So who’s the guy with Taylor Momsen (Jenny) on the Gossip Girl set? Is he a new character or just someone she’s talking to during breaks from filming?

Her outfit doesn’t look too shabby and I love the silver purse she has with her.

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After People magazine referred to Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively as “curvy”, on- and off-screen boyfriend Penn Badgley offered his thoughts on body types. Penn tells PopEater that he’s “never been proponent of the thin L.A. girls.” He’s glad, he says that the girls on Gossip Girl “aren’t bone-thin.” His advice for the 90210 girls? “I hope they eat a double cheeseburger or something.”

Me too, Penn. For one, I think they look just plain awful. Shenae Grimes, above, is disproportionate to the point of grotesque. Despite the loads of frills in her dress, her head is nearly as wide as her body (and no, it’s not just a bad photo, every one of her in that dress looks similar). But more importantly, it sets a terrible example. It’s an impossible - and unhealthy - standard.

(More chat and photos after the jump)

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When you look at the core cast of Gossip Girl, you notice a few things: they are all impossibly good looking, fashionable, young… and white. This, of course, isn’t a new revelation. But as the show’s popularity - and cast grows - the omissions are becoming more noticeable.

This issue is even more timely to me, of late. I’ve been following along with a series of reports on CNN on “Being Black in America” - the reports are in response to CNN’s recent documentary (co-produced with Essence magazine). One of the reports opens up a long-running debate about the role of minorities - specifically, black Americans - in movie and television roles.

A little perspective, first.

The first African American to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for her role as “Mammy” in Gone With the Wind. Highly criticized by the NAACP for taking roles as servants, McDaniel reportedly remarked, “I’d rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be one for $7.”

Amazingly, it would be another 24 years before another African American was once again honored in an acting role. Sidney Poitier took home the lead actor trophy for Lilies of the Field in 1963. Almost 20 years later, Louis Gossett, Jr. became the first African American man to win a best supporting actor Oscar for his work in An Officer and A Gentleman.

Just over 10 years later, Halle Berry became the first African American woman to win the best actress award for her performance in Monster’s Ball. That same year, Denzel Washington won the best actor award for Training Day. The 2002 Academy Awards was significant in that three acting Oscars were awarded to black actors (the other, an honorary award, went to Sidney Poitier).

Since those first barriers were broken, Hollywood is, it would seem, becoming more diverse. Or is it? The numbers of other minorities in major movie roles are still relatively small. Oscar winners - arguably a measure of the representation of all cultures in successful films - include Japanese-born Miyoshi Umeki for her supporting role in 1957’s Sayonara and Cambodian native Haing S. Ngor for The Killing Fields in 1984. Mexican born Anthony Quinn won twice as a supporting actor in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life; Puerto Rican Rita Moreno won as supporting actress award in 1962 for West Side Story. And more recently, Puerto Rican born Benicio Del Toro won a supporting actor trophy for Traffic.

Is it any better on TV? Some say no. While there are channels which have a relatively high percentage of television shows geared towards minority audiences, some argue that the percentage of minorities on television is still too small. The CW, Gossip Girl’s home, features a mixture of programming from both UPN and The WB television networks, and is perhaps among the most representative of diversity in America with shows like Girlfriends, Everybody Hates Chris and Aliens in America. But is it enough?

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In 2008, the summer solstice will occur at 23:59 hours UT on 20th June (Friday). It is the first time since 1975 that it hasn’t occurred on 21st June. The summer solstice is, as you may know, the longest day of the western hemisphere. To celebrate, Gossip Girl Report, the Entertainment Channel and b5media are having The Great Blog Off on June 20.

Here’s the scoop:
1, At gossipgirlreport.com - and all over b5media - we will blog at least once per hour for each hour of the day beginning at midnight our time (I’m EST). Yep, that’s 24 hours straight blogging.
2, NO pre-posting allowed. So, everything that is posted will be fresh - or as fresh as can be whilst sleep deprived.
3, Guest bloggers ARE allowed and are, in fact, highly encouraged.

Yep, that last part means that I’m going to be looking for some guest bloggers. Ideally, you would agree to “cover” for me some time between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. EST on June 20.

But even if those times don’t work for you, I’d love to have you participate. Send me an email (look for my email link in the sidebar) if you’d like to be on the guest post list (I’ll get you confirmations, how tos and more details later). You don’t have to be a Gossip Girl expert - but you do have to write something about the cast or the show (even if it’s that you don’t like it) for the Great Blog Off.

And it gets better.

