Hey, guys.
It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet.
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and if you have seen the title or the thumbnail of this video,
which I don't know how you wouldn't if you clicked on it,
you already know what time it is.
And that is my favorite time of all,
dissecting pop culture through a class
slash economic slash financial lens.
We have already talked about some
of the greatest hits in terms of torpedoing
our healthy relationship with money
and class on this channel, hits like Sex
and the City and Carrie Bradshaw's
comically unrealistic life or the phenomenon of The Real
Housewives, which brought us an entire baseball team's
worth of scammers, including Erica Jayne, who got
her own video on the subject.
But while those targets are mostly
culpable for going above and beyond
in the grotesque aspiration and wealth
they demonstrate, one of our other big cultural touchstones
for women of a similar generation,
i.e. myself, that doesn't so much focus on aspiration
but focuses on the very legitimate and honestly
sometimes confusing portrayal of social class,
and that's Gilmore Girls.
Many of us who grew up watching Gilmore Girls
felt that it was giving us a window into class dynamics that
might prepare us for the real world
or make us a little bit more aware
of the various dynamics going on under the surface
when there are different levels of money and power
in a given relationship, especially familial ones.
But almost every lesson that Gilmore Girls taught us
about class was ultimately extremely compromised,
if not outright ridiculous.
Now, Gilmore Girls broached the topic of money
in nearly every episode.
And you could argue that this puts
it head and shoulders above other similar shows
because at least it was addressing
the financial elephant in the room, as opposed
to shows like Friends, where we're just
led to believe that struggling actors and baristas are
able to afford sprawling apartments in Soho.
But while money is addressed on this show,
considering that its entire premise is about class
differences, it's remarkable just how completely tone
deaf it was as both a piece of writing,
and as a broader cultural phenomenon.
So let's break it down with the miseducation
that Gilmore Girls gave us about money and class.
So let's just start with the basics.
Most working or middle-class Americans
don't have rich parents or grandparents to fall back on.
Gilmore Girls centers on Lorelei Gilmore, a hotel manager
in her 30s raising her teenage daughter, Rory,
in the quirky small town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut.
And in the show's pilot episode, we
learn that after getting pregnant at 16,
Lorelei ran away from home after giving birth
because she didn't want the future that her parents had
laid out for her, which basically included marrying
well and doing things properly.
16 years later, Lorelei goes to visit
her semi-estranged parents, Richard and Emily,
to ask for a favor.
She can't afford the tuition for the prestigious prep school
that her daughter Rory was accepted to,
so she needs their help paying for it.
And because that kind of money historically
always has strings attached to it,
this is where the show's central drama begins.
Lorelei must resume regular relationship
with her parents in exchange for covering Rory's tuition, which
sends Rory into a stuffy prep school, where the student
body comes from a very, very different background
than her humble middle slash working class roots.
Now, in the context of the show, we
are supposed to see Lorelei as a kind of noble protagonist
because she left her WASPy roots behind
to live a life that was more true to herself.
But one of her defining character traits on the show
is how much she wants to have her cake and eat it too.
For example, she's constantly miserable about having
to go to her weekly Friday night dinners with her family
but more than happy to let them float Rory's tuition
or buy her a car for her graduation
because it also benefited Lorelei.
So even though so many of her decisions
are framed as brave and independent,
she ultimately makes them because she knows and utilizes
the fact that she has something cushy financially
to fall back on.
For instance, near the end of season three,
just as Rory is graduating from Chilton, her prep school,
which, again, her grandparents paid for,
Lorelei's father gives her some good news.
Thanks to an investment that he made in her name the day
she was born, she now has a check for $75,000
to do it as she wishes.
We all love when that happens.
Do you remember the first time your father came up to you,
and you were like, here's a $75,000 check
to have fun with because I made a good investment when
you were born.
We love that.
And almost immediately Lorelei uses this money
to pay her parents back for the Chilton tuition,
even though there were many other more pressing expenses
to address.
It could have been put toward Rory's now college
tuition and the fact that mother and daughter were
about to embark on a three-month tour across Europe.
And her parents are understandably
upset about the way she handles the situation, mostly
because it represents an end to the transactional and somewhat
obligatory relationship that they
had because of their funding of Rory's tuition.
But if she was so desperate to break off
these ties from her parents, which is the reasoning she gave
her daughter for paying it back in one lump sum,
why would she not have been saving and paying them
all along?
