In season 1 of Gilmore Girls, Rory starts a new private school called Chilton. Chilton is filled with entitled children whom come from wealthy families and feel they own the world. Rory, coming from a normal home, with not much extravagance does her best to fit in. Rory at the age of 15 is still naive and equipped with living the small-town life, not much into the craziness of the rich students who are now her classmates. Tristan is a boy who seems to notice Rory on the first day and does the typical ‘I’m going to pick on you because I like you” act. He begins calling her Mary, referring to the Virgin Mary and uses it to get under her skin. In this episode of Gilmore Girls, we see Lorelei and Rory discussing the name that Tristan and the boys at school have now bestowed upon her. Rory, unaware of the meaning behind the name is frustrated with Tristan and his nickname that she does not understand.

In our textbook A First Look at Communication Theory, we are presented with a theory entitled Muted Group Theory, authored by Cheris Kramarae. Kramarae addressed the idea of a muted group, which is by definition “people belonging to low-power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly, thus, their ideas are often over looked.” (458) Kramarae in this theory puts a specific emphasis on women and the way in which we use our language to conform to a literal “man-made construction” of our society. (457) Kramarae says that “women’s words are discounted in our society; women’s thoughts are devalued” and she goes on the prove this point by giving examples on how our language is “man-made” in the literal sense. (457) She discusses the masculine power to name, claiming that “because of their political dominance, the men’s system of perception is dominant, impeding the free expression of the women’s alternative models of the world.” One way she explains this is discussion how there are gender related terms directly pointed at women such as “catty, bithcy, shrill, etc.…” but there are no alternate terms for men to describe them in the demeaning way that these words describe women. (459) This brings up an interesting idea when considering the language used and the ways in which it has been constructed by men.

In the Gilmore Girls episode mentioned above, we see Tristan addressing Rory with a name that has a sexual and potential demeaning idea behind it. When considering the language Tristan addresses Rory with it brings the realization that there is no word similar to address a man with, or no underlying name that you would use to call a man that would be in direct relation with Mary. Mary is alluding to the idea of the virgin Mary. Tristan was pointing Rory to be naïve, sheltered, innocent, and there are other sexual allusions that could be made as well. This use of language could be related back to the idea Kramarae defined as muted group theory. Rory falls into the muted group of being a woman and therefore lives in the world of man-made language construction. Her inability to use language to match that of a man’s is essentially the thing that Kramarae hopes to change.