Rory Gilmore: the TV icon for the thinking girl — isn’t that what they called her?
She walked around with a book glued to her nose, chose studies over parties, and was hailed nearly perfect by her friends, family, teachers, and neighbours. Well now I have to say goodbye, Rory Gilmore! You all but screwed me over and now I’m ending the decade-long TV hero relationship we once held.
I grew up watching, nay, worshipping the Gilmore Girls. Rory Gilmore was my idol. When she wore pea coats, I wore pea coats. When she made those charming pop culture references, I spent hours online tracking down the esoteric trivia. And when she hurled herself into her many panic-driven studying frenzies, I hurled myself alongside her. It was a bizarre identity-dependent relationship I formed with Rory, and apparently I wasn’t the only one. A Google search of her name will bring up pages like “How to Look like Rory Gilmore” and, even scarier, “How to Be Rory Gilmore.”
I remember reading an article that portrayed Rory as a saviour for teen girls. She was finally a relatable character for the kids who did not spend their high school years overdosing at glamorous house parties. True, I suppose. In a way she made nerdy cool, but she wasn’t really a nerd, was she? She dressed well, weighed 110 pounds, and, to put it simply, anyone whose high school date is Jared Padalecki should immediately have their nerd status revoked, even if they can carry on a conversation about Nikolai Gogol. My real issue with Rory, though, is that I think in all our praise and glorying of this intellectual icon we all forgot one thing: Rory Gilmore was a flat-out workaholic.
It’s not healthy to stay inside and study as often as she did, to hurl yourself into frenzies and fits over every little assignment and beat yourself up over any minor fall in grades. For four long years I followed in her footsteps, twisting into self-induced anxiety attacks and draining all my energies into the unhealthy relationship I had formed with this fictional character. While I know no one has a good high school experience, I can’t help but think that mine might have been a little more enjoyable had I taken a bit of time to relax. Worse yet, it was all done in vain. I’m at U of T with the rest of my high school classmates who didn’t spend nights before exams breathing into a paper bag while memorizing the periodic table. The only difference between us is that, while they’re all ready to hunker down and take school seriously, I, beaten, bloody, and exhausted, have nothing left to give to my studies.
This would all be fine except that, while three years have passed since the show’s finale, I still can’t shake that guilt. Sure, come the final few seasons of the show Rory broke under stress as well. When she got to Yale, she stole a boat, took a semester off of school, and went off gallivanting in Connecticut with her rich, asshole of a boyfriend. But that’s not the Rory Gilmore that plagues me at night; no one liked that one anyway.
The Rory Gilmore who could list a million television, music, and film references as if she spent her entire life glued to a screen, but still got grades high enough to make valedictorian, is the one that haunts me to this day. She tugs at my conscience every time I forget Bono’s real name; she churns my stomach with guilt when I go out for a bike ride on a sunny afternoon rather than stay indoors to read; and her smug smile still feels like a kick to the gut with a frozen boot each time I get a less-than-mediocre grade on a paper.
I suppose the real issue at hand is the unhealthy influence television can have on teens if they spend too much time glued to the set, or why our society seems to praise and reward workaholic tendencies. But all I can think is, damn you Rory Gilmore. After a decade of your haunting, guilt, manipulation, I’m dropping you for good now. I’m moving on with my life, to bigger and better things. Like Liz Lemon.
