Pretty Little Liars Has a Groomer Problem

Pretty Little Liars isn't the type of show I'd normally be interested in, but one of my coworkers convinced me to watch it. She'd described it as Gossip Girl meets murder mystery. She even started asking me how far I'd gotten into the show and what I thought about it.

Pretty Little Liars opens the night of a sleepover where one girl disappears, before quickly cutting to the 'present day'. Allison (the girl who disappeared) is presumed dead and her group of friends have drifted apart. The girls come back together when they began receiving harassing messages. The sender, A, knows secrets about each of the girls and plans to extort them.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I wasn't a fan of the show and only got through the first season. I wanted to stop watching long before, but my coworker insisted it would get better. I thought the reason the show wasn't interesting was because I wasn't the intended target audience. The show is loosely based on a book series of the same name, both are intended for teenage girls.

The show was certainly popular when it aired. There was even a picture of the girls in the window at the mall where I worked. I couldn't go into a bookstore without seeing the books. The girls were fashion icons and often made best-dressed lists. There was no shortage of girls who wanted to dress like them, or even lead lives like theirs.

The popularity of Pretty Little Liars is exactly why I have an issue with it. While I haven't read the books, I have seen more than enough of the show to realize that there's an issue with the relationships portrayed within the series.

Early on, we learn that one girl regularly steals her older sister's boyfriends. Another regularly had flings with older men, but the worst of these relationships is the one that occurs between one of the main couples, Aria and Ezra.

Aria is sixteen when she meets and 'hooks up' her twenty-three-year-old teacher. The teacher and student have discussions about the relationship and decide to keep it hidden from others, often meeting at his apartment or in his car. The relationship is so prominent that I knew the couple had gotten married, despite having given up on the show.

A quick Google search of the series turned up articles and discussions about the pair, with some viewers holding the same opinion as I did about the couple. What's worse is that the watchers said he claimed to know that she was underage during their first meeting. He'd also been spying on Aria and her underage friends because he'd planned to write a book about her friend who'd disappeared. It's also revealed that he'd previously had a relationship with the girl who'd disappeared. This means he'd had relationships with two underage girls during the tv series.

It's easy to see why teenage fans rooted for the pair, because the writers romanticized both Ezra and the relationship. Ian Harding, who portrays Ezra, looks nothing like you'd imagine a predator to look. In fact, he's a handsome man that teenage fans found attractive upon their first viewing. Even now I could find a website calling him the perfect boyfriend.

Aria's parents did briefly try to break the pair up, but their efforts were short-lived and unpopular with the fans. They appear to be the only ones who have an issue with the relationship, as none of Aria's friends speak up about the relationship.

Pretty Little Liars isn't the first series to showcase an inappropriate relationship, but it's unusual that the pair gets a happy ending. While the relationship exists in the books, it's brief and Ezra gets arrested for dating his student. In the tv series, they're one of the main couples.

Pretty Little Liars is a work of fiction, but the fictional stories it portrays can be dangerous to its young audience. Maybe I'd feel differently if Aria had understood that she was being groomed by not only an older man but an authority figure in her life.

Many young people can relate to Aria, and may be unsure how to interpret a relationship that is actually predatory, yet portrayed as romantic. Luckily, Pretty Little Liars Original Sin does better in this aspect. The series showed an older man trying to take advantage of a younger girl, only to be reminded of her age and threatened by her mother. Unfortunately, this was the same series that name-dropped Aria and Ezra, claiming that they were the perfect couple.

Hopefully, if the series ever gets another reboot or spin-off, the showrunners will steer clear of these types of relationships.