Everybody knows that NYC Prep show isn’t real. That’s what the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog proudly reminds us. See, real NYC preppers are nothing like the upcoming series. One of the schools even sent a letter saying as much. See one of the Bravo show’s cast members, the cockle-eyed Camille, goes to Nightingale-Bamford, a tony Upper Eastern academy in the vein of those on Gossip Girl. Well the school isn’t exactly thrilled about this attention, so the administration sent out a bitchy-in-a-stiff-East-Coast-way letter to parents basically saying “this girl does not represent Nightingale.” The decision to participate in the show was made by the student and her parents without consulting Nightingale’s administrators. We counsel our girls to avoid such exposure, knowing that the best intentions are usually subsumed by a media machine that too often simplifies the many facets of a Nightingale education into a shallow and stereotypical view of independent schools. (As with most series of this genre, the show is “reality” in name only.) … This is not the first time someone has presented skewed version of our world, nor will it be the last, so we approach this situation as we’ve handled others previously: focused on providing our girls the world-class education that has long defined Nightingale. Plus all the cattiness and drugs and sex and handbags! They have also defined Nightingale!
