Gossip Girl is currently on summer hiatus (season two starts in two months!), but that hasn't stopped the show from influencing the behavior of aspirational teenagers and twenty-somethings everywhere. No, not in that it encourages underage drinking and drugging and sexing, as the show's prep school characters do week in and week out: the Times reports that Gossip Girl has become "one of the biggest influences on how young women spend." It seems female fans of the show are so eager to ape the fashions of Serena and Blair and little Jenny Taylor that they literally rip pictures of the stars out of magazines and flee to the nearest boutiques to buy the threads in person, or else try to buy the clothes online right on the Gossip Girl website.

In fact, designers such as prep school favorite Tory Burch see such a big uptick in business when their clothes are featured on Gossip Girl that they even pay fees for prominent placing. Some even take it one step closer, resorting to designing "oversized cardigans and ruffled plaid shirts with gold buttons" specifically with the Gossip Girl audience in mind. So much for artistic integrity in the fashion world. (It's not just small brands that are guilty of pandering: the Times calls out Marc Jacobs for its "punky school-girl style" and "crested blazers" from Ruffian as well.)

You know, this is probably worse than all those girls who have been getting knocked up after watching Juno, in that it's actually quantifiable.