Why wait for this sudden unexpected windfall
to all of the sudden care about breaking free?
Also, why the [BLEEP] are you going off
to Europe for three months if you
owe all of this money to your parents
and your primary motivation in life
is not having to see them on Friday nights?
Show me the logic.
And while Lorelei's parents in this show
are framed as the pinnacle of WASPy, oblivious, tone
deafness, they are far from the only characters
in the show who exhibit it.
Throughout the series, it is not difficult to see
Richard and Emily's privilege.
Emily's never worked, for example.
And there's an ongoing gag throughout the series where
she can't keep a maid for very long
because she continually fires them
for not being able to keep up her impeccable standards.
And the main reason for Lorelei's estrangement
from her parents was that she felt stifled
by the stuffy environment.
She was giving big Rose Dewitt Bukater.
She was not trying to have a life of polo matches
and cotillions.
As a side note-- and I might actually do a video on Titanic
at some point-- but I would have married Colin, cheated on him.
Be smart, girl.
Secure the bag.
But like in the case of Rose, money
was used as a tactic of control.
But even if Lorelei is framed as being
more worldly and cultured and aspiring
to a more spiritually rich life, she ultimately
wants the same bougie [BLEEP] her parents do.
She wants an Ivy League education for her daughter
without the burden of student loans
and all of the opportunities that it would afford her.
And she ultimately falls back on that privilege
we all know and love in order to secure those things.
And that's one of the things that's
so frustrating about Lorelei as a character.
She left home at 16 and worked her way up
from housekeeper at an inn to the manager of it.
So clearly she's aware that an extremely elite education
is not the only way to succeed in life.
But yet the extremely WASPy, traditional, old-school paths
of success are the only one she ever
considered for her daughter.
This gives me extreme vibes of in my hometown
there was this extremely expensive Montessori
school that cost like, I'm not kidding, almost $30,000
a year for high school.
And all of the kids that went there were very much
like aspiring artists and performers and directors
and all of this stuff.
And all of their parents were, of course,
like, doctors and lawyers and executives and whatever.
And around the college age, they all sowed their wild oats.
Like, they went and did a bunch of crazy shit.
Like, one of them was like in a vaudeville improv group
in New Orleans, which is like should
be banned under the Geneva Conventions as torture.
But they were all basically out doing their crazy art house
stuff in Bushwick, whatever.
But eventually they all went back into the fold.
And the vast majority of them, or at least
the ones that I still can see on social media,
they all ended up just getting normal legit high-paying jobs
because if that's where you come from,
statistically chances are that's where you'll end up.
And yes, struggling the beautiful struggle for a while
feels really romantic and sweet and bohemian.
But ultimately, they just want a nice apartment.
And similarly, Lorelei's issues with her upbringing
almost always seemed about her personal inconveniences
and aesthetics less about anything systemic or class
based.
Like, that girl did not give a damn
about the actual class inequities perpetuated
by things like the Ivy League.
And Rory has certainly leaned on her own privileged background
when needed.
In the aptly titled season five episode "But I'm a Gilmore,"
Rory is beside herself that her boyfriend Logan's parents don't
think she's good enough for him saying--
I mean, I'm a Gilmore.
Do they know that?
My ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
And let's not pretend that all of their neighbors
and various background characters in the almost
completely white town of Stars Hollow
don't have their own issues with privilege and entitlement.
For example, Taylor Doose, the town selectman and leader
of the weekly town hall meetings,
is a pretty damning portrayal of a New England NIMBY.
He turns up his nose at all of the same things
Richard and Emily wouldn't want in their own neighborhood,
from skateboarding teens to permit-less
streetcarts to disruptive musicians in the town square.
And while Lorelei and Rory may, yes, have had some
working class habits, their lifestyle
was nowhere near an accurate portrayal of the working class.
So yes, Lorelei and Rory's lives do look different
from the everyday lives of Lorelei's parents.
They take public transportation.
They rarely travel.
And Lorelei's putting herself through business school
a few nights a week while working a full-time job.
But their lives in practice look radically
different from working or even most middle-class Americans.
There's a running joke on the show
that both Lorelei and Rory eat like complete crap,
to the point where Lorelei thinks
that she must be pregnant when she randomly
craves fresh fruit.
And yet they have seemingly endless metabolisms.
The amount of pizza, junk food, and takeout they eat
is portrayed as a cute quirk, thanks to them
both having sample size physiques.
