I love Gilmore Girls and have been a loyal fan for years. I have seen every episode at least twice and find comfort in the small New England town that so resembles my own. However, it wasn’t until the Gilmores came to Netflix that I realized how little my new favorite community (the gay one) was represented.
The show began in 2000 and ended in 2007, spanning seven seasons of straight people. Not one new queer character was introduced. Not even as a side character, not even a gay best friend. In a show so focused on powerful women and positivity, and created by a bad-ass female producer, I would expect to see at least a little positive queer representation also. Since I don’t get to see that, I made a list of where it should have been.

Michel

Michel is written like a gay man of 1930s cinema. He has no on-screen romantic interest, talks about going on “a date” in one episode where no gendered pronouns are used, and is obsessed with his appearance and clothing. He’s also extremely opinionated, obsessed with his tiny dogs, and judgmental. The sarcastic Michel embodies nearly every gay male stereotype and I’m about 100% sure he’s a friend of Dorothy.

Paris

Let’s start in the most obvious place: the spring break kiss between Rory and Paris, the only queer kiss in the whole seven years of this show!
To set the scene, Rory and Paris are on spring break, but they’re not That Kind of Girl. They don’t like to party, they like to read and watch The Power of Myth! Party girls don’t like reading. But they do kiss each other at a party, causing Rory to both slut shame her friends Madeline and Lousie and imply that all women who kiss each other are just doing it for the male gaze! (Rory is NOT on this list for a reason).

Really, Rory is a character who is supposed to love literature and she’s never read a queer book? Hasn’t taken a women’s studies class? I don’t buy it. Anyway, back to the wonderful Paris.

Let’s not forget that Spring Break was not Paris’s first attempt at kissing Rory. Let’s also not ignore how much of a power couple Rory and Paris would be. But Rory aside, Paris strikes me as a character who could be bi or pan. She’s loved men truly and she has a very open and rational mind about everything. She wasn’t bothered by the age difference between herself and her professor, Asher Fleming, and she is always up for trying new things. If Paris met the right person, she would be with them, whether man, woman, or anyone in between.

Gypsy

Gypsy is the town mechanic. She is harsh, wears only a jumpsuit, works on cars, and never talks about men (in stark contrast to basically every other woman on this show). I’m not convinced, but I’ll give her a solid 65% chance of being a lesbian.

Taylor

Taylor may be super Christian and politically conservative but I smell a Log Cabin Republican. I don’t know what it is, but I think Taylor is a classic closet case. I can see him going to his big New England house, complaining about the irrational townspeople to his husband as they pet their cats and drink cocoa by the fire. I’m not wrong.

Lane

I don’t actually think Lane is a lesbian as written, but we can dream, right? She loves cool music and was probably more than aware of cool, queer female rockers. She dyed her hair purple for an afternoon. She constantly sneaks around and had to come out of her own closet to her mother, revealing her secret life of rock and roll to a family who initially did not accept it and then grew to realize she was still the daughter they loved (do I smell a metaphor?). Lane is also on the record for saying that heterosexual sex is the worst (I’m exaggerating for emphasis). So Lane Kim will go on the books as “why not?”

Now you can just enjoy all the queer characters you could have had!