The It Girl Analytical
In the book The It Girl, by Cecily Von Ziegesar, Jennie Humphries is a girl who wants to be popular and will do anything to get that status. In the book Jennie gets sent to a new boarding school and wants to become a new person; more sophisticated and classy. Once she arrives she learns that she rooms with the most popular girls in the school and rumors start to spread about Jennie being promiscuous. She runs into some drama and ends up being accepted into the cool group of people. Jennie seeks to gain power over others to improve her reputation and to be in charge. Jennie tries to gain power over many of the girl characters to seem cool.
When roommate Calli gets caught for having a boy in her room past curfew she blames it on Jennie. Jennie has to go talk to committee and testify that she was the one with the boy. Calli bribes Jennie to take the fall and Jennie holds it over her head to get her to do whatever she wants. This portrays Jennie’s want for power over the girls because it shows that she will turn against her friends if means more power for her. Another example of Jennie’s hunger for power over the girls is when Jennie forces Brett to admit her affair with Eric Dalton, the schools Disciplinary student advisor.
Jennie knows that if she gets Brett to trust her and tell her secrets then she can have power over Brett and black mail. Overall Jennie tries to gain power over all of the girls to show that she is the “it” girl. Jennie seeks power over select male characters to show that she is popular and can get whatever boy she wants. In the beginning Jennie charms Brandon Buchanan with her new girl act and plays like she is clueless to how things work around the school. This convinces Brandon to like her and Jennie gains power by turning him down and saying that they are just friends.
This allows Jennie to have the control of making Brandon do whatever she wants him to in order to make her like him. Another example is with Heath Ferro. Everyone goes to a party and Jennie allows Heath to take her to the famous church spot where he makes out with girls. Heath and Jennie end up kissing and when drunken Heath tries to take it to the next level she stops him and leads him back to his dorm room. This lets everyone know that Jennie has the power to say no to Heath and that she can have him whenever she wants him. Jennie also has a secret thing with Easy Walsh, Calli’s boyfriend.
Jennie knows that she can’t be in a relationship with him because Calli would be mad and everyone would think she is a boyfriend stealer but she has strong feelings for him and he feels the same way. Later on Easy breaks up with Calli which shows that Jennie has a power over his feelings and can now get him do whatever she wants. Jennie has a great amount of power over the boys because she plays with their emotions and gets them to do whatever she wants. In The It girl Jennie struggles to gain power over everyone for selfish reasons.
Everyone wants to be popular and have everyone love them but some people will go to the extreme to achieve this kind of power. We can learn from Jennie’s ways that there are other ways to have power and better thing s to do with power than to manipulate people and their emotions. By gaining all of this power Jennie earns a reputation but not the one she was looking for. It just shows that she is selfish and will do anything to get what she wants and to be on top. Like some say, he is most powerful who has power over himself.
