When it comes to Gilmore Girls,
everyone talks about the talk.
"Lorelai for God's sake be quiet."
But there's also something to say about Rory Gilmore's locks.
"You can get your hair done."
"You won't think I'm an idiot?"
"Depends on what hairstyle you choose."
In dreams and literature,
hair is often interpreted as representing mental process or thought.
So a character's hairstyle can symbolize their mindset,
how they think.
"That's why her hair is so big, it's full of secrets."
Changes in hair, from a drastic cut
to a temporary night out do,
can signal a new idea or a change in how a character views the world.
Hair also reflects self image because hair is something we control to present ourselves.
It's how we want to be seen by others.
In a long-running show like Gilmore Girls,
the creator's can send messages
through stylistic choices like the evolution of Rory Gilmore's hair.
Through the years Miss Gilmore's mane
has morphed, grown, and curled like an unconscious mirror
that's in tune with her emotional twists and turns.
Sure, sometimes hair is just hair
but at times it might be a clue the subconscious and what's going on inside
So let's have some fun unraveling the memorable moments in Rory Gilmore's hair.
Long, simple, and straight-laced,
that's how we meet the young Gilmore girl.
"Rory, me, that's... that's me."
The look reflects a small-town girl and shy bookworm
who depends on her mother for her social life.
The girl is a blank page, innocent and unformed.
If hair symbolizes thought
long hair can symbolize a lot of thought,
being a circumspect, considered, and conscientious person,
even sometimes getting in one's own way
by overthinking.
First boyfriend, first dance, first big screw-up.
Rory's pretty updo has a contrived play-acting look,
like a broad imitation of an Audrey Hepburn figure.
This lovey-dovey dance business and her
entree into the world of serious relationships
might be a little more grown-up than she's ready for.
"I'm coming out."
"Out of what?"
"Out to society."
The ballerina bun is de rigueur for a deb,
but while she was at least trying the ill-fated dance do for herself,
the high society bun is her grandmother, Emily's world.
Rory is just faking it, much to Lorelei's relief.
"There you go."
The retro look for the dance marathon
is called victory rolls, a 1940's World War II-era style.
The vintage do announces that Rory is performing a fiction,
she's masking the reality that her romantic feelings
are shifting from Dean to Jess.
But her over-the-top make-believe isn't convincing enough.
"You don't want to be with me Rory."
"Yes I do."
"Oh, please."
Curls give off a carefree, pixie muse vibe,
but these new curls aren't laid back,
they're an emotional upheaval.
"I also failed to mention that I'm seeing someone else."
"Who?"
"Jess."
The brief changed the curls corresponds to Rory's testing the waters of rebellion.
Her feelings for Jess are both
more complicated and more physical than she's experienced.
"How can you let your daughter be with that abominable thug?"
In their eyes her new look is her acting out of character,
no longer as straitlaced as her once straight hair.
Braids correspond to unified, methodical thinking.
The three strands reflect the harmony of a trinity.
But the tightly constrained hairdo suggests a repetitive, inhibited thought process.
This braid matches how she's reaching for order,
fighting inner feelings of stress and chaos.
The girl is regressing, unsure about starting adult life.
Rory's still a girl, still a mama's girl.
It's no coincidence that alarm bells go off
when Lorelai sees the long bob for the first time.
"It was a spur of the moment thing."
"A spur of the moment and let's not tell my mother I'm pulling a G.I. Jane?"
Cutting your hair in movies and TV
is a trope for a reason,
it represents a desire for change, a grappling with identity and control.
Rory's cut signifies the end of her rollercoaster relationship with Jess
and her coming to terms with her re-emerging feelings for Dean.
She takes the impulsive step to shed all this emotion.
But, surprise, her new hair looks just like that of Dean's fiance, Lindsay Lister.
The matching look, however unintentional, suggests that on a subconscious level,
she's not ready to give Dean up forever.
"He's not your Dean. He's Lindsay's Dean. You're the other woman."
Metaphorically hair can also represent a character's strength and health.
"Do you see how long his hair is?
When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braid so the whole world can see their shame."
The obvious example is Samson in judges 16 of the Bible.
When Delilah cuts his hair,
the non-consensual hair loss weakens him.
Like Samson's, Rory's cut, even if it's her choice,
could be a sign of vulnerability.
Still, even if she'll look back on this bob as an impulsive mistake,
it's a key step in her growing up process.
She's shedding the long, girlish hair
that weighed her down in overthinking and the undetermined childhood state.
"Are you ever going to ask me out?"
And here we go again.
The start of Rory's relationship with Logan brings back the flirtatious undertones of curls.
But this time they're tighter, and more regular.
Rory's taught almost-ringlets reflect the tightly wound, high society culture she's trying to win over.
"Why don't they think I'm good enough?
"Rory."
"I mean I'm a Gilmore do they know that?"
Like her contrived curls, Rory's glamorous life starts to unravel.
The loosening of the curls coincides with a Rory who's
trying to seem low-key yet put together as she takes a break from Yale.
The trendy, wild-child bangs and carefree waves are a comfortable look,
but comfortable is not how she really feels.
Her life is just as messy as her hair right now.
"Everything's falling apart."
Rory is terrified of the unknown abyss of her post-Yale life
so she makes a radical hair change to process her radical life change.
Dyeing her hair pink.
Dyeing one's hair symbolizes a break from the usual self.
Even trying to be someone you're not at your roots.
The punky pink hair could be both a cry for help
and a way of camouflaging dark feelings in happy bright colors.
It's an assertive move by a young woman who's feeling confused about who she is.
"And my relationship with Logan and the rest of my life."
By the end of the show's original run,
Rory arrives at a professional, put-together look.
But the side pony is also a twist.
It's asymmetrical, unresolved.
This isn't a conclusion it's a beginning.
Nine years later, and Rory returns with an integrated blend of some of her former highlights.
She's arrived at a carefully, casually unified melting pot of all the many inner hair selves
she discovered over the years.