end up at a diner, where Blair is seen eating, and ensuring Serena that she will call her doctor in the morning.

Outside of the Thanksgiving episode, there is a brief illusion to Blair’s eating disorder in season 1 episode 13 - Blair’s mother tells her that she heard her running the taps to mask the sound of her throwing up, an accusation that Blair doesn’t deny. This particular relapse is never really addressed in any further detail, and while there are other few moments throughout the first season wherein Blair’s mother will briefly reference her weight, or Dorota will double-check she eats breakfast, Blair’s ED is never really brought up in any further detail. It’s next mention, and the only time it’s named in the show, is when she’s experiencing morning sickness in season 5, and Dan, who’s not aware she’s pregnant, asks if she’s ‘bulimic again’. Perhaps not the most elegant way of wording it, but the concern is there.

Gossip Girl’s treatment of Blair’s eating disorder was a weird one. There was a strange central inconsistency regarding her mother’s role in the whole affair - early on, there were a few moments where her mother made comments praising her for losing weight, or suggesting she choose a lower calorie option for breakfast, but the showrunners seemingly dropped this idea fairly quickly, and later episodes in the same season depicted her showing concern over her daughter’s eating disorder and encouraging her to eat healthily. 

It was a storyline imported from the books rather than an idea directly from the show’s writers, and you can sort of tell - there’s a stilted sense of obligation to the whole thing, and a consistent reticence to dig any deeper than they had to. They didn’t really want to write an arc about eating disorders, and a lot of fans bemoan the show for this, wishing that the issue had been properly explored, or even, y’know, lightly touched upon, given that the show seemingly had endless hours to devote to the daddy issues of a serial abuser. ‘I’m still upset they didn’t continue the eating disorder storyline’, reads a thread on the Gossip Girl Reddit; ‘I agree! It would’ve added another dimension to the series and created more depth to Blair. Certainly could have swapped out some of Serena’s love interests for this storyline,’ another user agreed. Bit harsh on Serena, but it gets the point across - people wanted more.

Yet despite all this, as someone who’s struggled with an eating disorder, I sort of, kind of - like the way Gossip Girl handles Blair’s ED? Maybe ‘like’ is the wrong word. But I certainly can’t imagine that them digging any deeper into Blair’s bulimia would have yielded anything especially interesting, or well thought-out, or remotely helpful for teenagers who were struggling with the same thing. Gossip Girl is notorious for the respect and understanding it granted sensitive topics; remember the delicacy with which they handled the aftermath of Chuck’s attempted sexual assualt on Jenny, or Jack’s attempted sexual assault on Lily, or Dan’s relationship with his teacher, or Serena’s relationship with her teacher, or a teenage and destitute Nate being forced to sleep with an adult woman in order to keep the lights on. Oh, wait.

So, yes, Blair’s eating disorder is relegated to the background like Cousin Greg at a Roy family gathering, or Rufus in a discussion about people’s favourite Gossip Girl characters. Yet, a part of me can’t help but wonder if we’re better off this way. At no point in the show is Blair deep in her eating disorder. She has her wobbles, sure, notably in the Thanksgiving episode, but for the most part, Blair is recovered and doing very well for herself, busy coming up with elaborate schemes involving Flo Rida or military school rather than stressing about food. Blair Waldorf is a lot of things - smart, funny, petty, shallow, downright diabolical - but she is at no point defined by her struggles with eating disorders. 

Contrast this to someone like Cassie from Skins, who drips through the show sing-songing about not eating for multiple days at a time. Skins does portray having an eating disorder as, like, bad, so it can get a fucking medal for bare minimum there, but the Cassie storyline is disturbingly instructive, containing a scene where she step-by-step describes to another character how she disguises the fact that she’s not eating, and everyone around her just sort of - accepts that she’s deeply ill? Her parents are indifferent, her friends all know but aren’t particularly bothered, and the hospital which she attends for treatment is outright demonised. Compare this to Blair, and the seriousness with which Serena and Dan treat the notion of her relapsing, the mention of her calling her doctor, whom she presumably has a good relationship with, and even the support she receives from her mother after the writers’ decided they wanted to give her an attitude transplant. In Gossip Girl, the idea of Blair lapsing back into bad habits is treated with grave urgency; in Skins, Cassie’s whole life is one diabolically terrible habit and no-one seems especially concerned by it.

So, Gossip Girl marches on for 6 frankly unnecessary seasons, eating disorder largely forgotten. Blair plots, gets caught, succeeds, fails, gets married, gets divorced, becomes a princess, watches a man fall to his death from a skyscraper, etc. She starts the show as a teenage girl in recovery; she ends it as a capable, distinguished woman with a fashion empire under her belt. And whatever, maybe Cassie’s storyline is a more gritty, in-depth portrayal of eating disorders. Maybe it raised awareness, got people talking about them, while YouTube commenters forget Blair ever had one. It’s Cassie who’s one of the most widely recognised depictions of anorexia on teen TV, whose storyline played a part in Skins being nominated for a BAFTA.

But as someone who’s recovered from an eating disorder myself, it’s Blair that I come back to. Devious, cunning, kind Blair, with her outlandish ambitions and never-ending stream of ugly coloured tights; Blair, for whom her teenage eating disorder is little more than a memory, a one-line throwback in the fifth season of her fulfilling life. Perhaps Blair’s storyline never truly delved into the reality of eating disorders, but perhaps it offered struggling teens something even more valuable - hope.