Just Gilmore Girly Things: At Least Rory Will Always Have Paris

Just Gilmore Girly Things is a blog series on my inexplicable obsession with the CW/WB series Gilmore Girls that aired from 2000-2007. This series explores the personal and social connections I’ve made in my repeated watch-throughs over the last 23 years that nobody asked for. 

It’s Pride Month and while Gilmore Girls is as heterosexual of a show as it gets and there’s a persistent casual transphobia that seemingly defines comedy of that era, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Paris (Liza Weil) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) was a missed opportunity for early TV lesbian representation. 

I feel like a lot of the sapphic fans of the series probably won’t need much convincing. There’s something uncannily familiar in the dynamic between the two, especially in high school. Rory’s the -not-like-other-girls girl; she tries to be the girl who treats everyone fairly and with kindness. Paris is the insecure rich girl with negligent and critical parents who use her as a pawn in their marital issues. 

When Rory first shows up at Chilton, she threatens Paris’s internal identity of being the smartest in their grade, so Paris locks in on her as a target of ridicule and competition. Since the series adamantly asserts Paris’s heterosexuality, this may be a result of how scarcity mindsets turn tokens against each other to vie for the status of being “one of the only” in systems of power. But some sapphics may recognize her fixation on Rory embedded internalized misogyny as the confused denial of adolescent queers who are trying to explain away their intense feelings, distorting it into a more socially acceptable antagonism. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Paris often references looks or physical appeal, even when it doesn’t seem relevant. Again, for heterosexual women, this is usually rooted in their own low self-esteem and for Paris, Rory not only threatens her social status in the school, but also threatens the narrative in her mind that her intellect is too intimidating and that’s why she isn’t deemed desirable in their school. Rory not only matches her intellect, but manages to do so without making enemies of all her peers. 

But early in the series, there’s a scene where Paris comes up behind Rory while she reads on a bench on campus, to whisper a vaguely threatening literary quote into her ear. It reminds me of a scene in the early lesbian tragedy, Lost and Delirious (2001), when Pauli (Piper Perabo) confronts Tori (Jessica Pare) in the school library, quoting Shakespeare and brandishing her fencing foil as she refuses to accept that Tori would rather hide in a heterosexual relationship than openly love Pauli. 

Add in the scene where Paris tries to convince Lorelai (Lauren Graham) to flash a little cleavage to sell grad night tickets and then can’t take her eyes off Lorelai’s chest, I don’t think it’s unfair to wonder about Paris’ sexuality. 

It doesn’t help that the series offered an early version of queer-baiting with them. Such as when they’re forced to work together to perform the final act of Romeo and Juliet for school. When Tristin (Chad Michael Murray), who is supposed to be play Romeo, is pulled out of school on the night of their performance, Paris jumps into the role opposite Rory’s Juliet to deliver the (off-screen) final kiss at the end of the play. 

Then when Paris and Rory decide to attend Spring Break in their first year of college together and find themselves not enjoying themselves the way their peers are around them, Paris’s solution is to kiss Rory while they’re at a club. She says she’s just following what their high school pals they bumped into suggested as an explanation, but those pals also had only suggested it as a way to get into clubs or get free drinks. 

Of course, both Paris and Rory both go on to have a number of boyfriends, but we know that that doesn’t negate sapphic attraction. And for both of them, they’re each the other’s most intimate and closest friend. I won’t deny that it’s possible that they both stick with each other because they’re afraid to put themselves in the position to be rejected by new friends before they even try to make them. 

But I think another possibility is that Paris may have had feelings for Rory, but Rory never reciprocated them. Truthfully, Rory probably wouldn’t be able to be a good partner for Paris because she often treats Paris with pity and annoyance, and Paris is too insecure to seek out intimacy elsewhere. 

Plus if I learned anything from Jenny’s Wedding (2015), it’s that Alexis Bledel cannot play a lesbian if she tries. 

I think Paris is still a sapphic in denial. In A Year in the Life (2016), there’s some corporate butch vibes to her. But Paris never comes into contact with queerness and never explores it as a possibility. 

I used to imagine an alternate plot line where Paris and Rory get into a relationship together, but now I’m glad that they never do. Sometimes the best part of a crush are the possibilities that it can allude to, but trying to bring them to life can often just burst our bubbles and leave us hurt. But I do wish that Paris got to at least brush up against the queer community so that we can at least put our suspicions around her sexuality to bed.