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‘Gilmore Girls’: Rory Gilmore Is an Entitled Millennial

That’s because she’s never had to hustle; everything has been handed to her. She only watched her mother struggle to raise her on her own, and even then it’s established that Lorelai went to great pains not to expose Rory to her struggles. … Despite her flaws, I relate to Rory because she displays all my — and my generation’s — worst characteristics.

This guest post written by Scarlett Harris appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

Like any pop cultural product that features archetypal women, viewers are apparently permitted to identify with only one of the Gilmore Girls: Lorelai or Rory. While there are personality traits from both mother and daughter Gilmore that I recognize in myself, I’ve never been a fan of Lorelai (Lauren Graham), so Rory (Alexis Bledel) it is. Like her, I’m bookish, introverted, and a writer. However, since the premiere of the revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, there’s been a backlash of sorts to the original television series as a whole, but particularly to Rory and her entitled millennial status.

We rejoin Rory nine years after her graduation from Yale and her first reporting gig on the campaign trail for Barack Obama. What’s Rory been doing since then? Well, it’s hard to tell but the show definitely wants us to know that she’s a capital-W writer. The problem is, though, that the Gilmore Girls writers clearly have no idea what it’s like to be a journalist in 2016. First, who the hell has three phones? Second, who can afford to flit between London, New York, and Stars Hollow on an on-spec dime (ie. nothing)? And third, who coasts on their lone byline in an albeit prestigious publication like The New Yorker. Luke can get away with proudly printing Rory’s “Talk of the Town” piece on the back of his diner menu, but most writers know it’s all about the hustle and where the next paycheck is coming from. I’ve managed to have a couple of articles published in my dream publication, but from there I was looking to what’s next. There’s a difference between savoring a milestone and resting on your laurels, but it doesn’t appear that Rory knows that.

That’s because she’s never had to hustle; everything has been handed to her. She only watched her mother struggle to raise her on her own, and even then it’s established that Lorelai went to great pains not to expose Rory to her struggles. But when Rory’s met with what appears to be the first hurdle in her professional career (and we don’t really get a sense of what she’s been doing since covering Obama’s campaign in 2007 and The New Yorker), she goes running to Mitchum Huntzberger (Gregg Henry), a man the show vilified for so long for telling darling little Rory that she didn’t have what it took to be a writer. Though he is an asshole, he was kind of right. And having her suck up to him (through Logan no less: she doesn’t even have the intestinal fortitude to ask him to put in a good word for her at the hallowed Condé Nast personally) after establishing him as the Big Bad for the better part of fifteen years undoes a lot of character development.

To be fair, Rory is largely a product of her upbringing. Until the events of Gilmore Girls as we know it — Lorelai’s reconciliation with her rich parents so Rory can go to an expensive private school and then Yale — Rory was raised by an independent, struggling, small-town single mom. Whatever life lessons she learned there were swiftly erased by the ensuing plot developments: her rich grandparents and then her rich father paying for her education and European holidays, her rent-free accommodations, and breaks in school and work to “find herself” similarly bankrolled by Richard (Edward Herrmann), Emily (Kelly Bishop), and Logan (Matt Czuchry). Judging from social media, while much of A Year in the Life’s audience felt like slapping the painfully unself-aware Rory at several points throughout the revival, who among us would turn their noses up at the privilege to write their memoirs in a stately Connecticut home? Say what you want about her (and I have), but Lorelai is one of the only characters in the show who springs to mind.

Despite her flaws, I relate to Rory because she displays all my — and my generation’s — worst characteristics. The number one complaint about millennials is that we were raised to believe we were better than everyone else, that we should win the ultimate prize just for trying, and that things should be handed to us. Then the global financial crisis hit and we had to reassess everything we had been led to believe was true. I went to college for professional writing and thought I would have a high-powered career in magazines. Instead, I’ve spent the intervening years hustling for the smattering of bylines I’ve had. I struggle with incredulity when my pitches are rejected because I, like Rory, have been socialized to believe that I am a special snowflake and what I think and feel matters so much that any publication would be lucky to print my words.

But some of us have also had a lot of safety nets put in place for these inevitable failures. Like Rory, I’ve also moved back home (to a house that I won’t inherent as my parents have no assets) to save money for a long-term overseas trip, so I wasn’t really “back,” also like Rory. And what my mum can’t offer in financial support she makes up for in home-cooked meals (sorry, no pizza and Tater Tots) and dog-sitting, so it’s not like I’m at a destitute loss compared to Rory’s multiple financial backers. But it took me a long time to reckon with the fact that my parents couldn’t support me financially if I took a misstep like Rory has and, as a single woman with no designs on getting into a relationship anytime soon, I don’t have the emotional and financial support of a partner. The Emily to my Rory has six children, twelve grandchildren and countless great-grandchildren, so there’s likely no inheritance coming my way. And I’m fine with that now. I know that anything I do or have is because I worked for it. The rare things I achieve through luck make me uncomfortable: am I entitled to them if I didn’t work for them? Can Rory Gilmore say the same?

