Gilmore Girls and the Incomplete Picture of Privilege

Like most women who went through high school and college in the 2000s, I have slowly been marathoning my way through Gilmore Girls on Netflix. My first brush with the show was some time between 2003 and 2007, when it was on air, but I was never a regular watcher. I got the quirky, charming feel of the show from the sporadic episodes I watched, but never really paid attention to anything more.

Now that I am watching every single episode in order, there's something that I already knew about the show but has really been standing out to me--that is, the assumption of privilege that underlies pretty much the entirety of the show. Now, as a friend pointed out to me, privilege in one sense is a given from the beginning of the show, with the pilot ending with the main title characters agreeing to weekly family dinner with their parents/grandparents (respectively) in exchange for tuition for Rory's private school tuition. And I completely agree. Much of the plot would not exist without the backdrop of privilege, and the charm of the show would simply not exist if not for the comfort within which the characters generally live. But what gets to me about privilege in the context of the show is how we don't see that the "less privileged" characters in the show still do enjoy privilege in the larger scheme of things.

(At this point, I'd like to warn first-time Netflix watchers of the show that there will be spoilers to somewhere around midway through Season 6. For the record, I really don't think spoiler alerts are necessary for a show that has been off the air for 7 years, but I like covering all my bases.)

But back to the representation of privilege that is missing from the show.



Let's start with Lorelai. Lorelai has her flaws, but one of the admirable things about her (or what is treated as admirable about her) is her independence--the independence that allowed her to leave her privilege behind after she gave birth to Rory, get a menial job, and work her way up to executive manager. She works hard. She overcomes obstacles. She's not perfect, but she is a welcome presence in the world of female TV characters.

All this is great. But given the repeated contrast between her more "modest" lifestyle with her family's wealth, it is easy to forget that Lorelai's life in Stars Hollow is not devoid of privilege, even without her family's financial support for Rory's education. Over the course of the show, Lorelai has days where she can't get away from her job, but when there is some kind of emergency (not always a family emergency), she appears to have flexibility with her work schedule, and there's no indication that she's losing pay for doing that. In the real world, only 12% of private sector workers have paid family leave, and only 40% qualify for unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act ("FMLA").

In addition, despite facing financial difficulties on multiple occasions (mainly related to Rory's education), there is no indication that Lorelai is living below the standards of others in her community. Furthermore, according to Legal Momentum, half of single mother households make less than $25,000 a year, and median income for single mother households is only one third of that of married households. Lorelai, even as a single mother who is not immune from financial problems, seems to be pretty well off by these standards. I do not want to diminish the fact that her hard work is insufficient to pay for the education that her daughter deserves and that many hardworking single mothers most likely face the same problem, but the inability to afford private school tuition for your well-deserving child is a luxury compared to inability to afford food or housing or healthcare for you and your kids.

I think these examples are sufficient to make my point in the casual context of a blog post, but I feel that the discussion of privilege in the show is incomplete without a reference to Rory's boat incident at the end of Season 5 (and its repercussions in Season 6). To fill in any readers who don't really care about spoilers and have made it this far (as well as any readers who have miraculously forgotten this major story line), Rory decides to go joy-riding on someone's boat with her trust-fund baby boyfriend after said boyfriend's father (who happens to be a bigwig in the journalism industry) crushes her by telling her that she doesn't have what it takes to be a successful journalist, which had been her lifelong dream. As a result, she decides to drop out of Yale (temporarily as it turns out) and is sentenced to 300 hours of community service and a criminal record which was to be eligible for expungement in 5 years.

In the show, this sentence is treated as appropriately harsh. The judge, who goes out of her way to address how she does not give a damn (not in those words) about where Rory goes to school or who her family is, rejects the deal that the expensive lawyer hired by her grandparents worked out with the prosecutor (which would have given her 25 hours of community service). In several episodes after the sentencing, Rory is shown performing community service with people who clearly do not share her socioeconomic background. Implicit message: Rory's privilege was of no use in this instance.

But was that really the case?

