This is Jenny Humphrey, as played by child star and rock music protege Taylor Momsen* – before (left) and on her way (right) to becoming the self-hating trouble-causing girl Blair Waldorf eventually exiles from Manhattan:
(pics from refinery29.com and wikipedia)
Jenny Humphrey is Dan Humphrey’s star-struck 14 year old little sister who initially arrives at the prestigious prep school very eager to please the older girls from the powerful families, only to be subjected to cruel pranks, fight her way to the top of the Mean Girl hierarchy, strive to keep her position as new Queen Bee without rich parents to pay for her stuff (brunches, outfits for the many parties) by first earning a respectable and prestigious job in fashion, and then striking out on her own with her own label.
No surprises, of all the Gossip Girl characters, Jenny’s is the one with a further spin-off book.
(And do I get flamed for putting a(n albeit clean) Gossip Girl clip up? This one gets telling comments like, “Remember when we could still root for Jenny?”)…..
In the scene below, Blair Waldorf hands “Little J” the keys to her mother’s fashion design shop during a big sleepover after a party, asking her to “steal” the jacket off the mannequin display and deliver it to her (Blair has Mum Issues, perpetually thinking her mum loves her friends especially the super smiley and carefree Serena more, despite all she (Blair) worked hard to achieve at school and extra-curriculars).
What Jenny doesn’t know is this is a ritual hazing for new girls, and she’s about to get locked in and left to face the police when the alarm terrifyingly goes off:
“You need to ask yourself if all this is worth it.” So says Blair in Queen Bee mode to Jenny. Some of “The Rules” – include which way to wear headbands (y’know, like the Secret Handshake) which otherwise perfectly functioning attractive young women attending Ivy-s like Columbia, among others, actually follow. You must not sit higher on the steps than the Queen Bee, or suffer yoghurt dumped on your head.
Now, within the fictitious safety of Crazy Girl Land: if the system or person(s) you require approval or affirmation of your own self-worth from is flawed, or worse – broken or dysfunctional – what d’you think happens to your goals and morals?
Jenny is who you start off respecting, for her gumption and resourcefulness. Except… like any adult in the “real” world, when she strikes out on her own with the best of intentions, she experiences politicking, disillusionment and betrayal despite her best efforts, and eventually succumbs to the temptation of responding in kind. (And all the grownups in da office say Yeah, Exactly!! 🙂 ) Several times she finds the strength to walk away, telling Blair Waldorf whom she once admired, “It’s not worth it” – only to relapse, eventually leaving for good, but not before doing devastating damage to herself while trying to hurt her enemies.
Jenny’s is the biggest cautionary tale, that even the most resilient and resourceful of kids need “parents” (actual or figurative, hence the quote marks) – even if they say they don’t, and go to great lengths to establish their independence and capabilities. Because you don’t know who else they’ll meet. Because you cannot foresee all the things that can happen (and to some extent probably will – look at what happens at work everywhere.. can you imagine it happening to your kid?)
What happens to Jenny Humphrey is a stark reminder that just because they’re kids doesn’t mean it can’t happen to them (there is actually no correlation between age and work politicking barring toddler and early childhood, but it’s one of our blind spots.. Without firm grounding and support, at a time when they’re trying to establish their independence (NOT disrespectin’ their capabilities and maturity, you understand 🙂 ) it can be even harder to stay close. But even more necessary.)
Jenny’s first “jobs” are innocuous enough – writing Blair Waldorf’s party invites, because of her excellent calligraphy, making her own outfits for the increasingly frequent parties she gets invited to, doing so well that some of the rich girls start to commission her to dress them (that is actually really awesome, right? These girls wear Stella McCartney and Prada – made by adults who have gone to design school and won fiercely competitive careers at major fashion labels…. and she 15 Year Old With Sewing Machine.)
At some point however, as she gets more popular, Jenny sells her sewing machine for cash so she can keep up with the lifestyles of the girls from more privileged families. That was such an OH NO!! moment for me. Her natural talent and resourcefulness are what won her a respected place in the girl group, not how much money her parents had. She should’ve been proud of that, it was no secret to the others that she couldn’t afford quite the same lifestyle anyways and the other girls already accepted her.
