When I was younger, I wanted to have a friendship like Miley and Lilly from Hannah Montana. For the few unacquainted with the double-life pop-star, the show revolves around a teenage girl who is trying to balance being a normal teenager with a very abnormal day job as a world famous singer. She is flanked by her father, brother, and two very loyal best friend, Lilly and Oliver.
Who wouldn't want friends like them? Friends who seemingly one exist to be your sidekick? The irony was, as bad as I wanted to be Miley, I was always a Lilly. This archetype exists in most Disney channel or youth-geared TV, in which there is one main character around whom the plot revolves, and the supporting characters' only role is to console or aid the main character. Someone needs to tell the executives at Disney that this isn't a healthy relationship.
If young girls and boys watch these shows and mimic them in their own friendships, they are being set up to have difficulties in their adult relationships. Enter: Carrie Bradshaw, the ultimate in selfish and reckless friendships. There are entire articles devoted to how bad of a friend she is on Sex and the City, a cult classic that many young women watch as a right of passage into womanhood. Bradshaw has long been an icon for the contemporary woman.
Bur burning bridges, putting herself first, following every flighted fancy, and then expecting her friends to pick up the pieces every time she falls apart? Is that what we want a contemporary woman to be? Friends like that only create tension and hostility amongst a group. People start talking behinds back, tea is spilled, and the shade is real. I know from firsthand experience how divided ranks can create all out mutiny.
After kids graduate from the Disney Channel, their new TV role models become Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen of the teen hit Gossip Girl. The show ended when I was 14, yet it keeps its popularity today among teens who weren't even teens when the show ended. In fact, there is a reboot of the show scheduled to be produced by HBO. But for the thousands of young girls who idolized the glamorous lives of the characters on the show, I'd just like to address the elephant in the room: sleeping with your "best friend's" boyfriend, dating her ex-boyfriend, revealing her scandal to a gossip website, and overall throwing her under the bus do not make stable, long-lasting friendships.
Despite the "happy ending" that the characters supposedly find, the damage incurred along the way is certainly not worth the reward of staying friends with sh**ty people. I'm not here to argue that all TV friendships are without their teachable moments or redeeming qualities. But when Netflix and Hulu have made it easy for a sad or lonely person to lay in bed and fantasize about the characters they are watching on their laptop screens, it raises the question of whether TV is a form of escapism or parasitism.