It’s unlikely that the inevitable second/ninth season of Gilmore Girls will address Rory’s privilege: her pregnancy (#LastFourWords) is a convenient scapegoat for her to escape her floundering writing career and throw herself into being a mother. Not that women can’t have both, as Lorelai did, but it seems more like an excuse for Rory to give up than a challenge for her. And we all know what happens to women (again, women who aren’t Lorelai) that teeter outside the guidelines society/Stars Hollow prescribes for them: pregnant with twins the first time they have sex, thus informing their negative opinion of the act, or pregnant with a child they didn’t want because they thought our husband had a vasectomy. Like other shows that depict millennials (and particularly millennial women) as entitled layabouts, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life does nothing to dispel this stereotype.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Why Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls Is a “Cool Girl”

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers

The Kims Next Door: Korean Identity on Gilmore Girls

Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in Gilmore Girls

The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in Gilmore Girls

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer based in New York City. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris and read her previous published work at her website The Scarlett Woman.

Sugar, Spice, and Things Not Nice: Violent Girlhood in ‘Violet & Daisy’

The character of Daisy personifies the film’s juxtaposition of violence and girlhood. Daisy loves cute animals and doesn’t understand Violet’s dirty jokes. The twist is even that she has not really killed anyone, thus remaining innocent of all crimes. The opening scene displays the most daring oppositional iconography — the young girls dress as nuns, the ultimate image of pure goodness, while having a shoot ‘em up with a gang.

This guest post by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Violet & Daisy is written and directed by Geoffrey Fletcher (Oscar-winner for Precious) and stars Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan as the title characters. The stylized Tarantino-esque film, inspired by Thelma and Louise, oscillates between genres. Mostly, it is a coming-of-age story of two teenage assassins, with a play-like structure, scenes with heavy dialogue occurring one room between the girls and the man they’ve been sent to kill, played by James Gandolfini. The snafu is that they grow to care for him, making it hard to get the job done. And they need the money to buy dresses from their favorite celebrity line, Barbie Sunday.

Violet & Daisy subverts the notion that girls are not a part of such nastiness–the mafia, crime organizations, robberies, and murder. Fletcher magnifies the girlish and childlike imagery to challenge the viewer on this. It is clear from the poster–two girls holding bright cherry red lollipops, and the tagline “Too much sugar can kill you”–that the film will be fetishizing juvenile images.

These images run rampant throughout the film: blowing bubblegum, playing patty cake, yo-yo tricks, dressing as uniformed schoolgirls. One scene shows them lusting after the oatmeal cookies Gandolfini’s character bakes. They gulp down glasses of milk and reveal their milk mustaches. The character of Daisy personifies the film’s juxtaposition of violence and girlhood. Daisy loves cute animals and doesn’t understand Violet’s dirty jokes. The twist is even that she has not really killed anyone, thus remaining innocent of all crimes. The opening scene displays the most daring oppositional iconography — the young girls dress as nuns, the ultimate image of pure goodness, while having a shoot ‘em up with a gang.

Violet and Daisy use their girlhood to their advantage; the men around them underestimate their skill or cannot fathom their participation in such acts. The girls often sneak past the cops right under their noses. After a hit, they throw their nun disguises in the trash and round the corner in new matching gym outfits, playing swords with sticks (another child image). When Violet is in a store after a shoot-up, the cop questions her as a witness. Violet taunts him by asking, “What makes you think a girl can’t be in on it?” The cop obliterated any idea of her involvement because of her sex and young appearance. The rival gang that is also after Gandolfini’s character, dangerous and hardboiled men, mock Violet and her boss. They joke that he must have been too deep into the economic depression to “send a cunt like you to do a man’s job.” We have male characters erasing or overlooking Violet and Daisy’s actions because of their sex and gender, assuming that it defines their capabilities. Violet and Daisy prove themselves to be more than capable of their job, taking it seriously and referring to themselves as “career women.”

Violet and Daisy are primarily detached from their hits, usually murdering men who have committed a crime or a grievance against their boss. However, there is one instance of vengeance violence. It is revealed, through Daisy’s initial misunderstanding then realization, that Violet was raped by the rival male gang- all significantly older men. Violet does end up murdering these characters- though out of mere circumstance rather than seeking them out in order to enact revenge. They are also after Gandolfini’s character, coming to his home and threatening him and Daisy. Violet saves the day by sneaking up behind them and shooting them all. The film does not frame incredible emphasis on this aspect of vengeance, for she seems to be enjoy inflicting death no matter who it is. This unnecessary trope could have easily been left out of the narrative, there are other ways to establish a rival group of assassins. However, I do appreciate that there was no exploitative flashback scene depicting the act.

We are disturbed by women who commit violence; they violate our culture mores and assert their independence and agency in threatening ways. Our disturbance is greater when it is a young girl, expected to be pedestals of purity and unwavering goodness. This is evident in the film’s R MPAA rating, for not only violence but “disturbing behavior.” Naturally, their fear is manifested in these child-like young women who gleefully and willingly glorify murder. One scene features the girls stepping on dead bodies, exclaiming joyfully time for the “internal bleeding dance!” The most violent scene features Alexis Bleldel wielding a fire extinguisher as a weapon, the blood splattering on screen as we hear the thunk of metal hitting bodies. However, most of the violence–even the ramifications of the fire extinguisher–is off-screen. Thus the idea of young women doing this is just as disturbing as viewing it.

