My Heroines: Rory Gilmore

Today's birthday girl is Lorelai "Rory" Gilmore (Alexis Bledel). She was born 4:03 AM on October 8 1984 and is the daughter of Lorelai Gilmore and Christopher Hayden and together with her mother the main character of the TV series Gilmore Girls and one of my biggest Heroines!

Rory is very close to her mother. Lorelai was only 16 when she had her and the two of them are therefore often more friends than mother and daughter. She often has a much more difficult relationship with her father. Christopher has never rejected his daughter, but Lorelai has spent most of the time raising Rory alone. Later on, Christopher gets to try single parenting himself, when his partner Sherry abandons him and their baby girl Georgia, called Gigi (A nickname also being a tribute to the series itself - GG.).

Rory and her mother Lorelai

Rory is kind, clever and in the beginning of the series, her biggest dream is to go to Harvard and study journalism and political science. To achieve her goals, she gets into Chilton Academy. It costs a small fortune and Lorelai at last goes to her estranged parents, asking for a loan. They demand a weekly dinner with their daughter and granddaughter.

Rory lives in the small town Stars Hollow where everyone knows each other. When asked about her lack of social activities, she tells the principal of Chilton that living in Stars Hollow itself is kind of a social activity. She is much beloved, by the other townspeople and in the first few seasons quite sheltered.

She graduates from Chilton at the end of season 3 and decides, after a lot of thinking and pro-/con-list writing to go to Yale, her grandfather's alma mater, where other aspects of life than books and studying, sort of starts to sip into her world in a way they have not done before.

Rory is a very special character to me. Not only because she was born only two days before me (My date of birth is October 10 1984.), but because she was the first fictional character I could really relate to. Just like me Rory is sort of nerdy and takes a great interest in school and learning. she is very smart and proud of that.  And the greatest thing about it is that neither the other characters nor the show itself looks down upon her because of it. Because she had Rory so early, Lorelai did not get to go to college, but it is evident that she still reads a lot and no one beats either Gilmore Girls in knowledge about pop-culture.

Rory and Jess

Neither of the Gilmore girls are dependent on men either. They have men in their life from time to time and also goes through some heartache, but they are still independent character with their own lives and free will both in and out of relationship with men.

Another reason why I connected on a quite deeply level with Rory has to do with her relationship to books. We both read just about everything we come over and things she did (like bringing many different types of non-school-related-books to school just because she does not know which one she wants to read during lunch or bring books to parties no matter that there will not likely be any down-time) I thought I was the only one doing.


Gifs from Tumblr. Pictures from here, here, here and here.