Okay, so maybe I will indulge myself in a tinsy almost!meta about Blair Waldorf and why watching her became such a painful experience. It will be chaotic and not at all thought through, so be prepared for lots and lots of randomness.
Since the very beginning, Blair Waldorf has been the sum of her own insecurities. The thing about her character, the one that made her so popular and loved, was that - despite her being a New York teenage socialite - people felt like they could relate to her. On a very abstract level, of course, but still. Her parents’ marriage crashed and burned, her mother was never satisfied with her, she was horribly jealous of her best friend, her boyfriend wasn’t in love with her any more, she got mixed up in something pretty scary with one of her male friends and at the same time, she tried to stay at the top of her class. It’s a lot of drama to take at once but most people had at least one of those issues and that was what mattered. On the top of all that, Blair was always deep down very insecure and needed constantly to prove herself to others. She wasn’t like Serena, she didn’t possess a strong feeling of self-worth and confidence that would help her get up every time life knocked her down.
This is why she always depended on other people to tell her who she is. She treated them as some kind of a mirror, looking at herself through their eyes. It is noteworthy that Jenny and Chuck were pretty much the same in that aspect, which is why they were always my favourite characters on the show. (I just thought it was interesting, even if painful, to watch them struggle with that.)
She did it not only with her parents and friends, but also with her boyfriends. Blair always changed a bit, depending with who she was at the moment. With Nate she was the perfect high society girl; with Chuck she was more daring and a little decadent, always scheming and playing games; with Carter she hit rock bottom; with that guy from the end of season three she tried to be just a normal, twenty year old girl; with Louis she transformed into a fairy tale princess; now with Dan she aspires to be a part of New York’s intellectual elite.
At this point, most shippers would already be fighting with which one of those man Blair was her real self. Our choices determine our ship, as you’d probably noticed. But if we take off our shipper goggles for a second, if we take Blair out of a ship, I think we will see that we’ve never met the real her.
If Blair lets her relationships define her (and she does) and she wasn’t not in a relationship for more than a few weeks (she wasn’t), where does that leave us?
Without the real Blair Waldorf, that’s for sure. Maybe that’s it, maybe that’s just the kind of person Blair is - someone who will always be accommodating people in her life and changing to fit their opinions of her. It’s a little exasperating to watch but not impossible as a character trait. What is annoying though, is the fact that while being continuously written as a dependent weakling (because despite all her fierceness, Blair most of the time fails to be strong when she really needs to be), power is her character’s catchphrase, but nothing is ever done about it.
After five years, Blair Waldorf acts with Dan Humphrey exactly the same way she did with Nate Archibald.
The breaking point should be, of course, season 3. Blair’s I don’t like who I’ve become with you was oh so telling. It was a major epiphany on her part, she finally understood that she always moulded herself to others (men she loved, in particular) and that it could be a dangerous thing. It felt like she is finally going to take her life into her own hands and decide who she really wants to be.
Then, of course, season 4 happened and any continuity went to hell.
Do you see my point? The ships, the men Blair dates really don’t matter. We think they matter because Blair thinks they do. That’s the way she operates. So we all waste our time trying to determine who would be better for her, when the thing is, both Chuck and Dan could be just as good. Chuck’s destructiveness and Dan’s tendency to be controlling wouldn’t be so damaging, if Blair wouldn’t let them be. But she does. And if the writers don’t plan to develop her character any further, she still will. So it really won’t matter for her happiness, who she is with, because at the end of the day, she will let some guy stomp on all over her.
Still, there is one thing that makes me personally lean towards CB.
People who remember the whole show better than I do could probably dig out some great parallels between Blair’s different boyfriends. To my mind come two scenes: the one from 3.04 (Remember I’m Chuck Bass and I love you) and the most recent one, from 5.21 (I have a feeling that the real Blair Waldorf is a lot closer than you think). I’ve seen some people claiming that this is a proof how differently Chuck and Dan treat Blair. That Chuck thought of her as his extension and Dan views her as an independent being. But I think that these are details subject to one’s interpretation; what really matters is that in those scene, both of them told Blair who she is. You are the person I love - this is the measure of your worth. You possess traits I value and because of them are the woman I fell for - this is the measure of your worth. Can you see how similar their rhetoric is? Their way of thinking? But why do they say those things?
Because Blair subconsciously wants them to. Because she needs them to tell her who she is. She expects it and relies on it. They know it, so when they see she is down, they actually try to make her feel better. But how misguided they are!
And then Dan is all: If only you could see what I see! and it’s like he unknowingly hit jackpot because that’s exactly what Blair wants. He tells her who he thinks she is and at that moment, she wants to be that person more than anything. Dan has no idea what he did by listing all those things Blair supposedly is. He hopes that no magazine can dictate Blair how she views herself and I think that clearly shows that he’s not doing that on purpose. But nevertheless, Blair devours his words, feeds on them and I can see in my mind’s eye that she will really try to be that girl Dan told her about. Maybe she really is her, I don’t know - Dan made those observations in one of the short periods when Blair was alone and had no man to define her but it still doesn’t make it any better that she needs him to tell her that. Since she worked at W, she could change, she could feel differently about pretty much everything and this is why trying to fit Dan’s image of her, an image over a year old, that might have not been even accurate or complete in the first place, is just not right.
The next few episodes we’ll probably see Blair trying to be the girl Dan loves and failing. Because she will always fail as long she tries to be a little more this, and a little more that. And just like she said, she is the real problem here.
On an end note, I’ve never been a fan of that first scene I quoted above. Despite my deep love for Chuck and Blair, I think they had better, more meaningful scenes, with less cheesy dialogue. What really ticked me off though, was how dependent on each other they seemed at the beginning of season 3. Those who oppose their relationship tend to cite 3.04 to show that Blair let Chuck dictate who she was. They are, however, forgetting about 3.01 and the infamous: I’m not Chuck Bass without you. I had serious problems with that because I always root for the characters as well as the pairing so I prefer them more independent in general. But what was making it all a little better for me was the fact, that this strange co-dependence went both ways. There was some kind of a sick balance to it.
Blair lacks it with Dan because he doesn’t need her to tell him who he is. Chuck and Blair were very co-dependent and Dan isn’t like that. Somehow he always has the upper hand in his relationships - and you know what? I don’t blame him. It’s not his fault that he’s a strong individual; he doesn’t plan on it, it just happens. But that’s why I believe no girl on the show is his real mate, because there is no girl self-confident enough to be his true match. Well, maybe Vanessa was. But Vanessa’s gone - mostly because her power struggle with Dan wouldn’t end and neither of them was ready to compromise.
So really, that’s it. I don’t enjoy what happened to Blair’s character but I don’t blame it on the relationships she’s in. It’s a serious flaw in her portrayal, the lack of growth that seems unconscious and that probably won’t be solved, because the writers aren’t willing to write Blair and only Blair, without an added bonus of a romantic interest.