Yet while some may be disturbed by violence in girlhood performance, we have seen other similar characters on screen. We turn to Natalie Portman’s performance in The Professional and Chloe Moretz in Kick Ass. In The Professional, do we accept the world-weary child, who dares Leon to sniper shoot the passerby, because she evokes adulthood via mannerisms? Hit Girl from Kick Ass seems to be played for farcical shock, and is far more violent than anything seen in Violet and Daisy. Audience members marvel that an 11 year old girl, who should be playing with Barbie dolls, is instead calling men cunts, stabbing swords through their chests and cutting off their legs. A.O. Scott’s New York Times review of Violet & Daisy scolds it for “hav[ing] nothing to respond to beyond the spectacle of girls with guns.” While I do not think Violet & Daisy is nearly as exploitative as Sucker Punch, we must consider its elements. Sucker Punch reads as a masturbatory fantasy of girls wielding guns and swords as a means of giving themselves agency and vengeance over the men who exploit them. The main character, Baby Doll, also appropriates girlish imagery, creating this strange eternal child who is taken advantage of repeatedly in highly sexual ways. It is a spectacle in every way imaginable, but I do not think Violet & Daisy fetishizes violence nearly as much, for the plot is centered on tripping up their physical ruthlessness by forming a genuine emotional connection with their victim.

Violet & Daisy is a film that plays with its genre and is hard to read. Is it a fantasy? Or a commentary on violence? Should we take it seriously? One thing is clear- it deliberately engages with child-like motifs to challenge our views about girlhood, depicting young girls as capable agents enacting violent acts. Child or childlike assassins have been used in film before to comment on both societal terrors and curiosities. Looking at Violet & Daisy, I feel that it uses child-like imagery to amplify our cultural fear of violent women, as evident by the men who underestimate their mental and physical capabilities. A woman wielding a gun is terrifying, but a young girl wielding one is even more so, and Fletcher augments that taboo by pervading the film with childlike imagery.

Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is currently an MA Cinema Studies student at Savannah College of Art and Design. She writes about film at Geek Juice, Screenqueens, and her blog. You can usually find her watching movies or listening to Bruce Springsteen.

The Kims Next Door: Korean Identity on ‘Gilmore Girls’

While Rory struggled with the myriad of concerns afforded to a main character: her love life, her future, her friendships and family, Lane’s biggest conflict was always her overbearing, uber-religious mother and to a lesser degree, her own Korean heritage. Being Korean is never posed as a positive thing for Lane, it is only a marker of difference.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.

When Gilmore Girls was on it never occurred to me how strange it was that doe-eyed, bookworm Rory was on odd choice for a main character. Rory always carried a book around in her purse and considered an ideal evening to be watching a movie with her mother and eating her weight in junk food; on any other show she’d be a nerd, but her best friend, Lane Kim was undeniably cool. Lane was in a rock band, Lane was a cheerleader, she had an encyclopedia knowledge of music and later, she lived in a virtual frat-house with her bandmates. But she wasn’t Rory, the town’s baby, the golden girl, Snow White. Lane appeared to be just as smart and well-read as Rory, but no one ever suggested Chilton or Yale could be options for her. Rory and her big blue eyes went off to conquer the world and Lane stayed back in Stars Hollow, a few blocks from where she’d grown up, still in her mother’s sphere of influence.

For most of the show’s run, Rory or her mother Lorelai, would have their A-plot adventures, navigating the strange world of wealth and classism their old money background and Rory’s acceptance to Chilton usher them into, while plots for supporting characters like Lane, Rory’s closest friend (besides her mother) since the first day of preschool, popped up occasionally. While Rory struggled with the myriad of concerns afforded to a main character, her love life, her future, her friendships and family, Lane’s biggest conflict was always her overbearing, uber-religious mother and to a lesser degree, her own Korean heritage.

Being Korean is never posed as a positive thing for Lane (played by Japanese American actress Keiko Agena), it is only a marker of difference. Besides Michel, the flamboyant Celine Dion-loving inn concierge, who is Black, there are no other memorable minority characters in the series besides Lane and her mother. Though she is given her share of witty lines and pop culture references, Lane is the token minority best friend who has quirky hobbies, such as obsessively collecting CDs and hiding music and books her mother wouldn’t approve of under her floorboards. Once, when she believes she is being shipped off to Korea with a giant suitcase and a one-way ticket, the unseen idea of Korea, a far away land full of unknown relatives and unfamiliar culture so different from her American identity, is posed as a punishment and a threat.

In the first few seasons, her major hurdle is her mother’s insistence that she only date nice Korean boys, preferably future doctors. In one episode, she finds herself interested in a Korean boy who attends Chilton with Rory and her attraction to him becomes a minor identity crisis, that she handled by sneaking around and acting as if he was a boy her mother would not approve of. The relationship quickly ended before it had really begun because of Lane’s fixation on her mother’s approval, and her often pointless rebellion against her. In a later plot line, Lane discovered another young Korean boy, who she described to Rory as “the male me”, as he was forced to keep his relationship with a white girl secret from his mother. At the time, Lane was dating a white boy ( Adam Brody , who left Gilmore Girls to make his name in The OC ), they made a deal to pretend they were dating each other.

If Lane is used as a foil to Rory, Lane’s mother, who is only ever referred to as Mrs. Kim (Emily Kuroda), is contrasted with Lorelai. Lorelai is young and fun, while Mrs. Kim is austere and unyielding; if the show’s thesis is that Lorelai’s parenting style, acting as best friends instead of mother and daughter, is successful and enviable, we can only infer we are meant to see Mrs. Kim’s authoritarian parenting as failing her child. Though her character is given several humanizing moments throughout the series’s run, she retains cartoonish characteristics (notably in seven seasons, she is never given a first name), though this is common among the denizens of Stars Hollow. She talks fast and brusque, “barking” out orders in her heavy accent, scaring and dominating other adults, and single handedly controls Lane’s life, like a less ambitious “Tiger Mom.” Her idea of the life Lane can have is small: attend a religious college, marry a Korean doctor and have children. It’s a life not unlike her own.

