It’s very difficult for me to hear Blair Waldorf ask Dan Humphrey to help her find herself, but not for the reason you probably think. For me, it’s difficult because Blair shouldn’t be asking ANYONE for help finding herself, except that this girl has always been defined by those around her. She has always used the men in her life to measure and push and define herself. If it’s not being Nate Archibald’s perfect wife, it’s Chuck Bass’s savior, Dan Humphrey’s intellectual, Louis Girmaldi’s little princess, even her father’s Yale scholar.
Blair has always struggled with this, before she “sold out for a tiara”, before she was “traded for a hotel”, she was and always has been a weak, scared little girl who just wants love, family, and to be respected. It’s one of the reasons she’s always been my favorite character. How can someone so confident, so mean, so self assured and powerful, by so cripplingly insecure and weak? This identity crisis is nothing new.
The Blair Waldorf that Dan described is everything Blair is, but she’s also so much more. That person that he saw at W, that he believes to be her true self? I’m sorry, but I would have to disagree. That Blair was no different than high school Blair, she’s just one of the many masks that Blair wears when she wants to play a certain role. I believe I have seen the “real Blair Waldorf” once and once only: on a stage in a dark and smoky burlesque bar, dancing and confident and powerful and absolutely beautiful.
That is why I will always ship Chuck and Blair. Because that Blair? The one that she had never dared let loose, with all her masks and insecurities stripped away? That’s the Blair Chuck fell in love with. He has, obviously, done terrible things to her. But he’s also never done the one thing that every other person in her life has done. He is the only person who has never once asked her to change. Ever. She has ALWAYS been enough for him, even when he wasn’t enough for her.
