Waif Girl Fall: Rory Gilmore Is a Bimbo, Too

Content Warning: body dysmorphia, drug addiction

Summer has come to a close, taking along with it the Instagram posts shouting at you “every body is a beach body!!” and “just because your body isn’t as skinny and toned as mine doesn’t mean it’s any less beautiful, even though everyone and every societal norm is telling you so.” In come the Pinterest fall mood boards featuring Rory Gilmore in a cozy fall sweater, a malnourished-looking Winona Ryder smoking a cigarette, and some unnamed chilly girl in a sweater and scarf (and no coat!) warming her hands around a to-go cup of hot coffee. The leaves are starting to change colors, my living room is warmed by the little flames of my candles, and it’s time to turn on the fall classics. It’s the best time of year. 

I always feel relieved when fall rolls around – no more worrying about the way my thighs look in shorts, no more displaying my belly in a bikini, no more holding my bare arms out at the exact right angle so they don’t look too big in photos. I can throw on my biggest comfy sweater and my baggiest pants and hide all the parts of my body I don’t want to see. And in the past, I’ve always thought that the transition into colder weather is good for me. That I can pack away my issues with my body for the cold season along with my swimsuits and tank tops – I’ll see them again next year. But this year it doesn’t feel that simple.

It seems like everywhere I turn (on the internet) there’s a new phrase for girls to latch onto and model their fall personas after – where there was once Christian Girl Autumn there is now Waif Girl Fall, Cold Girl Makeup, and Heroin Chic. Normal girls everywhere are picking up where the stars of the 90s left off – grabbing a pack of cigarettes for the aesthetic and along with it a nice little appetite-suppressing nicotine addiction and a splash of lung cancer.

Why do we feel pulled back to the 90s in the fall? Fall represents an end, of sorts. Spring is the beginning of the astrological year – even though the calendar resets after December 31, the astrological new year begins at the Spring Equinox, when the Sun enters the first sign of the Zodiac, Aries. Spring marks the beginning of long days and short nights which continue until the Autumn Equinox. As the days become shorter and give way to the night, we are given more time for rest and reflection. Fall is not the time for trying new things – it’s the time for comfort, for the movies and TV shows that fulfill our deep desire to be wrapped in a metaphorical (and sometimes literal) soft blanket. 

My fall comfort media includes Gilmore Girls, Practical Magic, Heathers, and Twilight. All feature Waif Girls: Rory Gilmore, Gillian Owens, Veronica Sawyer, and Bella Swan. The literal definition of “waifish” is “thin and looking unhealthy or uncared for.” The feminine ideal. Thinness at all costs.

Going hand in hand with the Waif Girl is cold girl makeup, which blew up on TikTok last fall and winter. Its defining feature is extra blush applied on the cheeks and nose to create a flushed, just-inside-from-the-cold look. Get that girl a blanket and a pumpkin spice latte, stat! The state of being cold has defined a new beauty standard for young women. And it makes perfect sense – coldness is a telltale sign of being malnourished, aka soooooo skinny! 

Finally there’s the most disturbing of them all: “Herion Chic.” The physical symptoms of heroin addiction include exhaustion, weight loss, and flu-like symptoms. This life-threatening illness is a new ideal that girls can model their looks after. A quick keyword search on Pinterest pulls up a slew of black and white images of the thinnest, palest white girls you can imagine, cigarettes pinched between long slender fingers, and not a single smile to be found. But don’t worry, Pinterest adds a message to the top of the search page reading: “If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, help is available. If you have unused or expired prescription drugs you’d like to get rid of, find a disposal spot near you.” The keyword is still searchable, though – just in case you really need to see some eating-disorder-promoting, drug-addiction-glamorizing photos.

Earlier this year, Pinterest took action to censor posts that may compromise the safety of minors. Some search terms including “young girls,” have been banned – but many questionable tags are still searchable. There is clearly a bigger discussion to be had about what procedures apps like Pinterest need to put in place to protect their users, what levels of censorship are necessary/appropriate, etc., but the basic fact is that they can block tags that could be harmful to users. They just don’t. Pinterest’s lack of action reflects the way most powerful companies, systems, and governments now disregard the personal wellbeing of consumers, citizens, normal people.

Cigarettes are having a renaissance in the US, and their renaissance is a mark of the apathy felt by young people toward the state of our government. The economy is crashing once again, the planet is on fire, and women and trans people don’t have control over their bodies, so why does it matter if I pick up a pack of cigarettes? The government or climate change or another recession will kill us all before the cigarettes do. And as the economy crashes, thin bodies become more mainstream as a way of normalizing a culture of penny-pinching and under-indulgence.

This generational sense of apathy lends itself to the Waif Girl resurgence. Another defining characteristic of the Waif Girl, aside from her marked thinness, is her mental illness. She is typically isolated and depressed, and those characteristics only add to her desirability. She is a damsel in need of saving, and her resurgence is led by characters like Marianne Sheridan from Normal People.

In Normal People, Marianne and Connell both suffer from mental illness, which is one of the things that draws young audiences to it – it shows us a snippet of real life rather than providing the escapism many of us are used to seeking in the fall media we consume. The biggest difference between the two characters, though, is that Connell seeks help and goes to therapy. Marianne, on the other hand, experiences healing mainly due to her relationship with Connell. For Waif Girls, their issues are characteristically so much bigger than they could get help for. They feed their love interests’ savior complexes, and they wallow in their hopelessness. Why wouldn’t young people, experiencing the enduring feeling of hopelessness marking the present, feel drawn to them? They are so sad, but they look so good doing it. If I’m going to be sad, I might as well look good doing it.

I’m having a hard time figuring out how I feel about the Waif Girl renaissance. The angel on my shoulder is saying: why don’t we just choose to glamorize taking care of ourselves? Why don’t we fill our social media feeds with inspiration to provide ourselves three nourishing meals a day, give our bodies the rest they need, and feed our minds with content that makes us want to treat ourselves well? But then there’s that pesky little devil saying: just fucking do it, smoke a cigarette. If every center of power in the world doesn’t give a fuck about my life or my health, why should I care? If we are going to keep metaphorically and literally lighting the world on fire, why shouldn’t I use a lick of that flame to light my cigarette?