Footnotes to the TV series
EMILY: Young man, come in here please.
LORELAI: Hey, Dean, meet my mother, Emily Post.
Emily Post (1872-1960) was a famous expert on etiquette. Her 1922 book Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home became an instant best-seller, was popular for decades, and made her name. She went on to write newspaper columns on etiquette, and founded the Emily Post Institute in 1946, which carries on her work.
It’s interesting to wonder if Emily Gilmore is named after her.
(Emily is clearly excited about Rory attending the dance)
LORELAI: Wow, Mom, look at you. You’d think Ann Taylor was having a sale or something.
Ann Taylor is a chain of women’s clothing stores selling classic styled suits, dresses, shoes, and accessories, with affluent career women its target demographic. Its first store opened in New Haven, Connecticut in 1954, and there are now nearly 300 stores in the US.
There are two Ann Taylor stores that Emily might shop at one – one in West Hartford, and another at the mall in Hartford.
EMILY: “We’re in here?” That’s how you answer the door?
LORELAI: Well I was all out of Saran Wrap.
EMILY: I don’t even want to figure that one out.
Saran wrap is a brand of plastic wrap or clingfilm made for wrapping food; it is such a dominant brand that the brand name is often used for the item itself (like Kleenex).
Lorelai’s comment to Emily is a probable reference to the 1991 comedy-drama film Fried Green Tomatoes, directed by Jon Avnet and based on the 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; Flagg was one of the screenwriters for the movie. The film did well at the box office and was generally well received by critics.
In one of the scenes, a character named Evelyn (Kathy Bates) tries to revive her marriage by greeting her husband at the door dressed only in Saran wrap. She got the idea from the best-selling 1973 self-help book The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan, the #1 non-fiction book of 1974.
Morgan, who gave out marriage advice grounded in evangelical Christianity with a distinct anti-feminist bias, suggested that women greet their husbands at the door wearing sexy outfits, with Saran wrap being one idea. (It doesn’t work for Evelyn and her husband).
You can see this as either a reference to the film or the book, but it seems far more likely that Lorelai saw Fried Green Tomatoes in the 1990s than that she has read the 1970s book (and if she did, it was probably after seeing the film).
LORELAI (after putting hairspray in Rory’s hair): OK, that will be good for six slow dances, four medium ones, one lambada, but if you plan on doing any moshing I suggest another coat.
A lambada is a sensual dance from Brazil which became popularised in the 1980s and ’90s, sometimes called “the forbidden dance” because of its sexy nature.
Moshing or slamdancing is an energetic, aggressive hardcore punk dance where you push or slam into the other dancers. The place near the stage where moshing is performed is called the moshpit.
Sookie brings the Gilmore girls some tacos and burritos for dinner, which are both popular traditional Mexican dishes. Unusually for Sookie, she seems to have bought them (maybe from Al’s Pancake World or the anonymous take-out window place?) rather than making something herself.
A taco is a corn or wheat tortilla (flatbread) folded or rolled around the filling; in the US, they are often made commercially as a hard corn shell. A burrito is a wheat tortilla which is wrapped around the filling into a cylinder shape. Sookie got extra hot sauce, so the Gilmores must like their food spicy – as the fiesta burger demonstrated.
(Rory comes into the room wearing her dress for the dance.)
LORELAI: Wow. Someone hit you with a pretty stick.
The obvious opposite to the slang expression “hit with an ugly stick”.
PARIS: I don’t have enough change.
RORY: Pay me later.
PARIS: What am I, your versateller?
A versateller is an automatic teller machine (ATM); the word was popularised by commercials for the Bank of America in the 1980s. Some people still prefer the word to the more common ATM. The name combines the French for “pay” with the word “teller” (usual American term for a cashier).
TRISTAN: Uh-huh. Well, look, Okay, I’ll confess something to you. I don’t have a date.
RORY: Well I hear Squeaky Fromme is up for parole soon. You should keep a good thought.
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (born 1948) was a member of the infamous Manson Family. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, and was released on parole in 2009; she now lives in a small town in New York state. She is one of only two former followers of Charles Manson who never renounced the cult leader and continued to profess her allegiance to him.
RORY: Well, what can I say? I like ’em cheap. Sloppy too – bald spot, beer gut, you know, and the pants that kind of slip down in the back, giving you that good plumber shot. That sends me through the roof.
Plumber’s crack; the top of a man’s bottom showing over the top of his pants.
TRISTAN: The guy’s supposed to buy the tickets.
RORY: Really. Does Susan Faludi know about this?
Susan Faludi (born 1959) is an American feminist, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, and author. Rory may be interested in her work partly because she is a Harvard graduate who became a journalist. During the 1980s she wrote for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, among others, often writing articles on feminism.
Her book Backlash: The Undeclared War on American Women was published in 1991, and has become a classic feminist text. In 1999 she followed it up with Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, which looks at how traditional views of masculinity have led to poorer outcomes for many men.
Rory has probably read both books, but may be thinking of Stiffed when she makes her comment to Tristan, as he is espousing a stereotyped view of male gender roles.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 