Though early seasons hint that there is a Mr. Kim living with Lane and her mother, just offscreen, gradually these hints peter out and Mrs. Kim is left in a strange netherland: She mistrusts unmarried women and considers herself to be married, yet she doesn’t seem to be divorced or widowed. Like Lorelai, she is, or at least acts as, a single mother and along with her dominance, this masculinizes her.

Meanwhile Lane is closer to the stereotype of Asian women as submissive. Though she attempts to be rebellious and independent, Lane’s worldview has been shaped by the mother whose shadow she lives in. As Gilmore Girls began with the tension of whether or not Rory would repeat her mother’s mistakes, sex was always loaded territory in the show. Though Rory is able to grow into an outgoing, sex positive woman, thanks to Lorelai’s example, Lane is never able to enjoy sex. She believes her mother has somehow gotten into her head, convincing her subconscious that she had to wait until marriage to have sex, even though her conscious mind has not made this choice. On her wedding day, she learns that Mrs. Kim believes she is lucky because she only “had” to have sex once in her life, which produced Lane. Likewise, Lane becomes pregnant from her first, grossly unsatisfying sexual encounter.

As a friend, Lane is also subservient to Rory, though part of this is the nature of her role as a supporting character. Rarely does she get mad at Rory for going off to a fancy new school, leaving her at Stars Hollow High, frequently referred to as a nowhere school which prepares students only for trades and sales. Lane is forced to live the life Rory would have lived if not for her rich grandparents’ patronage.

Part of Rory’s new life are her countless new friends, classmates roommates and colleagues (mostly notably frenemy cum BFF Paris Geller), who often seem closer to her than Lane. Even if Lane is Rory’s closest friend, Lorelai is always her best friend, the person she cares about and understands better than anyone else. In contrast, Lane only has her music and she accepts this.

Besides being the only non-white character whose background we are given in detail, Mrs. Kim is also the only religious character, thus her Asian-ness is inexplicably tied to her religiousness, as a Seventh Day Adventist. Her church appears to be mainly Korean and Korean food and instruments are major parts of their gatherings. Though religion is a major source of conflict between Lane and Mrs. Kim, it also facilitates an understanding when Mrs. Kim’s mother comes to attend Lane’s wedding. The grandmother is a strict Buddhist who is unaware that her daughter is a Christian, forcing her to hide her bibles and crosses under the same floorboards where Lane hid her music. Lane is finally able to understand her mother though this rebellion, her Christianity becomes as subversive as Lane’s rock and roll.

Though Lane’s Korean identity only ever appears to be a source of discomfort, by the series’ end she seems to have made an offscreen peace with her heritage, as she names one of her twins Kwan.

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘Violet & Daisy,’ ‘Sucker Punch,’ and Poe’s Law

And the main thing about ‘Violet & Daisy’ I couldn’t puzzle out is what we’re meant to make of the incessant and brutally unsubtle reminders of the title characters’ schoolgirl trappings: popping bubble gum while blasting machine guns, stopping to play hopscotch on the way to pick up ammo, sucking lollipops while chatting with their boss and sharing cookies and milk with their target, giggling while jumping on the bellies of their victims to see blood spew from their mouths. I get that there is a “shocking contrast” between these innocent activities and their professional murdering, but could Fletcher really think that was novel or interesting enough to warrant a whole movie?

And then I think: Oh god, is this a sex thing? This is probably a sex thing. Wait, that’s too gross. This can’t be a sex thing. But oh god, lollipops. Lollipops are always a sex thing.

People who know me and know I write for Bitch Flicks love to give me suggested post topics. “I watched this movie and there was a girl in it—you should totally write about that!” Sometimes it is a case of “I can’t tell if this is sexist, could you sort that out for me in ~1000 words?” (I tease, but I actually really appreciate these suggestions because deciding what to write about is often the hardest step. Dance Academy is in my Netflix queue, KDax!)

Movie poster for 'Violet & Daisy' — Movie poster for *Violet & Daisy*

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday, so I am finally yielding to a long-standing request and reviewing the film Violet & Daisy. Collin’s gchat-transmitted review of the film is “I just liked that it was about two killer women and it had Tony Soprano in it.”

A slightly longer synopsis: Violet (Alexis Bledel) and Daisy (Saoirise Ronan) are young, girlish assassins, who take a new assignment because they want to buy dresses from the fashion line of a pop singer named Barbie Sunday. For contrived reasons, they fail to kill the target (James Gandolfini) initially and form a strong emotional bond with him while periodically fending off other assassins after the score. Gratuitously violent dramedy ensues.

Alternate title: Cutesy Murderesses! — Alternate title: *Cutesy Murderesses!*

The whole thing is rather twee and aggressively quirky, Tarantino-by-way-of-Wes Anderson (down to the Futura title cards). It’s so patently derivative I started to wonder if that was The Point somehow. Did writer-director Geoffrey Fletcher (who also wrote Precious, the polar opposite of this film in terms of tone) get carried away with a style mimicry writing exercise and actually make the movie?

Violet and Daisy play a hand clapping game

And the main thing about Violet & Daisy I couldn’t puzzle out is what we’re meant to make of the incessant and brutally unsubtle reminders of the title characters’ schoolgirl trappings: popping bubble gum while blasting machine guns, stopping to play hopscotch on the way to pick up ammo, sucking lollipops while chatting with their boss and sharing cookies and milk with their target, giggling while jumping on the bellies of their victims to see blood spew from their mouths. I get that there is a “shocking contrast” between these innocent activities and their professional murdering, but could Fletcher really think that was novel or interesting enough to warrant a whole movie?

