Headbands and Fictional Characters: Serious Business

So here I was, researching anti-intellectualism because I picked the topic for my research paper for my summer college composition class. I was reading a New York Times article online about Susan Jacoby’s book… when I notice something at the side of my page…

The “T Magazine” article was also put on the front page of nytimes.com.

So, I click on it and it says…

Imagine my surprise — while watching the season premier of E!’s reality show, “Living Lohan,” Blair Waldorf (my favorite “Gossip Girl” character) made a cameo. Only it wasn’t Blair. It was Ali Lohan, Lindsay’s 14-year-old sister, dressed up in Blair drag for her on-camera interview segments. It was full-blown fashion plagiarism, right down to the plaid headband. What would Blair say? Probably: “Nice try, Little Lo. Too bad you can’t style away your Long Island accent.”

I learned for the first time that Lindsay Lohan has a sister (though I really can’t remember what Lindsay Lohan is famous for), and that Blair Waldorf is a character in “Gossip Girl” which I have never read nor seen.

This “full-blown fashion plagiarism” of a fictional character sounds horrendous! A girl is wearing a plaid headband that a fictional character wears! How evil of this 14-year-old to do that!

Wait a minute… since when did this become news? Since when did dressing like a fictional character become a crime? I guess I’ll have to burn my Harry Potter costume and Starfleet uniform.

In all seriousness, I understand that a lot of people find this sort of thing to be… entertaining… But, The New York Times is a newspaper which is usually respectable. Have we really fallen so low that good news sources must sink to the level of supermarket tabloids? If people find this sort of thing enjoyable, that’s fine and I can’t stop them from liking it (though I wish they’d, I dunno… think about something important once in a while), but this shit doesn’t belong in reputable new organizations.

I wonder what “Little Lo” would say? Probably: “Blimey! I wasn’t expecting a kind of Spanish Inquistion!”