I'm sick. And I have been for the last three days. As someone who firmly believes recovery and stress do not mix well, I've spent most of my recovery time sleeping or reading obscure 19th century French literature. But as much as I enjoy dreaming and struggling with dead verb tenses, I have also caved to popular culture and watched a few episodes of Gossip Girl on the Internet.

Admittedly, Gossip Girl would not have been my first choice. Digging through the iTunes Store, however, it quickly became clear that I have already seen all of the "good" television produced in the last decade. I also feel uncomfortably pretentious, judgmental and elitist whenever I comment on the television adaptation of the Gossip Girl novels with, "I've heard the books read like one giant product placement." Thus I spent a few hours in the company of Blair, Dan, Serena and the rest of the melodramatic, judgmental ensemble of fictional Manhattanites.

While I doubt I will become an avid follower of the series, it has some merits. The costume design is nothing short of incredible. Everyone looks very sharp, though not at the expense of conveying their personalities. I only wish there existed a real college campus where everyone looked so sharp. People should at least change out of their pajamas to attend class.

I have also become a great fan of Blake Lively's voice. It reminds me of a chocolate-covered sea salt caramel. It's sensuous, smooth and sultry, but with a pleasant bite and a wonderful, unquantifiable playfulness. If Ms. Lively ever narrates a documentary, I intend to be the first in line for tickets.

Above all else, though, Gossip Girl makes me question the influence of mass media and popular culture on today's — shall we say — young adults.

Teen-oriented television brims with female characters who have their cake and eat it too. Gossip Girl's Blair, for instance, sits at the top of her fictional preparatory school's social hierarchy and manages to maintain an implied high level of academic achievement. Likewise, Serena, the program's protagonist, seems assured a fictional place at Yale College and garners the attention the the series' namesake Gossip Girl. (A brief aside. Gossip Girl has a particularly sophisticated method of disseminating her blog posts. No blog I know of sends multimedia messages with pictures, video and sound to all of its subscribers whenever something new goes online.)

The male characters, however, seem forced to choose between social smarts or book smarts. Serena's love interest, Dan, never displays any real mastery of social skills, though he undoubtedly comes across as intelligent. On the other side of the coin, Chuck, the chauvinist playboy and occasional antagonist in the series, has a clear mastery of social skills, but never really displays any intellectual ability beyond a knack for scheming.

Similarly, NBC's The Office — arguably a more male-oriented program — portrays the male characters as irresponsible, oblivious, negligent, or simply all three. Based on the one episode of The Office I've seen, I would not hesitate to call Steve Carrell's character an idiot.

How hard would it be to pen a popular television series featuring Blair Waldorf's male twin as its protagonist?

While women still experience some level of discrimination in the workplace, my personal observations suggest that the young women of America's schools, colleges and universities, work — on average — much harder than their male counterparts. Obviously, a number of factors play into this lack of motivation, but I feel like popular culture reinforces unfortunate stereotypes and something need be done.