The Puffs, the #1 Chilton Sorority

PARIS: No, they’re the Puffs, the most influential sorority at Chilton.
RORY: Chilton has sororities?

PARIS: Only ten worth mentioning, and the Puffs, they have been number one for at least the last fifty years.

A sorority is a women’s social organisation at a college or university, the female equivalent of a fraternity. They were once common in US high schools as well, but these days many schools ban them. However, they are still in existence, and some schools are willing to turn a blind eye to them while not recognising them officially.

We learn here that Chilton is the sort of school which tolerates this practice, and that it has at least ten major sororities! The Puffs have been the most powerful and exclusive of them since at least 1951.

The current Puffs seem to consist of Francine “Francie” Jarvis (President), Ivy, Dijur, Lily, Celine, Lana, Asia, Anna, and Lemon. The name Puffs could have been chosen in-universe because of powder puffs, suggesting a fashionable femininity, or even that they are delicious little morsels, as puffs are such a favourite food in Gilmore Girls. However, it suggests being filled with their own importance (“puffed up”, “puff piece”) and full of hot air.

There’s something insubstantial about the Puffs, as if a puff of wind could blow them away – remember that Rory even pretended a draft of air is what drove her to their table, taking her on a trip to another world just as weird and bizarre as Oz.

“L tattooed on her forehead”

LORELAI: And these fanatics that run your school, they’re the ones that write the letters to the fancy colleges saying things like, ‘Hey she’s keen, look at her’ or ‘Have you seen the L tattooed on her forehead, ’cause it sure is a big one.’

Lorelai is referring to the habit, very common in the 1990s, of satirically making an L shape with the fingers on either your own or another’s forehead to denote you or they were a “loser”. Lorelai imagines the L to be tattooed on Rory’s forehead as a mark of permanent loserdom. Loner and loser seem to become conflated extremely quickly in this episode.

“Like mother like daughter”

HEADMASTER: Like mother, like daughter.
LORELAI: Okay, hold on.
HEADMASTER: Ms. Gilmore, active participation in Chilton activities for a parent is vitally important.

The phrase “like mother like daughter” can be found in the Bible, in Ezekiel 16:44. There, it specifically refers to the city and people of Jerusalem, who are said to have the Hittites as their “mother”. It isn’t complimentary, meaning that Jerusalem has taken on the same disgusting practices as earlier cultures, despite the love and protection of God. The proverb seems to have been well-known even in Old Testament times.

You can see Headmaster Charleston in the role of disappointed God, having offered the love and protection of Chilton to Rory, only to find that she has inherited her mother’s appalling habits!

This is where this episode’s title comes from.

The Headmaster Talks to Lorelai

Indignant that the school has dared to suggest her daughter is less than perfect, Lorelai marches into the headmaster’s office in high dudgeon to put him straight on the Gilmore Girl philosophy of not doing anything you don’t feel like.

Headmaster Charleston pulls the wind from her sails by immediately getting out her file (really? Schools keep files on parents? What kind of school is this?). The file is worryingly thin, denoting a lack of parental involvement. Lorelai has only been to one bake sale a year ago, and was observed to not stay afterwards to talk to other parents. Seriously, how does he know all this stuff? Why does he care?

Perhaps tactfully, Headmaster Charleston does not bring up the fact that Lorelai got rather too involved in the school by having a serious relationship with Rory’s teacher. That’s all forgiven and forgotten, but failing to hang out after a bake sale? That’s on your permanent record, Missy!

Now, usually when Lorelai is told to do something, she gets stroppy and calls everyone a Fascist, but this is Rory’s future, so after a few futile attempts to explain she’s too busy, she meekly leaves with a list of organisations at Chilton she might join.

Just as the school wouldn’t listen when Rory was slightly late to a test because she lives out of town and got hit by a deer, there is no attempt to understand that Lorelai is a single mother who works and studies, and is also doing about a million volunteer jobs in Stars Hollow already. Do fathers have to do any of this volunteer stuff for Chilton, or are their lives considered far too busy and worthwhile to be called upon in this way? If so, one of the more realistic things in the show!

The Guidance Counsellor Talks to Rory

Mrs Verdinas, Rory’s guidance counsellor at Chilton, speaks to her about her lack of socialising at school, which Headmaster Charleston told her about a few weeks ago. Mrs Verdinas is her new guidance counsellor; the previous year it was Mr Summers, who we never saw.

This means that only a short time into the academic year, Headmaster Charleston, who is running an entire school, has decided the big problem he needs to address is Rory reading at lunchtime. How he knows about this is a bit of a mystery, unless he spends his free time stalking students in the dining hall.

In a school with hundreds of students, Mrs Verdinas and Headmaster Charleston have been keeping such a close watch on Rory that they’re bothered she’s been spending her lunch times reading and listening to music. Even though she’s getting good grades, works on the school paper, and interacts well with other students on class projects, none of that counts because she doesn’t have any friends at school.

Apparently colleges don’t accept “loners” (really?), and Chilton isn’t going to write a good letter of recommendation for Rory (have they never heard of simply telling some vaguely-worded white lies?). And friends in class doesn’t count, they have to be friends to eat lunch with. Mrs Verdinas never even checks what Rory is reading – perhaps reading Gore Vidal at lunch is better preparation for college than gossiping with Madeline and Louise?

It isn’t even a matter of Mrs Verdinas having a quiet chat to Rory to suggest she might try socialising a little more outside class, she more or less threatens to ruin Rory’s academic future unless she gets some lunch friends, stat!

Yes, it’s all pretty unbelievable, but that is the plot of this episode.