The Great Blog Off is also an opportunity to do something good. The Entertainment Channel will be taking charitable pledges (details forthcoming). If, for example, you want to donate $1 for every hour that I blog on June 20, you would donate $24. Obviously, flat donations are also appreciated. No need to pull out your wallet now - there will be more information about this closer to the date.

The b5media Entertainment Channel will be supporting The Actors Fund as our charity for the Great Blog Off. The Actors Fund is a nonprofit, national human services organization that helps entertainment and performing arts professionals in theater, film, music, opera, television and dance through a broad spectrum of social, health, employment, and housing programs that address their essential and critical needs.

Charity Navigator gives The Actors Fund their highest rating for, among other things, having a low administrative expenses to donations ratio.

I am really excited about this event. I predict that it will be the most fun day of the year to read my blog! Keep checking by for details…

Like many Gossip Girl fans, I wasn’t surprised at Eric’s outing on last week’s episode. I was taken aback, though, at how well it was done. True, it was sensationalized and glammed up at Asher’s party - but at home, over the table? That was brilliant.

I love that Georgina outed Eric to his family at the table. No, I don’t believe that most gays and lesbians are outed by their sibling’s evil enemy at the dinner table - but I think that being outed often comes from situations beyond their control and that felt honest.

I also really enjoyed Kelly Rutherford’s portrayal of Eric’s mom. As a mom myself, I understand - no matter how politically incorrect it might be to say it out loud - that you don’t want your children to be gay. Not because of the stigma that you would face (which maybe matters a bit more in the elite circles of the Upper East Side) but because, as a parent, you constantly worry about how society treats your child. And let’s face it, although our society has certainly progressed in terms of its acceptance of gays and lesbians, it’s still tough to be homosexual in today’s world.

I grew up in rural North Carolina where I wasn’t exposed to homosexuality except what was on TV. And clearly, pre-Ellen and pre-Will and Grace, TV did not portray gays and lesbians in a flattering light. And perhaps it was one too many episodes of Jack pretending to be gay on Three’s Company but I grew to believe that being homosexual was a choice. That is, until high school.

I had a “Jenny” moment in high school. Remember when she accused Eric of being jealous of Asher because she thought that Eric was in love with her? I’ve been there.

In high school, I had a friend whom I call J. J used to hang out with me and my then boyfriend quite a bit. I felt that he was just a bit too clingy - especially as prom approached and he grew increasingly moody. I thought that we needed to have a talk. So, I sat J down one day and explained that while I was really flattered that he had a crush on me, that it was not in the cards and he needed to understand that and give me some space. We could, I reminded him, always be friends.

He looked at me with such disbelief. He did not, he explained, have a crush on me. He did, however, have a crush on my boyfriend. He was gay.

Wow.

I had no words. But you know what, that was actually the best thing. Not saying anything. Because I let J talk. And he talked about his friends and his family and how hard coming to terms with his sexuality had been for him. It had clearly been a struggle for him. And in that moment, I realized that nobody would ever choose to feel that way, to be treated that way, to constantly worry about being found out. It was a defining moment for me.

I started looking at the world a lot differently after that. I saw the injustice of my church chasing a good friend out of town when it was revealed that he way gay - in their minds, gay = pedophile and they would not allow him to continue to teach at church (he was a highly respected elementary school teacher outside of church). I witnessed girls being ostracized and teased on campus if they chose to be open about their sexuality. And most chilling, I watched in horror as the story of Matthew Shepard unfolded - you may remember that he was the young man who was beaten to death by two men simply because he was gay.

I now have a completely different view of homosexuality. I believe that everyone has the right to be happy. And I understand that life is not one big fun episode of Will and Grace.

I hope that the producers don’t drop the ball on this story line. I think it would be great to see Eric deal with being dumped by Asher and move on to find someone else - ooh, a prom episode would be awesome. It would also be interesting to see how Lily continues to come to terms with Eric being gay and whether that would interfere with her relationship with Bart, who, I am just guessing would not be terribly supportive.

Where do you think the story line would go? Are you happy with the portrayal of gay characters on Gossip Girl? Do you think it’s realistic? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A reader left a comment about the OMFG promos that got me to thinking: does sex on TV make kids more likely to have sex?

I don’t know that I think it does.

I have always loved TV. I watched pretty racy shows when I was a teen - 90210, Melrose Place, Dallas, almost of all of the soaps. And I was a good girl. A really good girl. I don’t mind saying that I did not have sex in high school. And neither did most of my friends.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t exposed to it. Quite the contrary. It was on TV, in the movies, in music. Everywhere.

And still, that didn’t change my views on the subject.