Plenty of young people Rory's age make stupid, reckless mistakes. (I seriously doubt that all the road signs that I saw in frat basements when I was in college ended up there through strictly legal transactions.) But some young people have room to make those mistakes and learn, while others make one mistake that fundamentally changes their path. I don't think I'm far off if I say that social factors (race, socioeconomic status, and other factors) could have had a serious impact on whether a stupid mistake can derail a young person's future.

In the show, the consequences of Rory's actions are treated as a big deal. I certainly am not trying to minimize a large number of community service hours and the existence of a criminal record, but after a little soul-searching, Rory was able to go back to her life at Yale and even enjoyed immediate success by being elected as the daily newspaper's chief editor. She had the luxury of taking time off from school (whatever the unfortunate and dramatic circumstances), she was able to find a place to stay comfortably without the need to pay rent (her grandparents' pool house, which is adjacent to their mansion), and a convenient and flexible job dropped into her lap through her grandmother's connections. After all of this, she (her family) immediately had the resources to get her back into an Ivy League college, and she had enough time to overload herself with coursework to try to catch up with her peers because she didn't have to get a job to earn money to be in college. These may just be practical conveniences for the flow of the show, but with the Gilmore family's resources, Rory's ability to take this path can realistically be explained by the privilege she enjoys if an explanation were required.

So what if Rory didn't have grandparents with resources? What if she was just a smart kid with a single mother who didn't happen to have a semi-estranged wealthy family? Assuming she was able to finance attending an Ivy League college to begin with, could she have afforded to drop out, find and live in comfortable housing, and turn around and return to that college? Could she have afforded this after months of working flexibly and partying with her rich boyfriend and his friends? Sure, Rory suffered consequences of her stupid mistake(s) and faced obstacles which she eventually overcame. However, those consequences were mitigated by the socioeconomic privileges she enjoyed, and she did not need to exert as much strength to overcome those obstacles as she would have had she not been blessed with such privileges. This is what is not apparent in the show, and it's the kind of glossing over of privilege in the show that makes me a little uncomfortable at times.

In the end, what bothers me is the downplaying of the social privilege enjoyed by some of the main characters due to their juxtaposition with even more privileged characters. I guess it's quite realistic that persons from predominantly white middle-class communities do not see the privilege that they possess in comparison to those who are less privileged by virtue of race or socioeconomic status. It's easier to feel the privilege enjoyed by other persons over the majority when worlds collide, for example, at an Ivy League college. That certainly is what I personally observed at my alma mater, Dartmouth College.

The entire Dartmouth campus has a very upper-middle class culture, and most people tried to pass as such. But we were certainly aware that there were filthy rich kids among our midst. At the same time, I had many friends who, in addition to taking out loans, took jobs on- or off-campus to make ends meet. But the issue of class appeared infrequently in the mainstream voices of campus. I know upper-middle and middle-class kids had financial concerns (to varying degrees) when it came to affording tuition and fees and having enough leftover to have a satisfying social life, and the fact that there wasn't enough financial aid for everyone who needs it was a topic that came up in campus discussions from time to time. Yet, there seemed to be very little awareness of the experiences of students who would identify their socioeconomic status as below middle class. This treatment of privilege that I witnessed among the general student population at Dartmouth is what I am reminded of, time and again, when I watch Gilmore Girls. The focus tends to be on the privilege of those at the top in comparison to those in the middle, and the privilege of those in the middle are not accounted for because only the top and the middle are visible.

Gilmore Girls is meant to be a somewhat comedic, feel-good show with bits of fairy-tale-esque moments, and it certainly is not fair to demand social commentary from it. Gilmore Girls is cute, funny, and lighthearted. It is also unapologetically female-focused, and it generally projects a positive message about the economic and sexual independence of women. I love it, and I stand by the position that it is a good show. But even if the show is governed by a touch of the fantastical, I think it's worth pointing out how some of the happenings may actually be a somewhat realistic reflection of a presumed sense of privilege that the characters implicitly possess. This presumed privilege is something that we shouldn't hesitate to discuss openly and, to get over the initial awkwardness of acknowledging those of us who possess certain forms of privilege, why not start by thinking about what is missing from the TV shows we adore?