Instead, Jenny eventually chafes even more than her brother Dan does, at her family’s inability to afford the same lifestyle the less resourceful, more privileged-by-virtue-of-birthright girls take for granted. She soon resorts to stealing from them (in fact, THIS is what loses her their respect, NOT the lack of money from her parents). Then her new boyfriend, whom she believes to be The One, offers her a deal – lie about their relationship so he can keep quietly seeing other boys, and he will fund her spending habit. Eventually he gets outed, and so she looks for another “job” – delivering recreational drugs at social events. This includes sewing pills into jackets.
(So brilliant. So wrong. Some high end clothing for real have chains sewn in the bottom hems link by link – it makes the (heavy!) jacket fall better. It’s also a case for home-done vs high-end; clothing/ accessories label designers and chefs alike care first and foremost that their piece looks/ tastes good – no free lunch, they give up some comfort in the design for that, I’ve read interviews where Michelin-starred chefs have highlighted that part of the reason your home cooking doesn’t taste that good is because of the much higher amount of fat or sugar they use (don’t you just love people who are secure enough in their own skin to be honest).. Such revelations are incredibly valuable (but often underrated) – we would not be able to create our own stuff quite as well, without the honesty of highly qualified people at the top of their game.. We should give them more credit for being honest, otherwise we’d be stuck only with the people who breed insecurity in order to make themselves look better… (And of course the flip side of the fat and sugar content is also true, some chefs strive to use their skill to recreate traditional ethnic foods without the unhealthier stuff.)
Anyway back to GG – what makes the character of Jenny Humphrey a total parent’s nightmare is it can happen to anyone. In this case it happened to someone talented, gutsy and hardworking, from a grounded upbringing. AND it happened to her while she was still a kid.
Somewhere between fake boyfriend and drugs, Jenny earns a legitimate internship with Blair’s mother’s fashion line – on sheer merit, despite her young age. She fights hard for the job she has won fair and square and needs (which arguably the rich girls messing around with her job responsibilities when they bring their Mean Girl Games don’t), emerging with some very resourceful saves…… only to have her boss, Blair’s mother, pass off the final masterpiece design as her own work. Jenny even initially goes along with it, until being brutally told off (not completely out of line, she went partying too late to finish a lesser assignment properly) and not allowed to join the client meeting where her masterpiece will be shown. She leaves, taking her masterpiece with her.
At some point, her very attentive and dedicated father finds out Jenny is cutting school in order to keep up with the designing. When he puts his foot down she legally files for emancipation and moves out. (OMG. Anyone remember how hard he worked, ironically, to get her in school?) They eventually compromise with homeschooling, but he had so many hard fights that included not being on her guest list at shows, and all the while the stigma of not having a high flying career while being around all the dysfunctional but high achieving Type As – Stay At Home Parent is a much harder label to wear than any other job description especially when you’re walking in to society parties trying to find your daughter – AND daughter had to experience this terrible crash first –
Moving in with a model friend/ room mate who is relatively older, Jenny struggles to start her own fashion line. With not much money (paying for materials with jars of change etc), she eventually produces enough for a show, and arranges with her model friends to crash a society event – they hijack the music, and the models walk through the event wearing her designs and handing out her business cards. Jenny politely and sincerely apologises right after the show, explaining how badly she needed the break. The host – Serena Van Der Woodsen’s mum, a former wild child herself (who probably also thinks her own daughter causes more headaches than that with the wild partying haha), admires the effort and declines to press charges when the girls are arrested.
Jenny continues to grow her business, but then the hard partying lifestyle of the older girls, especially her room mate/ business partner, make it difficult for her to keep client and investor appointments. She is also placed at risk when, during her estrangement from her father she follows her room mate to a photo shoot and is encouraged to undress for pictures and nearly taken advantage of by an older photographer, before one of her brother’s friends happens to check on her and get her out. When she attempts to see clients without her wild friend, the friend gets horribly offended and throws her out, setting fire to all her creations.
Jenny’s dad somehow gets her rehired at Blair Waldorf’s mum’s fashion label and this time Jenny works hard at home school AND her design job… until going out for “reconciliatory drinks” with her wild former room-mate and ending up drugged and almost taken advantage of again. When one of her brother’s friends rescues her (again!) she starts to fall for him. And then everything just goes to hell in a handbasket. Jenny gets into idiot girl fights over boys, stoops to anonymously tipping Gossip Girl (the kids ALL end up doing it in the end)…. and when rejected (and pretty much asked to get a grip), throws herself and her first time away to Chuck Bass who is reeling from thinking Blair has dumped him for good during their latest crisis. He still asks Jenny if she’s sure, and she insists that she is. (Um.. Y’know what? The answer to this is always NO. Just. NO. Even if it sounds like the word “yes,” what that still means is NO.)
