"I'm a grown woman!"
"Says the woman with a Hello Kitty waffle iron."
While she may be the older of the Gilmore Girls duo,
Lorelai Gilmore feels more like her daughter’s friend than her mother.
"Okay our house is burning down and you can save the cake or me,
what do you choose?"
"That’s not fair the cake doesn’t have legs."
This unique relationship that defines the Amy Sherman-Palladino series
is partially framed as the product of the women’s closeness in age,
"You do not look old enough to have a daughter...
No I mean- and you do not look like a daughter."
Lorelai was just sixteen when she had Rory,
so she remembers vividly what it’s like to be a teenager,
but there’s another explanation for their mental proximity:
in many ways, Lorelai is still stuck in her own adolescence.
"I'm hungry!"
"Have some more pizza"
"It's cold!"
"Heat it up"
"It's not the same!"
"Lorelai, go to your room!"
When we meet her, Lorelai is in her early thirties,
yet she hasn’t reached many of the benchmarks
we associate with adulthood.
She’s been working at the same place since she was a teen,
"So Lorelai, how are things at that charming little inn of yours?"
"They’re still charming and little and we’re just crossing our fingers
it doesn’t assert itself and become rude and large."
Her parents still treat her like a teenager,
"You wear that in public?"
And she hasn’t been able to commit to any long-term romantic relationships.
"Do you think you’ll be single your entire life?"
It’s not mature and put-together teen Rory
but Lorelai who seems to do most of the growing up on the show.
"Maybe we’ll pull a Freaky Friday."
"Or we can just pretend like we did and
you can go around acting really immature-Oh wait."
Back in 2000 when Gilmore Girls started airing,
Lorelai’s Adult coming-of-age story
was a departure from decades of settled, all-knowing TV moms.
"If you know what you did was wrong, I mean, that's more important
than any punishment we could think of."
And it gave us a warm, enviable spin on the
traditional mother-daughter relationship.
"Thank you, Mom.
You are my guidepost for everything."
Today, it’s a portrait of delayed adulthood that’s only become
more relatable to younger audiences.
Here’s our Take on how Lorelai Gilmore shows us
that you’re never too old to grow up.
"You know what's great about being a grown up?
This."
"You're watching The Take.
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"Someone willing to throw important life experiences out the window
to be with a guy?
It sounds like me to me."
The Lorelai we first meet essentially stopped developing at 16.
After she got pregnant, Lorelai dropped out of high school
to run away with her infant daughter to Stars Hollow,
where she’s remained ever since.
Her career has remained largely stagnant, as
she’s still at the Independence Inn— and although she’s worked her way up
from maid to manager,
"And how are things at the motel?"
"The inn?
They're great."
"Lorelai’s the executive manager now, isn’t that wonderful?"
her desire to strike out on her own and build something new
with her friend, Sookie, remains a pipe dream.
"You know, someday, when we open our own inn?
Diabetics will line up to eat this sauce."
Lorelai’s whole personality feels juvenile,
from her manners,
"She has this off-putting sense of humor, Mikhail,
you would know that if you spent time with her."
to her eating habits.
"Do we want marshmallows?"
"Ymmm...and jellybeans.
And chocolate Kisses.
Cookie dough we have at home, peanut butter."
Her relationship with Rory is more like that of two sisters.
"I have your CD."
"Thief."
Lorelai mocks Rory for being too uptight,
"My sense of adventure did not translate to my offspring."
while Rory kids her mother for behaving like a child.
"I have vanilla, chocolate, strawberry,
and toasted marshmallow."
"Anything in there not resembling a breakfast cereal?"
And it’s often Rory who’s the more responsible one.
"I can’t be late on my first day of school."
Lorelai’s relationship with her own parents similarly
hasn’t progressed past adolescence.
"Is that a collectors cup or can I throw it away for you?"
Emily and Richard Gilmore still see their daughter as
a reckless girl who can’t be trusted to make her own decisions.
