At first glance, the GawkerStalker cell phone picture of 14 year old Gossip Girl star Taylor Momsen wearing a short skirt on a subway is just creepy. I mean, can it just be possible for a girl to ride a subway without being groped, oggled or have pictures taken of her for a snarky gossip blog? And on second, third and fourth glance…it’s still really creepy. But once you get over the creepiness, or at least just accept it, this has to be one the most surreal blog posts ever. Why is it surreal and not just gross?

Taylor Momsen plays Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl. What “Gossip Girl” refers to in the show is a blog written by an annoymous sleuth who reports on gossip among Upper East Side teens. In the show, what often happens is that some teen will take a picture of one of the main characters in a compromising situations — say Serena buying pregnancy tests. The tipster sends the picture to Gossip Girl, and within minutes, the picture and an explanatory caption show up on her blog and is sent out to the cell phones of the “Upper East Side Elite.” “Gossip Girl” is basically a small scale version of Gawker for this make believe universe.

Coming back to real life, Taylor Momsen was in a compromising situation — wearing a short skirt while sitting on a subway — and a sleuth took a camera-phone picture and sent it off to the gossip blog.  The only signifigant difference between real-life and TV in this case is the name of the person involved — Taylor Momsen instead of Jenny Humphrey.  Surely Jean Baudrillard or Marshall McLuhan would have had some profound insight into this seminal moment in media cross-pollination and self reference, but I just think its weird.