And then I think: Oh god, is this a sex thing? This is probably a sex thing. Wait, that’s too gross. This can’t be a sex thing. But oh god, lollipops. Lollipops are always a sex thing.

Daisy sucks a lollipop. — Lollipops are always a sex thing.

But wait, the guy who wrote Precious couldn’t possibly think the sexualizing little girls is the key to a winning film. That doesn’t make any sense. This must be a critique of these sexist and icky tropes. The punchline is coming any minute. Any. Minute. Now…

This sort of Poe’s Law experience is probably familiar to many feminist film-watchers: is this patriarchal trash or is it secretly a critique of patriarchal trash? A classic example is Sucker Punch, a movie that scientists have proven cannot be written about without using the word “masturbatory.” Most feminists (including myself) barfed all over the movie and its icky initialization and objectification of victimized women, but director Zack Snyder insists his film was meant to be a critique of the audience’s desire for such content. Which makes my bullshit meter go off. The sad truth is we live in a world where it seems more likely that a movie about abused women with names like “Baby Doll” and “Sweet Pea” fighting fantasy steampunk wars is much more likely to be catering to the perverted male gaze than challenging it.

And ultimately, Sucker Punch was too unpleasant a viewing experience for me to worry too much about the validity of its claims to feminism: it is a terrible movie either way. Thankfully, Violet & Daisy isn’t nearly as gross as Sucker Punch, but if anything that makes me even less bothered to decide if the movie was trying to deconstruct these tropes or just replicating them. Either way, Violet & Daisy is not really worth watching unless doing so will somehow make your partner happy.

Have you experienced Poe’s Law at the movies?

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who will write a negative review of a movie you like as a birthday present.

World Champion Eaters: The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in ‘Gilmore Girls’

Guest post written by Amanda Rodriguez.

The long-running TV series The Gilmore Girls followed the lives of a single mother who got pregnant at 16 and her daughter as they live and grow in a small town. The mother and daughter duo (Lorelai& Rory) are unconventional, confident, independent, smart, capable, and fun-loving. In Lorelai’s words, “That’s because I’m not orthodox. I’m liberal with a touch of reform and a smidgen of zippity-pow.” The way in which Lorelai and Rory relate to food, however, is a complex issue that can function as a microcosmic reading of the entire show.

First of all, it’s important to establish Rory and Lorelai’s eating habits.

The Gilmore Girls like junk food.

The pair is infamous for not knowing how to cook and always ordering take-out or going out to eat. They eat burgers, pizza, or Chinese food for dinner nearly every night. For breakfast, it’s donuts, pancakes, bacon, pop tarts, or four bowls of cereal. They avoid vegetables at all costs. When they have movie nights (which is often), they stock up on a bevy of sugary snacks, including (but not limited to) Red Vines, marshmallows, cheesy puffs, potato chips, tater tots, and mallowmars. Not only that, but they drink copious quantities of coffee. Refusing to eat any sort of healthy food while indulging consistently in junk food is only half of it…

The Gilmore Girls can seriously eat.

This mother/daughter team has the capacity to consume mass quantities of food, out-eating their much larger male counterparts. They’re always up for round three or even four when the boys have thrown in the towel. In addition, they despise exercise and ridicule other women who either enjoy or feel compelled to workout.

Other characters constantly crack jokes that revolve around their disbelief surrounding the quality and quantity of the food the Gilmore Girls consume. The Gilmore Girls themselves refer to their eating habits with startling frequency. In fact, their diet is referred to in one way or another in nearly every single episode. Why is this theme so central?

Ostensibly, the way the Gilmore Girls eat is intended to be commensurate with the way in which they live their lives. Lorelai is not a traditional mother. She doesn’t grocery shop for healthy foods; nor does she prepare meals.

Lorelai’s refusal to conform to what society expects a mother to cook is symbolic of her rebellion against society’s expectations of what a mother should be. Instead, Lorelai is a hot, fast-talking, coffee guzzling, career-oriented woman whose relationship with her daughter is more like that of a friend than a parent. She encourages her daughter to think for herself and to make her own decisions. Both Lorelai and her daughter are extremely successful and well-respected with an intense emotional bond, proving that their unconventionality is not only endearing, but it works.

The pair’s notorious consumption habits act as a rejection of the notion that women must be so body obsessed that they strictly monitor their food intake, which can devolve into an unhealthy eating disorder and/or suck the enjoyment out of food and of life. These two women flaunt a freedom, self-acceptance, and pleasure-seeking attitude that are all expressed through their love of food.

Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Rory and Lorelia embrace the lowest common denominator types of food, preferring high quantity and low quality. Though Lorelai was raised in a wealthy household, she has rejected the upper class lifestyle. When eating their weekly Friday night dinners with Lorelai’s parents (Emily & Richard Gilmore), Lorelai and Rory often have trouble eating or enjoying the gourmet delicacies that they’ve been served. This is an expression of the way in which they’ve embraced their working class status.

Unfortunately, this is where the positive interpretations of the Gilmore diet end. On the surface, eating junk food and tons of it may seem subversive in its rejection of traditional values surrounding womanhood, motherhood, and class, but it is, in truth, an enactment of the male fantasy of the beautiful, slender woman who loves to eat and doesn’t worry about her weight. Within this context, their eating habits seem more in-line with an idealized concept of womanhood rather than a dismissal of it.