"I only want the best for her and since she is incapable
of judging what is right and what is wrong, I had to step in.
I had to act."
And Lorelai is so desperate to be free of her parents’ control
that she often behaves like that petulant teen,
obsessed with upsetting them.
"It’s almost like the absence of their reaction was worse than
any freak-out they could’ve had."
Lorelai acts like a reckless teen in her romantic life, too.
"Is this weird?"
She constantly second-guesses her feelings and behaves impulsively:
rekindling an affair with Rory’s father,
dating one of Rory’s teachers, and eventually,
rejecting marriage proposals from both of them.
"For the entire week before my wedding,
I’d wait till my mother went to sleep and
I’d sneak out of bed and I’d put on my wedding dress."
"Because I didn’t wanna try on my wedding dress every night."
Lorelai’s state of arrested development is one we’ve seen time and again
in pop culture— but mostly in male characters.
From the proud manchild,
"Chlorophyll?
More like Borophyll!"
to the confirmed bachelor, we’ve become inured to
boyish men who spurn marriage, children,
and meaningful careers.
"It’s gonna take a stick of dynamite to get me out of my parents house."
And while most of those stories involve these man-boys
eventually growing up, we’re also meant to find
their immaturity amusing— even liberating.
"It’ll give us so much space in our room to do activities!"
But until recently, the failed grown-up
wasn’t usually a woman, and she certainly wasn’t a mom.
Before Gilmore Girls, most TV moms were
caretakers and homemakers, wells of wisdom and sensible advice.
"Well, Beaver, today girls can be doctors and lawyers too, you know.
They're just as ambitious as boys are."
Lorelai Gilmore broke with this tradition
by being messy and irresponsible,
"We’re gonna get in trouble."
"You’re such a worry-wart."
as well as unapologetic about her imperfections.
Her rejection of the expectations society places on women—
and mothers especially— has since manifested
in other popular "Woman-child" characters,
who don’t have their lives all figured out.
"Why aren’t you married?"
"I’m just not right now."
Recently, we’re seeing a growing number of
pop-culture moms finally following in Lorelai’s footsteps
by not conforming to the pressure to be perfect
and conventionally "adult."
"I can’t tell you not to drink and smoke pot
because my senior yearbook quote was 'Let’s Drink and Smoke Pot!'"
On Gilmore Girls, Lorelai’s immaturity allows her
to relate to her daughter like a best friend—
-an unconventional spin that’s central to the show’s appeal.
"You're drawing me into your drunken world."
"It's not a bad place to be, my friend."
And while it’s Rory who’s technically coming of age,
in many ways it’s Lorelai's story of growing up
that delivers the deepest satisfaction.
"It feels right."
"Yeah."
"Such a long time getting here,
sometimes it's just a journey, you know?"
Traditional coming-of-age stories, typically rely on the idea
that people grow up fast— that often, all it takes
is one transformative experience, or even one crazy night.
"You just can’t stay 17 forever!"
These stories all take for granted that everything will just
"settle down" once you’re an adult.
"None of this will matter when I’m 38."
But Gilmore Girls challenges this narrative.
For both Rory and for Lorelai, growing up is a slow process of
trial and error, figuring out who you are
and what you value— and it’s never really finished.
One of the main ways we see Lorelai mature is
in her relationship with her parents.
"I'm just unbelievably touched and grateful for what you said to him,
for defending me like that."
Over the course of the series, Lorelai realizes that
her determination to live the opposite of the life
her parents want for her is a self-negating attitude,
one that actually hinders her ability to make her own choices
and define herself.
"What if I don’t want to do what I want to do because
I want to do it but because they don’t want me to?"
We recognize that she’s truly growing up when
she stops seeking not just her parents’ approval,
but also their rejection.
As a result, Emily and Richard at last begin to see Lorelai as an adult,
and to stop trying to micromanage her life.