Rory’s Coming Out

Rory’s debutante ball is presented as a counterpart to the school dance she attended with Dean in the previous season. Nine months have gone by, and Rory’s world has widened. Last year, she took hesitant steps towards taking part in Chilton’s social life, this time she is given an entree into Hartford society. In both cases, it was Emily who persuaded her to make an effort and attend – Lorelai may have seen Emily as a stifling influence, but she’s only too keen for Rory to broaden her horizons.

As a key part of making her debut, Rory walks down the stairs with Christopher while Dean waits at the bottom. Christopher kisses his daughter’s hand as Rory curtsies, then leaves her to Dean, who walks her down the aisle. This is a ceremony which some debutante balls still follow, particularly in the American South. It’s overtly nuptial, with the father symbolically “giving away” his daughter to her escort before they walk down the aisle together. (There’s even a white wedding cake!). After all his moaning, Dean looks absolutely overjoyed to be presented with a bridal Rory in a white dress being handed to him.

Lorelai thought debutante balls were creepy and sexist, because they involve displaying yourself to men with the hope they’ll marry you, even though that isn’t what actually happens, and hasn’t happened for about seventy years. Yet here Rory is, getting symbolically married while her father gives her away like she’s his property, and Lorelai’s just happy Christopher is involved, and she doesn’t even bother to mock it, let alone point out how deeply patriarchal it is.

Richard Getting “Phased Out”

We discover during the course of the ball why Richard has been so stressed and irritable. He is being “phased out” of the insurance company he works for. The process is one whereby a senior employee, like Richard, begins losing responsibilities to begin his path to retirement. Richard is taken off an account he brought to the company, he is given a bigger office upstairs, a new title (we don’t discover what it is), and a better parking space.

Emily sees this as a “promotion”, but Richard knows the bitter truth: the company is softening the blow of his eventual retirement by smoothing his passage out of a useful role and into one of a mere figurehead. To add insult to injury, it’s the very “phasing out” process Richard himself invented to get rid of a man named Alan Parker. (A hint of how cold-blooded and ruthless Richard can be in career matters).

Once this is explained to her, Emily still doesn’t see it as such a big deal, saying that Richard has “other options” (retire or take up some other project). However, Richard has been dreaming of this life since he was ten years old, and doesn’t want other options, feeling that if Emily doesn’t understand, then she hasn’t been listening to him.

Richard throwing a petulant tantrum at a social function his granddaughter is participating in might remind the viewer of some of the meltdowns Rory and Lorelai have had during the course of the show. As Headmaster Charleston said, “You do like to throw fits in your family”. There is a strong emotional streak in the Gilmore clan – perhaps one reason why the more restrained Emily is always trying to rein it in.

The argument is left unresolved for this episode, as Rory tells them it is her turn next. I have no idea how Rory even knows they’re talking in a side room and not already watching her, nor how she managed to get down the staircase, tell everyone she’s on next, then shimmy right back up the stairs again, ready to walk down and be presented. I’m pretty sure in real life someone would have told her to stay exactly she was and not interrupt the proceedings.

There is a poignancy to the fact that just as Rory is being ushered into society and acknowledged as a young woman who is growing up, Richard is at a point in his life where he is being gently shuffled off, ready for retirement. This contrast between them must be at least one reason why Richard has no stomach for Rory’s debutante ball, and expresses such angry disdain for the proceedings.

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

The song which is played while the debutantes perform their “fan dance” – not the burlesque entertainment the name leads you to believe, but a rather tame affair holding small white fans over their heads. Luckily for Rory, little actual dancing ability seems to be required for it.

Thanks Heaven for Little Girls is a 1957 song written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, performed by Maurice Chevalier in the 1958 musical comedy, Gigi, based on the novelette by French author Colette. The film is about a sixteen-year-old girl being trained to be a courtesan in 19^th century Paris, who winds up becoming a wife rather than a mistress.

The lyrics describe the pleasure men derive from little girls of “five or six or seven”, knowing that in a decade or so, they will have developed into bigger girls, who “grow up in the most delightful way”.

As a song about the joys of girls developing into nubile young women so you can marry them, it’s on theme for a debutante ball, but also wildly and hilariously inappropriate. The show does seem to agree with Lorelai (big surprise!) that there’s something pretty creepy about coming out parties and debutante balls.

Fat Farm

LADY 2: Janet just got out of Rainbow Hills two days ago.
LORELAI: Rehab?
LADY 1: Fat farm.

Even though a “fat farm” sounds like a place you go to in order to gain weight, it’s actually an old fashioned word for a residential weight loss program. It seems like a word they would use on a sit-com from the 1970s – Oscar and Felix from The Odd Couple went to a fat farm in one episode. Why is everything so dated in the world of Gilmore Girls?

The Hartford debutantes seem to be going to extremes for their debut, enrolling in weight loss programs, like Janet, and getting nose jobs, like Libby. Lucky Rory already looks perfect, so she doesn’t need to do anything except show up.

Baby’s Breath and County General

EMILY: Look at these flowers. Baby’s breath. What is this, County General?

Baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata) is a popular ornamental flower native to Central and Eastern Europe with clouds of tiny white blooms in the summer. It’s often used in floristry to provide a backdrop for larger flowers.

“County General” is a common name for hospitals in the US eg Roebuck County General Hospital. In real life, there isn’t a hospital with this name in Connecticut.

Emily seems to think baby’s breath is only suitable as part of a flower arrangement you’d give to someone in hospital, lacking the elegance required in a formal setting. You can see how standards have dropped in Hartford society without Emily’s capable hand on the tiller.