Gilmore Girls

The most disturbing and possibly damaging facet of the Gilmore diet is that it is patently unrealistic. Yes, there are thin women out there who have naturally high metabolisms or don’t exercise or prefer junk food. The combination of all three, however, is rarer. Regardless, there is a distinction between weight and health. For example, someone can be“underweight” or at “optimum weight” and be unhealthy, while another person can be “overweight” and still be healthy. It’s hard to imagine a nutrient deficient lifestyle like the one the Gilmore Girls practice resulting in copious energy, brain power, and a healthful appearance.

If so much focus wasn’t placed on Rory and Lorelai’s diet, we could chalk all this up to the combination of “good genes” (as often claimed on the show), a cute personality quirk, and Hollywood magic. The emphasis on the Gilmore diet, however, ends up creating yet another unrealistic expectation of how women should be and look. Many women lament online that they wish they could eat like the Gilmore Girls and not gain weight. Blogger with the handle“Leah (The Kind of Weight Watcher”) even created something she calls “The Gilmore Girls Diet” where she lays out her plan to eat like the Gilmore Girls in an attempt to lose weight. Even Lauren Graham (the actress who portrays Lorelai) struggles with food, her weight, and self-confidence. Not only that, but she loves being athletic and relies on exercise to keep her body healthy and within the Hollywood ideal. This underscores the fact that the Gilmore diet isn’t even realistic for the Gilmore Girls themselves.

For countless women around the world suffering from eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with food, the Gilmore diet is another detrimental example of the paradox insisting women should be naturally thin and beautiful while not paying attention to what they eat or how they take care of their bodies. This paradox contributes to many women’s struggles with body image and self-worth. It also promotes a negative relationship with food, where some women no longer view food as simply life-sustaining sustenance, but as a huge force in life. Some may see food as an enemy to be managed or starved, or, conversely, some women may develop an emotional dependence on food so that they must indulge in order to derive comfort. All the positive facets of the Gilmore diet are washed away in the face of its reinforcement of unhealthy body and food issues.

Now consider how unconventional the Gilmore Girls really are. They’re well-dressed, slender, and typically attractive. They live in a quaint, small town that they adore. Rory receives an Ivy League Yale education. Lorelai has no mechanical or home repair skills so must always ask Luke (the local diner owner) to be her handyman. Even their eschewing of the upper class lifestyle has its limits; they often enjoy the benefits of having wealthy family (expensive gifts, education, trips, etc), and the two generally fit in quite well at Emily and Richard’s upper crusty social functions. They obsess over boys and men, and both of them seek traditional heterosexual romances that will lead to traditional marriage and a traditional family.

In the end, the Gilmore diet says the same thing the show itself is saying: Yes, the Gilmore Girls are quirky, independent, and smart. Yes, the Gilmore Girls refuse to bend to society’s ideas of how a woman should be and what should be expected of her. At heart, though, the Gilmore Girls want that traditional life, and by the end of the series, they have that traditional life. Though the Gilmore Girls claim to be nonconformist, though they take an unconventional path to get there, they end up in the same place with the same kind of traditional life as other, less rebellious TV heroines. Their diet, like their lifestyle, may seem subversive at first glance, but instead reveals itself to be another expression of their internal acceptance of ideal, traditional womanhood.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Gender & Food Week: Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in ‘Gilmore Girls’

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Guest post written by Brianna Low.

Throughout Gilmore Girls’ seven seasons, mother and daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore are often seen eating vast quantities of junk food and ordering copious amounts of take out, which they consume together, often in front of the TV. From the series’ pilot episode it is made clear that neither Lorelai nor Rory have any interest in cooking, and the only things in their refrigerator are frozen fish sticks and leftover take out boxes. Their idiosyncratic approach to food is framed as just another endearing quirk instead of irresponsible, unhealthy, or an example of bad parenting.

While it could be argued that it is somewhat progressive of the Gilmore Girls series to portray two women who have no hang-ups about publicly consuming large amounts of food, it is important to remember that despite their voracious appetites, Rory and Lorelai are still conventionally attractive, thin, white women. Living in the quirky, depoliticized utopia of Stars Hollow, there is no real examination of the way in which the Gilmore’s racial and class privilege exempt them from the social condemnation that is frequently directed at poor single mothers and women of color whose food choices or weight are often criticized without any real consideration to the inequalities in accessibility to healthy, affordable food. Poor single mothers who rely on social programs like food stamps and have children who suffer from obesity and other related health problems are often publicly vilified for being irresponsible, unfit mothers despite the well-documented structural inequalities in food access and affordability.

Despite their objectively unhealthy diets, Rory and Lorelai manage to escape this specific stigma, both within the context of the show and in its outside criticism; this is due largely, I would argue, to their privilege and even the size of their bodies. While I don’t personally find it problematic that Rory and Lorelai are allowed to eat whatever they want with relative impunity, I do think it is important to place their unhealthy-diet-as-plot-device into a larger social and political context when critically examining the relationship between gender and food within the series.

Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) in Gilmore Girls; image via Emily Grenfell

Lorelai and Rory are not the only ones in the Gilmore Girls universe that have well-documented relationships with food. The diets of many of the supporting cast are intrinsic parts of their identities and function as important aspects of their characterization. The mother of Rory’s best friend Lane, Mrs. Kim, is a strict vegan who makes her daughter drink salad water instead of soda. Michele Gerard, concierge of the Independence and Dragonfly Inn, is a health nut that exhibits an almost fanatical devotion to calorie counting and exercise. The diets of these characters in contrast to Rory and Lorelai’s junk food addiction seem to highlight the drastic differences in the way the Gilmore girls like to eat.