However, while other characters often
acknowledge the disconnect between
their physical appearance and the way they eat,
to a point that could honestly be considered kind
of problematic, no one ever acknowledges
that their food buying habits simply
do not make sense for two people in a middle-class single-parent
household.
They eat at the same diner almost every single morning
for breakfast, often also for dinner.
And they almost every day order takeout.
Like, [BLEEP] cut out on the Chinese a couple of days
a week.
There's your tuition right there.
You don't need to go back to your parents.
Additionally, because this is just
like the golden rule of sitcom TV,
their quirky little houses apparently
worth an estimated $2.8 million in today's market, which
begs the question, similar to Carrie Bradshaw,
how in the world is Lorelei paying her mortgage?
According to a Time article from 2015,
at the beginning of the series, Lorelei
works as the manager of the inn.
According to PayScale, the average salary
for an inn manager was $51,564.
When we first meet Lorelei, she has
been employed at the Independence Inn
for at least 15 years, starting as a maid at 16
and working her way up the food chain.
While it isn't clear exactly when she became the boss,
we can assume that with well over a decade of experience,
her salary was closer to $62,000, which
is the average for an experienced manager.
So let's say Lorelei was able to save
her pennies while living at the Independence Inn rent
free for 11 years.
And let's further say that she was
able to snag a jumbo mortgage with the most
generous down payment requirement of 15%.
Even then, that is 420--
blaze-- thousand dollars down, to say
nothing of closing costs, which would also be jumbo.
And yes, there is a chance that her salary was much more
generous than the median.
But that's still ain't getting her anywhere near a $2 million
home.
And even beyond Lorelei's wealthy parents,
money problems on the show are almost always
deus ex machina-ed away.
Like so many other shows centered
around privileged white women--
Sex and the City-- money problems on the show
are often solved with an improbable one-time fix.
That conveniently leaves the main characters not ever
having to confront their own habits
or what might have put them in that situation
in the first place.
Now, most of these do come from the elder Gilmores.
When Lorelei can't qualify for a loan
to fix termite damage in her house, yet more evidence
that she definitely wouldn't be able to afford that house's
mortgage, her mom co-signs a loan with her.
And one of the biggest examples came in season four
when Lorelei needed money to finish renovation
on construction on the inn because she
and her business partner, Sookie, have run out of funds
to pay their contractors.
So after breaking down to her friend and future love
interest, Luke, the owner of Luke's Diner,
Luke ultimately lends her the remaining $30,000
she needs with basically no strings attached.
But the worst offender in the series, though,
came in the four-part 2016 Netflix reboot titled Gilmore
Girls--
A Year in the Life.
Now, similar to the Sex and the City movies, it's up to you
whether you consider this canon or not.
I don't, but you do you.
After spending the entire mini series
flailing about unsuccessfully, having
all of her articles killed in progress or flat out rejected,
and making zero money, now freelance journalist Rory
has a brilliant idea to get back on her feet
professionally and financially, which
is writing a memoir about her use titled Gilmore Girls.
Now, first of all, it is beyond unrealistic to expect
the advance on a debut memoir from a completely unknown
writer to pay the equivalent of an actual year's salary.
I can talk all frickin' day about book advances.
But let me tell you, first of all,
they're not much to begin with.
Second of all, they come in installments.
You only get a little bit on signing.
And third of all, you often don't even
get the actual rest of it until years after the fact,
depending on how long it takes you to write the book.
But the even more frustrating thing about this situation
is that while Rory spends 90% of the mini series complaining
about these money problems, they appear to all but disappear
as soon as she's focusing on this new project,
even though the project hasn't even sold yet.
As TFD contributor Shannon Luders-Manuel put it,
"I'm left a bit disappointed with this ending,
as it seems to provide false hope to those
of us who are struggling to make a living as a writer.
I'm all for Rory completing a manuscript,
and it helps give me the continued drive
to complete my own.
But my bills are still there, seemingly endless,
while Rory's have just left the screen."
Now, listen, we all have our problematic faves.
And we can still love Gilmore Girls
for its quirky adorkable pop culture reference-laden
portrayal of a quiet New England town.
But if we're looking for an accurate
depiction of the working or middle class,
especially for being a show that prides itself on giving us
that, it is a big old fail.
And as always, guys, thank you for watching.
And don't forget to hit the Subscribe button
and to come back every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday
for new and awesome videos.
Goodbye.