There are certain female characters in modern pop culture that many people relate to or can see aspects of themselves within. One of these characters is Rory Gilmore from the noughties television classic Gilmore Girls, a show that has seen a complete renaissance moment after being put on Netflix in 2017, the year of the new revival’s release. Gilmore Girls is now more popular than ever, particularly on social media, where it is a regular occurrence to see a TikTok edit of the show’s characters, or different posts with the hashtags #teamdean, #teamjess or #teamlogan underneath. Rory Gilmore as a result, has become the cookie cutter example of a book lover character who prefers to spend her time reading instead of partying. I am here to discuss whether her character development is realistic or just pure escapism. Beware of spoilers for both the original show and the Netflix revival from here.
For those of you who have not watched this show, it follows two women called Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel), mother and daughter. They live in the aesthetically pleasing town of Stars Hollow in Connecticut, which is filled with a tight knit community of eccentric characters.
Rory’s main journey over the course of the seven seasons is an academic one. She starts off the series having recently been accepted into Chilton, a prestigious private school which will increase her chances of continuing on to Harvard, her dream school. Over the course of seven seasons (and a Netflix revival), we see this shy bookworm determined to become the next Christine Amanpour go on a journey nobody expected.
Rory Gilmore is the prototypical bookworm girl. She wears a fancy school uniform that looks a lot cuter than the ones us Leaving Cert students had to wear during our school days, and different shots of her in the show are the backbone of many people’s Pinterest boards. The recent interest in the ‘light academia’ aesthetic of cosy jumpers and spending rainy days in the library has made Rory the perfect target for nostalgia-driven fashionistas.
Many of us can relate to her single-minded ambition to get into her dream school. However, I think the thing that she was motivated to achieve was the beginning of her downfall. The arrival of the period of her life she wanted to live the most led to the biggest change in Rory’s character.
She became incredibly real for this. Many people in real life enter college with big dreams and aspirations. Their entire life goal is to get into college to do a specific course but once they arrive in college, it is uncertain what career path many want to go down after graduation day. She wanted to be a journalist, but when tasked with what is expected in the early stages of a journalism career, she flunked. She was an excellent editor of the Yale Daily News, but when exposed to the real world of journalism, she was completely out of her depth.
The most famous example of this is when she takes part in an internship under the eye of Mitchum Huntzberger, who could be argued to be the show’s recreation of Rupert Murdock and Donald Trump put together. He is a newspaper giant in the Gilmore Girls world, owning many well renowned newspapers and is also the father of Rory’s boyfriend, Logan. She was only offered the internship in the first place because of a debacle that happened in the Huntzberger household surrounding Rory and Logan’s relationship. He admits it before she begins that she should take opportunities “handed to her”, as Mitchum puts it, because in his view, that is how someone gets ahead in succeeding in their career. Therefore, she should not be going into this thinking it is due to her journalistic skill and would need to prove it over the course of the experience.
At the end of this experience Mitchum tells her that based on what he has seen, she does not have what it takes to make it in journalism. As a result, after a little bit of criticism she completely loses it and drops out of Yale, despite college being the one thing she spent her entire life fighting for. Rory is the definition of main character energy, thinking she can’t put a foot wrong. I understand why she may be upset about these remarks. This is someone in journalism she has admired for years and since she has grown up with people around her constantly praising her and her work, it was a complete shock to the system when Mitchum said she was not good at journalism. I understand why it would throw her off and make her feel demotivated, but to completely drop out of her degree from an Ivy League institution thinking she would not get work after graduating based on what he said is completely irrational. If she chose to give up on journalism as a result of Mitchum’s comments, she could have used this opportunity in college to look at other career prospects and see if another industry would suit the skills she has gained in her degree and her overall interests. If she chose to continue pursuing journalism despite Mitchum’s feedback, she could have used this as a way of improving her skills and putting herself out there more through her work at the Yale Daily News in order to be better prepared to pursue a career once her time in college was over.
Rory then embarks on a path few foresaw: becoming a modern day equivalent to a 1950’s housewife to Logan.This is highlighted through the changes in her aesthetic. She goes from cute collegiate jumpers and coffee drinking to wearing Chanel-esque suits and drinking cocktails like her grandmother Emily. I hated this storyline when first watching it as it seemed so out of character for Rory to give up on her dreams so easily. However, I learned to understand why it was added and then watching the revival after the original series, I realised it was necessary. Rory is what young people don’t want to become. Her family, friends and all the people in her life have constantly praised her as being the smart girl destined for great things, meaning it is rare that she is challenged and critiqued. So when she is in her twenties and told by an expert that the one thing she has been preparing herself to do in life is something she is not good at, it leads to a complete existential crisis. There is a sense of realism to her character because not everybody gets handed everything they want on a silver plate for doing what’s expected and not going a step further. Sometimes the things you don’t want to hear are the things you need to hear the most.
Eventually she gets her act together thanks to the brief help from an old boyfriend (#teamjess), and goes back to Yale and we end the show with a more prosperous Rory back on track. That all changes when the revival is released. In the modern version of the show, Rory is now the same age her mother Lorelai was when the show started. She is even more of a mess than during her college drop out phase and is now unemployed, in the midst of an affair with an engaged Logan and is at a lower stage in her career compared to when she started.
Seeing her in modern attire holding the latest iPhone just doesn’t look right and takes you out of the story a bit as it reminds you that this is not the same happy-go-lucky show you spent seven seasons watching. Seeing this remake in the modern world makes the show lose its original nostalgic aesthetic that has made it rise in popularity in the first place. Rory’s development is as a result of going for the career you want but not ending up where you want to be. There is nothing wrong with not ending up where you expect to be, this is a natural way of life, however, she still has an element of main character energy of feeling entitled to certain prospects and opportunities just because she wants them.
Overall, the aesthetic of Rory Gilmore is pleasing and comforting as it reminds us of hope and potential not fully explored. She represents our inner younger schoolgirl determined to take on the world and she is a form of escapism for viewers trying to forget their problems in life. Despite her flaws, we cannot help but still like her as a character. I do enjoy Rory as a character, many of us were like her in our school days with big aspirations of our own. She is bubbly, funny and sarcastic, making her an overall enjoyable character to watch on screen. We can take lessons from Rory, the most important one being that if we are not prepared to accept reality face on, reality can potentially swallow us whole. The aesthetic of Rory Gilmore is pleasing to watch from a distance but I don’t know if it is a lifestyle we want to live.
