Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls

17. What a Girl Wants: Men and Masculinity in Gilmore Girls

321 WhataGirlWants Men and Masculinity in Gilmore Girls L A U R A N A T H A N E M I LY: I want to go on a date. L OR E L A I: With a man? E M I LY: No, a weasel. Of course with a man! —“Emily Says Hello” (5.09) L OR E L A I: I’m attracted to pie. It doesn’t mean I feel the need to date pie. —“Cinnamon’s Wake” (1.05) We live in a time when masculinity and femininity can no longer be easily defined. This point is evident in the earliest episodes of Gilmore Girls, as we meet characters like Michel Gerard, a metrosexual (perhaps queer) male who is obsessed with Celine Dion, his chow dogs, and his fastidiously maintained appearance; Kirk Gleason, the quirky Stars Hollow resident who lives with his mother and has a different job each week; and Luke Danes, the local diner owner whose uniform of choice is a flannel shirt and a baseball cap worn backward. Through these varied representations of masculinity, the audience gets a sense that—at least in the fictional universe created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel Palladino—one need not be the primary breadwinner, married (or heterosexual), strong and stoic, or a father to be considered a “man.” As easy as it is to say that there is nothing wrong with men opting for adventure over financial security, for careers over family, or for 322 | Food,Addiction,Gender,Sexuality other men over women as objects of romantic or sexual desire, the seven seasons of Gilmore Girls teach us that, even in a postmodern world where gender identities are fractured and destabilized, not just any man will suffice as a life partner. Not Kirk, whom Lorelai—the show’s thirtysomething leading lady who gave birth to Rory when she was sixteen—dismisses as too odd after he asks her to dinner (in “Haunted Leg” [3.02], the same episode in which we learn that he has a “dyspeptic parrot problem”). Not Max Medina, Rory’s charming high school English teacher with whom Lorelai ends her engagement without explanation. Not Dean, Rory’s first boyfriend who makes her a bracelet, builds her a car, and puts the Gilmore prodigy on a pedestal. And, for a while, not even Lorelai’s well-read, career-oriented father, Richard, from whom Lorelai’s mother, Emily, temporarily separates after nearly forty years during the series’ fifth season. If these men are not good enough for the Gilmore ladies, who is? With fans, the show’s characters, and even the Palladinos (plus their heir apparent, David S. Rosenthal, the final season’s show-runner) all debating that question, Gilmore Girls invites an exploration of masculinity and the ways that each potential or eventual paramour struggles to be both himself and the man the Gilmore women desire. Regular viewers of the series have likely noticed that, flings aside, every Gilmore ex has returned to the narrative fold at some juncture , desperate for his beloved Gilmore girl to take him back. This trend may be partly explained by the fact that, with the exception of Luke (to whom Lorelai is romantically linked off and on for the show’s final three seasons), neither main character’s love interests are permanent fixtures of the series, leaving their presence and the continuity of their on-screen romantic relationships dependent on both the writers’ whims and the actors’ other commitments. Viewers are not supposed to stop and ponder this notion, of course, for Lorelai ’s and Rory’s narratives gloss over the realities of show business to provide viewers a “caffeinated” narrative that might resemble their own lives: men coming and going, attempting to change their behavior based on what the Gilmore women desire. The male characters’ on-screen struggles are also complicated by their own self-interests WhataGirlWants | 323 and the gender expectations of previous generations. Gender identities , after all, are never ahistorical or without sociopolitical context, explains Judith Butler, a renowned feminist literary critic whose book Gender Trouble Rory must purchase for a class that she and her roommate Paris are enrolled in during Season Seven. If a man can describe his gender identity as “masculine” (or “feminine”), it is only because the behaviors or characteristics that have enabled him to do so mimic or correspond in some way to his predecessors...