No matter how glamorous and sexy the idea of sex might have appeared on TV, I knew better. I knew that I didn’t want to be the girl in my junior high who earned a rather unpleasant nickname by “servicing” one of the boys in my school at a party while drunk (you know who you are). I also didn’t want to be the girl who had sex in the back seat of the football team captain’s car and got kicked out in the parking lot after she puked (you also know who you are).

Girls know the difference between right and wrong. And while it’s popular to blame TV for mistakes in judgment, I don’t know that it’s fair. If your self esteem is at the point where you base your behavior solely on what you see on TV, I think you have bigger issues.

I’m not saying that TV doesn’t have any influence on popular culture - clearly it does. But maybe, it can be, as Blake Lively has said, cautionary rather than inflammatory. With that in mind, I think the OMFG ads for Gossip Girl are inappropriate - not because I think they’re too racy but because I don’t think they encapsulate the show. The show has thus far equated poor choices with poor results. In fact, the only couple on the show that has had sex without any regret is the only couple in a serious, monogamous relationship.

It’s unrealistic to believe that teens are not having sex. But I think fewer teens are having sex than we are led to believe. Those teens aren’t featured in the media but they are all around us - just like in my school, we knew which kids were having sex and they were getting all of the (bad) attention. Many kids don’t have sex - they just don’t get the sexy promos.

At least, that’s what I think. You tell me, does sex on TV make kids more likely to have sex?

Gossip Girl’s Taylor Momsen made an appearance at the ‘HERO: A United Nations Association Campaign’ benefit reception at Paris Commune on March 27, 2008 in New York City.

HERO is a campaign meant to build awareness and raise money for orphans and at risk children living in HIV/AIDS-affected communities in Africa. Currently, there are programs in South Africa, Ethiopia, Namibia and Zambia. Initiatives include building infrastructure to provide clean water and sanitation, food and education.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the campaign and how you can get involved, click here.

Of course, this makes me wonder: does a star’s involvement in a charitable cause make you more inclined to donate your time or resources?

Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester had a little taste of the Oscars on Saturday, when she attended The Belvedere Luxury Lounge at the Four Seasons Hotel in honor of the 80th Academy Awards. Meester was there to donate a few items to

Working Wardrobes. Working Wardrobes is a nonprofit organization that helps men and women in crises re-enter the workforce through wardrobing and career development.

To find out where you can donate your “gently” used clothes to help make a difference in the lives of others, check out this link. And if you do make a donation, tell us about it! We all love a feel good story.

Apparently, there’s a real life Gossip Girl - or two - at a campus gossip site. The site, juicycampus.com (warning: the site is painfully slow), reportedly features anonymous reports about real life students. The site mentions students by name in threads about popularity, weight and sexual encounters. Even uglier topics include anti-Semitism and homophobia - names are named.

It’s an opportunity, as you might imagine, for some pretty tough feelings.

Of course, the site’s founder, Matt Ivester, a Duke University grad (I’m sure that the Blue Devils are so proud), believes that the site has the opportunity to be positive. He told CNN, “College students are clever and fun-loving, and we wanted to create a place where they could share their stories.”

To that end, it is an open forum where anonymity is encouraged - the header claims “100% anonymous.” Many who are opposed to JuicyCampus claim that the site needs to be moderated in order to mitigate some of the nastiness. Ivester apparently has no such interest, touting “[i]t is not possible for anyone to use this website to find out who you are or where you are located” and even encouraging users by stating: “If you are particularly concerned about hiding your ip address, there are several services that offer free ip-cloaking. Just do a quick search on Google and find one you like…”

Nice, huh?

The site is causing so much commotion that at least one student government has voted to ban it: Pepperdine. Despite the vote, Pepperdine has not yet banned the site.

And, at least one poster has already used the site to “anonymously” threaten a shooting at Loyola-Marymount. An arrest was made in that instance.

My own campus isn’t listed, so I borrowed the alma mater of a friend: Penn State University. What’s there? Titles like “Red Headed Dance Team Sl*t” and “Ambiguous guys.” Most were just nasty and filled with spelling errors. I’m afraid that I don’t quite get the appeal.

What do you think? Harmless fun? Or in poor taste? Ban-worthy? Is a real life Gossip Girl too much?

So here’s my new theory on Britney Spears… she’s a closet Gossip Girl fan!

Brit was photographed at a Rite Aid earlier in the week browsing home-pregnancy tests with her current boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib. She later claimed, “I never had a pregnancy test. It was for my friend.”

Hmm.

Buying a pregnancy test in full view of the paps is likely a big publicity stunt. Where do you think she got the idea? High profile trip to the drugstore? Internet abuzz? All really for a friend? Sounds like a plot line out of - oh yeah, Gossip Girl!

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