Rory Gilmore Is A Bad Role Model

Hello from quarantine day 3,928… or at least that’s what it feels like. Life has begun to resemble the movie Groundhog Day. Each day repeats exactly like the one before it. I’ve been passing the time with Netflix, specifically by rewatching shows that I have seen a thousand times.

One of my favorite shows to rewatch is Gilmore Girls. An ideal mix of drama and comedy, set in the quaint little town of Stars Hollow, it’s the comfort food of television. However, while rewatching Gilmore Girls this time, a few years older and wiser than I was at my last viewing, I began to realize something - some of the characters were completely different people than I had believed them to be. My opinion of one character in particular changed drastically as I rabidly consumed all seven seasons and the revival series - Stars Hollow’s Sweetheart, Rory Gilmore.

Rory Gilmore was once my idol. She was brilliant but beautiful, she was a writer and aspiring journalist like myself, she loved to read but also got all the guys - in the eyes of 10 year old me, she could do no wrong. But the second time around, I was appalled that this character was once my role model. At first glance, Rory comes off as perfect. But this is a shallow and easily tarnished facade. Rory is often not a good friend, rarely a good girlfriend, and almost never a good journalist. On the surface, she seems sweet, kind, and levelheaded. But dig just an inch deeper, and we have a spoiled only child, coddled by family members and teachers who boosted her ego so high that when one man insinuates she might not be so special, she steals a boat, ends up in jail, drops out of college, quits pursuing her dream career, and moves into a pool house in her grandparent’s backyard. Mitchum Huntzberger, painted to be the bad guy when he tells Rory she won’t cut it as a journalist, turns out to be right. 12 years later in the Gilmore Girls revival series, Rory is a sorry excuse for a journalist, 32 years old and jobless, turning up her nose at opportunities that she deems “below her”, just because she had one successful article. One successful article. In 10 years. Her ego is so inflated that she shows up to an interview completely unprepared, no pitches or ideas, because she assumes she will get the job. She’s Rory Gilmore, right? When she attempts to tackle an article idea for a major publication, an opportunity that could be her big break, she squanders it by falling asleep during interviews and then sleeping with one of her sources.

Even putting her professional flaws aside, Rory Gilmore isn’t the perfect girl next door that she’s depicted to be. We’re supposed to think Rory is incredibly mature for her age, because she reads classic literature and goes to a fancy prep school. But right from the start, she was anything but. In the first episode, she throws a fit and screams at her mother for making her transfer from her dump of a public school to a private prep school that will provide her the opportunities she needs to go to an Ivy League school. Why might she throw this chance in the toilet? Because a boy smiled at her in the hall at school.

Boys: another aspect of Rory’s life where we see how royally messed up her actions can be. Rory is dating sweet, caring Dean when bad boy Jess moves to town and steals her attention. Instead of doing the considerate thing and letting Dean go when she realizes she has feelings for someone else, Rory decides to have her cake and eat it too, because she’s Rory effing Gilmore. Rory pines after Jess and lets her relationship with Dean slowly and painfully disintegrate. She doesn’t call Dean back or make time for him anymore, but what does she do? Call Jess so they can talk about books. Ah yes, Rory’s redeeming quality - she reads books, so she can’t be a bad person, right? Even when she throws herself at Jess and kisses him, at a wedding she attended with her boyfriend. Dean eventually comes to his senses and breaks up with her, and the next day Rory and Jess are Stars Hollow’s newest lovebirds. Poor Dean.

Oh, but Rory’s not done toying with you yet, Dean. A season or two later, Dean is married and working two jobs to support him and his wife, and Rory is single and a freshman in college. Despite their lives taking two very different courses, they end up back in each others sights again, and Rory loses her virginity to her married ex-boyfriend. Couldn’t you just leave the poor boy alone, Rory? And of course, she writes him a lovely letter after the fact, which his wife finds and Dean ends up a town spectacle as his wife screams at him and throws his clothes onto the street below. Fair enough, Lindsay. Fair enough.

Cheating seems to become a common theme surrounding Rory Gilmore, as we find her sleeping with her college boyfriend Logan in the revival series, even though he’s engaged and she’s in a committed, long term relationship, with a man she mostly just ignores. No one seems to see the problem with this either, which is an issue to unpack another time.

Rory treats her friends with about the same respect as her boyfriends. Her friendship with childhood best friend Lane is mostly one sided, with all of their talk revolving around Rory. When Lane has issues she needs guidance on, Rory is strangely nowhere to be found. Funny how that works. In college, Rory’s social skills are no better. She puts no effort into making friends, even with her roommates. This is a pattern continued from high school, where she was called into the principal’s office and pleaded with to be social instead of sitting by herself reading a book at lunch. Nothing inherently wrong with wanting some alone time, but the principal and guidance counselor did have some reasonable points - for someone looking to gain acceptance to an Ivy League school, social responsibilities are as vital as academic ones. But of course, why would Rory Gilmore work hard to get into college. She’s Rory Gilmore!

She does make friends with Marty, a sweet fellow Yale freshman who is unfortunately in love with her (why, Marty, why?). Even though Rory must have some idea that Marty is head over heels for her, she again painfully strings him along while she fantasizes about another boy - rich, arrogant Logan. She lets Logan and his rich friends talk down to Marty and make him feel small. Marty and Rory stop being friends after he admits his feelings to her and she shoots him down. Which is fair of her, of course, but then she can’t seem to understand why he won’t hang out with her after this. Let it go, Rory. Just let the poor boy go.

Of course, like many things in Rory’s life, this comes back to bite her. This is largely Marty’s fault, but Rory does play a role. Later in college, Rory finally makes two new friends, and one of them, Lucy, turns out to be dating Marty. When Lucy introduces Marty and Rory, assuming they’ve never met, Marty pretends like he and Rory are meeting for the first time, erasing their past history of hanging out everyday, eating takeout and watching bad movies. Rory is uncomfortable with lying to her new friend about this, but does not take any action or try to tell her friend the truth. Weeks later, Rory’s boyfriend Logan also feels uncomfortable with the situation, but unlike Rory, he does the right thing and tells Lucy. Way to go, Logan, guess you’re not a jerk all the time. This situation shows how little Rory has matured since she was that 16 year old girl who screamed at her mother over a boy. She still doesn’t know how to act responsibly and respectfully. And why should she learn to? She’s Rory effing Gilmore.

Have you watched Gilmore Girls? Do you agree?