I love fall. I really, really do. I love the colors and the weather and the holidays. If you’re in California like me, it occasionally rains. And when it does, it’s the perfect opportunity to start a rewatch of your favorite childhood show, Gilmore Girls.
The problem is, I never finish my rewatch. Not because I get too busy to find the time (one will always find time to procrastinate), but because I quite literally cannot take it. The early seasons of Gilmore Girls make me feel too uncomfortable with myself. Too self-aware. Too disappointed.
If you’re reading this and have no clue what Gilmore Girls is, don’t worry, I’ll fill you in. Gilmore Girls is an intergenerational dramedy that follows the lives and relationships between the Gilmore girls: Lorelai (Lauren Graham), Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Emily (Kelly Bishop). I didn’t watch the show until it was off the air, till I was 14 or 15, but when I did, I instantly connected with the storyline.
Lorelai is a single mother raising her daughter Rory in the storybook small town of Stars Hallow, Connecticut. Rory is a shy, nose-in-book, hardworking young teenager with dreams of attending Harvard. The show’s plot kicks off when Lorelai must go to her mother, Emily, to ask for financial support so she can send Rory to Chilton Preparatory School. Emily agrees, on the condition that Rory and Lorelai (who moved out of the house at 16 when she became pregnant with Rory) attend weekly Friday night dinners with Emily and Richard, Lorelai’s estranged father.
When I watched this drama unfold, I felt as though I was watching my life on TV. Like Rory, I too was raised by a single mom, and I too had weekly dinners at my grandparents’ house. But most of all, I identified with Rory’s driven, school-obsessed personality. I also wanted to go to an Ivy League school, and I was willing to do whatever it took to get there, even if that meant having next to no social life during high school. As years passed, everything that Rory did, I did too. I adored her. I still do.
But it wasn’t until last year that I discovered that that’s an unpopular opinion. Turns out, Rory’s not very popular anymore. Her mistakes in the later seasons of Gilmore Girls apparently really turned people off to her. While at Yale (Rory doesn’t end up going to Harvard), she briefly works for a small publication owned by her boyfriend’s father, who ends up telling her she doesn’t have what takes to be a successful journalist. Rory is crushed. She lashes out and crashes a boat, is served community service and temporarily drops out of Yale. In just a few episodes, the entire idea of Rory just…falls apart.
I’ve heard people call Rory selfish, privileged and immature because of these things. People have gone as far as to say she became a flat-out bad person. But I don’t think that’s true. The way I see it, Rory is a burnt-out former “gifted kid.”
The term “gifted kid” refers to children who were labeled “with [the] potential to excel in intellectual, social, physical or creative domains.” However, these children struggle under this pressure as they grow up. They can begin to experience “isolation, stress, anxiety, depression and destructive perfectionism.” And speaking from personal experience, when the gifted kid burns out, they’re just as confused as everyone else. There’s this feeling of disappointing those you care about, and most of all, yourself.
I think this phenomenon accurately accounts for what happened to Rory Gilmore. She has an extreme drive for success, one that makes her valedictorian and gets her into Yale. But when she no longer has the structure of school and classes and grades to define being “perfect,” when the path to becoming a journalist becomes difficult (unlike most of her early life), she begins to lose her identity and sense of purpose.
This is why I can never finish rewatching Gilmore Girls. When I watch the Rory in the early seasons, I see too much of the girl that I once was. Optimistic, hopeful, confident in my future. Like in Rory’s case, people have had opinions on my dreams, too. A professor here at UCLA told me my double major in Political Science and Gender Studies was “useless.” I pretend to ignore it, but it sits in the back of my mind. What if he’s right? And if he is, what the hell am I doing?
I also face intense pressure from my extended family, just like Rory. Rory is a Gilmore; her grandparents prioritize status, education and success. There are certain standards expected of her. Now my family is by no means as austere as what is portrayed by Emily and Richard, but they most certainly hold similar expectations. Perfection — the absence of flaw — pervades my mother’s side of the family. Living up to those expectations with everyone’s eyes on you is hard. As a child, those expectations grabbed ahold of me and wrapped themselves permanently around my bones.
Seeing what this did to Rory, how it “derailed” her life and contributed to her so-called “downfall,” scares me. I know she’s fictional, that everything that happened to her was the creation of the writers, but her struggle is all too real for me. I understand what happens to Rory on a personal level. She was set up not necessarily for failure, but to feel like one. Being constantly empowered and told you can do anything as a child, while a privilege, makes any type of struggle in your later adult life that much harder and confusing. If you were so amazing then, why is everything so hard now?
Writing this was both cathartic and suffocating. I’ve said my piece but it doesn’t undo the damage. It’s hard having a character so perfectly embody your own life. Someone who plays back your feeling of being hopelessly lost but nonetheless attempting to stay above the water. It doesn’t help either that Rory is so wildly disliked now. I ask myself, will I end up like Rory? Will I have worked tirelessly during my teenage years only to burn out in the next two? I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I sacrificed social occasions for good grades and I still do. Am I just repeating it all in the hopes I get into a good graduate school? When does it stop? At what point do I reach my Icarus?