"I’ve moved on.
Richard, anything you’d like to add?"
"I can’t think of a thing."
Lorelai’s self-actualization also manifests itself in her career.
"I’m diving in.
Sookie and I are finally gonna open that Inn."
When she first discovers the Dragonfly Inn, it’s in disrepair—
not unlike Lorelai herself.
"A little paint, some pretty curtains, 150 thousand dollars of construction,
We're open for business."
But in a testament to Lorelai’s growing maturity,
she commits to putting in the hard work
to make her dream a reality.
Lorelai’s "coming of age" is perhaps most evident, though,
in her relationship with Luke.
"You two are perfect for each other.
I have always thought that some day if you just sort of turned around
and opened your eyes that you would see it."
At the beginning of the series, neither Lorelai nor Luke
are ready for anything serious.
"I mean, people grow and evolve their whole lives,
the chances that you’re going to grow and evolve at
the same rate as someone else?
Too slim to take."
Unlike the working-class Luke, Lorelai dates the kind of men
her parents might have chosen for her.
"You have good breeding."
But even when Lorelai doesn’t seem to know who she is,
Luke remains a loyal friend.
"You think I can hack being a business owner?"
"I think you can hack anything."
as well as a surrogate father to Rory.
"Luke and I have had our ups and downs over the years but
through it all his relationship with my daughter Rory has never changed."
Luke’s and Lorelai’s is the sort of bond that
can only develop out of years of patient growth.
"I just want you to know I’m in.
I am all in."
In Luke, Lorelai recognizes fully who she is,
and in choosing him, she’s committing
not only to him but to herself.
"Luke will you marry me?"
After a lifetime of hasty decisions, both finally realize the importance
of taking the time to figure out what you really want.
"Take all the time you need."
Lorelai’s coming of age is contrasted with Rory’s own—
and from the very beginning, it’s Lorelai’s fear that
Rory will repeat her own mistakes that creates most of the conflict.
"She was supposed to have more than me.
She was supposed to have everything."
In arrested development stories, a character has often failed to
progress beyond a certain stage because of a critical event
or period of trauma, or because they’re hung up
on a particular era of their past.
"You can come to the city with me like we always planned."
"Mavis, I'm a married man."
"I know.
We can beat this thing together."
It’s no coincidence that Lorelai stopped growing at
precisely the age when she got pregnant with Rory.
Lorelai feels that becoming a teen mother required her
to sacrifice the personal growth and development that non-parents
get to continue on with.
And when it comes to Rory’s future,
it’s clear that Lorelai’s own lost youth—
and all those missed opportunities— continue to weigh heavily on her mind.
"She can finally go to Harvard
like she's always wanted and get the education I never got
and do all the things I never got to do and
I can resent her for it and we can finally have
a normal mother-daughter relationship."
At first, to Lorelai’s relief, Rory appears to be on
a polar opposite path from the one her mother took.
Yet over time we see that Lorelai’s example has affected
her daughter in more complicated ways.
After being laser-focused in high school on her goal
to become a high-achieving academic superstar,
Rory hits more speed bumps in college (and beyond) that cause her
to question her assumptions about adulthood and
recalibrate her plans.
"I don’t wanna wander around a school where everyone else is focused and
working towards something and I’m just floating."
Ironically, the 2016 revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
shows Rory subtly falling into very similar patterns
as her mother once did.
At 32 (around the same age as Lorelai was when the show began),
Rory is stagnating in her career and making immature choices.
"Um, sorry.
I just didn't have a pitch prepared."
"That's a little weird.
Thought you'd bring some ideas."
And in the last moment of the final episode,
history repeats when Rory reveals that
she’s about to become a single mom.
"I'm pregnant."
We can infer that the father is (like her own) a rich guy
with a controlling family, while Rory (like her mom)
is planting the slow-growing seeds of a deeper bond with
a gruff yet thoughtful man who’s not just reminiscent of Luke
but even related to him.