Of all of the supporting characters that are connected in some way to food, two of the most notable examples are Lorelai’s best friend and business partner, Sookie St. James, and Lorelai’s friend and romantic interest, Luke Danes. Sookie, played wonderfully by Melissa McCarthy, is the head chef and co-owner with Lorelai of the Dragonfly Inn. She is an extremely talented cook and a compassionate and loyal friend to Lorelai. Her scenes often take place in the kitchen, where she is seen cooking and dispensing advise to Lorelai. While the kitchen has always been a stereotypically feminine space, Sookie’s fixture there does not come off as regressive. Socially, the world of cooking has been sharply demarcated along gender lines, with the personal and domestic sphere belonging to women and the public and professional sphere being dominated by men. Sookie, a master chef and a woman, is portrayed as a highly skilled and respected cook who demands perfection from herself and her employees.

Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) in Gilmore Girls

Much has been said about the fact that the character of Sookie, a fat woman who is often surrounded by food, is never reduced to her body-size. It’s true that Sookie is never once shamed for her size or subjected to lazy fat jokes, nor does she express any self-hatred or desire to lose weight. It is somewhat sad and telling that Gilmore Girls has received so much praise for treating a plus-sized character with humanity and compassion, but Sookie’s portrayal is indeed remarkable in a popular culture landscape that almost always essentializes fat women to their bodies and positions those bodies as barriers to happiness and love. Sookie is portrayed as an attractive, confident, and competent woman who is deserving of both romantic attention and respect. Her burgeoning relationship and eventual marriage to Jackson, a vegetable farmer, is fully explored and is not framed as some sort of miracle or only chance at love.

Luke Danes, the gruff and grumpy owner of the local diner, possesses many stereotypical markers of traditional masculinity. Seemingly unsentimental, he is often shown shouting angrily at his neighbors and even his customers, he never changes out of his flannel shirt and backwards baseball cap, and often escapes Stars Hollow on fishing and camping trips in order to relieve his stress. Despite this potentially flat characterization, Luke emerges as a complex character that does in fact care deeply about his friends and his community despite his gruff exterior. Luke is an interesting study when looking at the presentations of masculinity and food in the fictional world of Stars Hollow, particularly in the way he is cast as a nurturer who uses food in order to reach out to and comfort his friends and neighbors.

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Throughout all seven seasons Luke is often shown bringing food to the Gilmore’s when they are in need. For example, when Lorelai’s father is hospitalized after a heart attack, Luke brings food to Lorelai and her family at the hospital. Inasmuch as food can be gendered, diners and diner food fare with its burgers, fries, and malts often tend to be coded as masculine, however Luke is an interesting case in that he refuses to eat his own food. Although he is never explicitly referred to as a vegetarian, Luke is shown refusing to eat hamburgers and often refers to meat as “dead cow”. When Luke and Lorelai start dating and eventually move in together, Luke is decidedly more active in their domestic affairs, taking charge of the cooking and their home remodel. While this might not be the most shocking or unheard of example of stereotypical role reversal in heterosexual relationships, it’s definitely interesting when examining Luke and Lorelai’s relationship with food and each other.

Luke’s Diner itself is also integral to the series as it serves as the physical and communal space in which much of the community gathers. Episodes often open with Lorelai and Rory sitting and eating together in Luke’s Diner. Throughout the series, food serves as the unifying agent that brings people together. When Lorelai is unable to afford private school tuition for Rory, she goes to her wealthy parents, Emily and Richard, in order to ask them for a loan. The elder Gilmores agree to the loan, their only stipulation being that Lorelai and Rory attend weekly “Friday night dinners”. These dinners are an attempt to fix the strained relationship between Lorelai and her parents.

Gilmore Girls

Like their daughter, neither Emily nor Richard Gilmore are ever shown cooking, instead the extremely wealthy Gilmore’s have their food prepared for them by personal chefs. The class distinctions between Lorelai and her parents are blatantly obvious and are exhibited in the type of food they consume and the way in which they consume it.

Throughout its seven series run, food plays an integral role in the Gilmore Girl’s universe. While representations of food within the context of the show seemingly transcend stereotypical gender division, food and diet choice are still used to identify and characterize the different personalities that make up the world of Stars Hollow. In the words of Lorelai herself, “It takes years to learn how to eat like we do.”

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Brianna Low is currently a student living in Chicago. She enjoys watching movies and reading about feminism.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Three Generations of Mothering on ‘The Gilmore Girls’

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham)

This is a guest post from Megan Ryland.

For me, no television mother springs to mind faster than Lorelai Gilmore of the long running show The Gilmore Girls. In fact, what is arguably so special about the show is that it offers a popular mainstream venue to focus on mothering, and especially the challenges of mother/daughter relationships. Of course mothers are a constant feature in the media (how else would mothers know how to behave!?) but teenagers are rarely depicted as having a positive relationship with their mother. Rory and Lorelai have a tight bond that remains the central focus of the show despite relationship drama for both mother and daughter. They also bring in the dual roles of mother and daughter when Lorelai interacts with her own mother, Emily.

Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel)

Lauren Graham plays Lorelai, an over-caffeinated, high energy manager of a successful inn. As her daughter Rory, Alexis Bledel is a teenager striving more for a Harvard acceptance letter than a date, who has inside jokes with her mother, and clearly thrives in this single mother household. Lorelai’s status as a single mother is important because we are reminded time and time again that Lorelai has created a life that she (and her daughter, and the rest of the townsfolk) finds satisfying and valuable. This is a very different portrayal of the consequences of teenage motherhood.

Although coming from money and privilege, Lorelai left behind the trust fund life when she had Rory at 16. She rejected her parent’s assistance, refused to marry Rory’s dad, and struck out on her own. This further soured Lorelai’s already poor relationship with her own mother, Emily Gilmore, but has not led to Lorelai being a “Bad Mother.” There are many factors that allow for this, including racial, geographic, cultural, class, etc. For example, as a young white woman with the cultural capital of high class status, Lorelai is able to dodge stereotypes and the accompanying discrimination that a young woman of colour and/or low socioeconomic standing might face. This is an unspoken advantage that may allow viewers to accept Lorelai as a successful single mother. However, I still believe that the representation of Lorelai as a mother who has done a great job raising a child without the aid of huge financial resources or a masculine figure is a major plus for the show. And of course her position as a single mother remains difficult. In fact, the impetus of the show is that the lack of financial resources for Rory’s schooling brings all three generations of Gilmores back together, because Lorelai asks her parents to help pay for Rory’s elite education and in exchange her parents re-enter her life.

Movie night with the Gilmore Girls

Rory and Lorelai have a very complex relationship. Rory is occasionally mothering Lorelai, but it is never a permanent role. Superior experience is always on Lorelai’s side and she is able to act as mentor to Rory as she grows up. Lorelai doesn’t always advise her in the most conventional ways, but I would argue that she rarely verges into juvenile territory while parenting. Her temperament is youthful, while Rory’s is much more mature for her age, but they remain a mother/daughter team, and a best friendship. Again, this sort of bond is rare. I think that it’s valuable for a show on a network aimed at young people (WB and then CW) to contain positive relationships between parent and child.

In the first season, they deal with questions of how Lorelai can date as a mother, and how she can share the space that she has carved out for herself and Rory with a romantic partner. This is an important question, and one that is realistically complicated (of course, it’s also made unreasonably complicated by the necessary hijinks of television). Lorelai and Rory are given scenes where they discuss their needs, desires and challenges. Furthermore, Lorelai is accepted as a sexual being who can also be a good mother. I would call that a win.

What is arguably more common on television is the relationship between Lorelai and her mother, Emily Gilmore. Many rants and screaming matches are conducted between them, as their relationship appears based in constant misunderstandings. However, despite estrangement and resentment, the relationship between Emily and Lorelai is arguably never unsalvageable. No one can really write off this bond, because Emily and/or Lorelai occasionally show that they do indeed care for and value one another.

Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop)

Emily is first seen as a stereotypical suffocating, judgmental, harpy of an older mother, except when she becomes vulnerable and shows that she works hard to keep up appearances. She is bedridden when Lorelai runs away, she attends her granddaughter’s 16th birthday despite hurt feelings, and most of all, she is concerned that she might lose her family. She is far more complex than the typical older woman caricature and Kelly Bishop does a fantastic job with the role. Viewers can potentially sympathize with Emily’s ideals (often a product of her time and upbringing) and her feelings of exclusion from her daughter and granddaughter’s lives, even if they can’t identify with her strategies for keeping them close. At the same time, fans can also understand why Lorelai ran from the privileged life that she had grown up with, as well as the difficulties that accompanied that choice.

Arguably Emily was a type of lone parent, as Lorelai’s father was a typical career man who barely had time to put down the paper or end the conference call for meals. Although Emily was privileged to have a number of servants and nannies at her disposal, the fathering provided by Mr. Gilmore appears to have been very limited. As the most involved parent by far, Emily’s mothering has not fostered an obvious bond, showing that this connection is not inevitable. What Rory and Lorelai have takes work and is very special. It’s not a natural given.

The show allows for an exploration of motherhood from a variety of angles. An important aspect is the interplay between the daughter and mother roles. Throughout its many seasons, all three Gilmore women are placed in daughter and mothering roles. For example, in one scene in the first season, Rory is missing after a dance and Emily accuses Lorelai of raising a child as wild and irresponsible as herself. Lorelai defends Rory and says that she trusts her daughter, acting as a daughter herself in a situation with her mother. However, when Emily leaves and a contrite Rory appears, Lorelai acts as the mother terrified for her missing child and admonishes Rory. The transition between daughter and mother happens in a few minutes and it’s not only beautifully acted, but also representative of the dual(+) roles that many mothers play. You are never just a mother. You are also a daughter, whether or not your mother is always present. You parent with a history as a child. It’s a fantastic scene and shows part of the complexity of a mother’s role.

Three generations of Gilmore Girls

The interactions between Emily, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore make the show Gilmore Girls a unique offering. Rarely do popular shows for young people focus on the relationships between generations of women, or the role (and challenges) of contemporary mothering. Race and class issues abound in the show, which should be unpacked, but as a forum for understanding some aspects of mothering and honouring mother/daughter bonds, Gilmore Girls is fantastic.

Megan Ryland is currently completing her BA, focusing on politics, women and gender. She writes about feminism, body image, and media analysis on her blog, http://beautyvsbeast.wordpress.com. She also releases the weekly show Hello City! Culture Cast, a Vancouver-based podcast that reviews movies, theatre, concerts and more.