I struggled for some time as to whether to tell this part of the story but without it you would not see as clearly how much really happened to Jenny.
Blair Waldorf appears at Chuck’s door having decided to try again (remember their relationship eventually survives many, many devastating situations including deaths, fake deaths, being stripped of inheritance, etc etc). In that moment, Jenny – who has just given her first time to Chuck – is impulsively told by him to leave quickly and not let Blair see her. (Jenny runs out, goes to pieces, tells everyone (guys – another reason even if the girl somehow says yes like this, YOU SAY NO) and Chuck (who otherwise usually sticks to strippers and not barely-legal girls, when not with Blair) is so ashamed of himself that he disappears completely – Serena eventually finds him working as a waiter under an assumed name in another country and close to marrying the restaurant owner’s daughter.)
When you cannot watch that “morning after” on a fictitious show without flinching is when you know without a doubt – THE ANSWER IN THIS SITUATION IS ALWAYS NO. (<sheepish> don’t waste the warning? GG’s out there and with all these “unsuitable for teens” themes, and it got so popular anyway.)
Gossip Girl the original anonymous blogger at long last is revealed to be……….. Jenny’s brother, Dan Humphrey (any cares haha). Dan explains in the finale that he started the anonymous blog when he realised he would never be accepted into this prep school elite culture. (This is actually not true because he did become accepted… and then he chose to betray those kids, including Serena (who falls hard for him despite being super wild and whom he claimed to love in return), and his own dad who had nothing to do with that elite school circle.) In other words, it didn’t matter how much love he received outside because he hadn’t fixed what was in his own head. (This is why they tell us to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first before turning to help children and other passengers around us)
In the end, Gossip Girl is not a person, not even an anonymous blog, so much as a concept, a phenomenon, a weakness in all of us that will be exploited. There is no “Gossip Girl” without anonymous tips, without readers, without the motivations that feed “her”. And so there will always be a “Gossip Girl”.
*Taylor Momsen’s casting however is even more interesting – leggy and blonde, she looks nothing like the Jenny of the novels – very short, chesty and with dark hair like her brother’s.
This piqued my curiosity because there are so many hopefuls and stars out there… Yet the “Jenny” of the tv series ended up being re-written to fit Momsen and accommodate her rock music career – and when she left the show, despite the potential of the character and movie talks, producers never cast a replacement. You wouldn’t guess Momsen’s professional muscle either, given some of her quotes in interviews at the height of GG fame when she left:
“I was coming to (Gossip Girl) set with a guitar every day… I am very lucky the producers were kind enough to write me out, allow me to… pursue my passion, because they could very well… have kept me on the show.”
Unlike the other Gossip Girl cast who are adults playing the roles of out-of-control teens, Momsen started work on Gossip Girl aged 12, having acted professionally since 3, following modelling auditions her parents brought her to where she was signed by the prestigious Ford Models Agency aged 2. She had her big breakout role (Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas) aged 7.
Of her former acting career however, Momsen has been quoted, “No 2 year old wants to be working, but I had no choice….”
“Fame is fleeting and stupid…”
Irreverent and unapologetic, Momsen has also been described as Rock Music’s Smartest Wild Child: “The power lies in the few and then you witness so much poverty, depression, and repression, and (coming back from tour) it changed my perspective on everything.”
Shortly after leaving GG, she co-wrote “Heaven Knows,” which reached no.1 on rock music charts in both the US and the UK. Her band has had some setbacks losing a large quantity of equipment during Hurricane Sandy, and more recently the death of a mentoring producer in an unrelated auto accident; her current net worth is around USD 4mio..
She also came very close to being Disney’s Hannah Montana, but lost the role to Miley Cyrus, which she has said in retrospect she was happy about (no kidding haha). She describes her turning point as when paparazzi shot up her skirt and for some time the picture of her tampon string was the first thing that popped up when she was Googled. (Sorry ah, a bit graphic but my point is everything comes with good and bad, no matter how shiny and pretty we think it is… You cannot say you want only the good and not the bad, it all comes together…)