"Whatever you say, Uncle Luke."
"It's Luke just Luke."
While Lorelai’s in-depth reaction to Rory’s news is yet to be explored
in a potential continuation of the revival,
this announcement is in many ways exactly the moment she’s long feared
for the daughter she was determined must not end up like her.
"You are going on the pill."
"What?!"
"You are not getting pregnant!"
Yet from what we’ve seen unfold for her mother,
we can gather that Rory- who’s also double the age
Lorelai was when she got pregnant, and on her way to publishing a book-
will be just fine doing things her own way,
in her own time.
Gilmore Girls underlines that messiness and imperfection are
important parts of achieving true maturity,
and the straight-and-narrow, fast-track path
isn’t necessarily the right one.
After spending all those years watching her mother grow-up as an adult,
Rory is ultimately empowered to make mistakes,
go her own way, and not make big life decisions before she is ready.
"I kind of like the idea that it’s just all kind of wide open and
if I married you it just wouldn’t be."
"It’s the first time in my life I’ve gotten to feel like
a single grown-up woman."
Ultimately, for Lorelai, waiting to grow up
until she’s an adult turns out to be a good thing.
The slower timeline gives her the space to formulate a clear idea
of who she is and what she really wants.
Both her career,
"We’re such great business women!"
and her relationship with Luke are strengthened
by her allowing them to evolve over time.
"This has been a really great first date."
"It only took us eight years to get here."
Being a late-bloomer actually allows her to be a more engaged,
open mother to Rory, and it eventually even enables
Lorelai to become closer to her own parents,
as they all but start over as friends.
"Why don’t we just talk about it Friday night at dinner?"
Looking back now, Lorelai’s is a story
that proves reassuring to modern younger generations who’ve
recently found themselves struggling with their own late-onset adulthood.
"I thought you were up!
It's 7:10."
"No it's a quarter to 6."
"No it's not!"
"Yes it is, I set the clock
for a quarter to 6 so...
It's 7:10!"
When Gilmore Girls premiered in 2000, Lorelai was 32, which
makes her a member of Generation X.
Yet her struggle resembles those that have become increasingly common
to millennials, many of whom have found
achieving the milestones set by their parents to be difficult—
even unrealistic.
"I was supposed to graduate from high school,
go to Vassar, marry a Yale man and
get myself a proper nickname like babe or bunny or shitsu."
Young people are less likely to be able to afford a home.
They’re getting married later— if at all.
And both millennials and now older members of Gen Z
are faced with a job market that’s still crowded with
Boomers and members of Lorelai’s generation,
making it difficult to find work, let alone a satisfying career.
For many in this environment, the traditional coming of age narrative—
in which your most formative experiences happen
in your teens and twenties, and then your life is set in stone—
-rings false.
Lorelai’s trajectory is far closer to what people today are living.
"I just thought I had everything under control but I didn’t,
and the inn is just falling apart."
So young viewers discovering Gilmore Girls for the first time now
may relate more immediately to the so-called grown-up
than to the perfectionist youth who appears to have it all mapped out.
"You have so many years of screw-ups ahead of you."
Lorelai reassures us that it’s okay to still be figuring out
who you are, well into your 30s and beyond...
and that the usual benchmarks of success—a career,
a committed relationship, knowing exactly what you want—
are not only still achievable later on; they may even be better for the wait.
"It’s really hard to get married.
Believe me, I should know."
The character also gives us a vibrant, energized portrait of adulthood
that doesn’t equate growing up with giving up.
However much she changes, Lorelai never loses her youthful spirit.
"Oy with the poodles, already!"
Decades later, she remains a sympathetic, inspirational
character to mothers and daughters alike—
and an illustration that, when it comes to deciphering
what to do with your life, we’re all making it up as we go along.
"But I’m here now and, hey, I’m like cheese."
"What?"
"She gets better with time."
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