s01e01 Rachel: Sweet'N'Low?

What is Sweet’n’Low?

Rachel is telling her run-away-from-the-wedding story, when a waitress brings her coffee. Rachel pauses the story to ask waitress for some artificial sweetener.

Rachel: "Sweet N Low?"

The joke seems to be quite translatable, if you know that Sweet’N’Low is a sugar substitute. But I kept sensing something extra about it. So I dug into my research and it appeared that the tiny pink baggie hides a whole arc of Rachel's character. Get yourself ready for a story here!

Okay, basic googling tells us that Sweet'N'Low is a pink paper bag that contains artificial sugar. 

First of all lets see what the Sweet'N'Low's package communicates to us. Once you start looking the parallels between the sweetener and Rachel pop up one after another. For one there is the classic Barbie pink, that is all about the girly girl message these days. By the way there were the times, when pink was the symbolic color for boys, just saying. 

The other two nods to Rachel are in the name. Sweet, as it is also true in some other languages, isn't used just for a taste description, but for talking about people's character too. And Rachel in many ways is fitting the sweet girl profile the best of all the characters. Well, later in the show Matt LeBlanc fought for his Joey's character to turn into a sweeter lane. But in the beginning it was just Rachel, the sweet one. 

The low part of the name is a tiny bit less translatable to other languages. On the package of the artificial sweetener low stands for being low in calories. If we talk about a person, than low can also mean feeling down, sad or low on energy. And even though Rachel is pumped up with adrenalin at the moment, that is how she has felt for some time in anticipation of a loveless and passionless marriage with Barry. Plus Rachel is about to feel maybe even lower, when later in the episode her father will cut her off his financial support and the grief for the life, she has given up would enter the scene.

Now when we are done with the surface messages. It is time to dive a bit deeper.

A quick bite of history. Sweet'N'Low was invented by Benjamin Eisenstadt in the mids of the past century. He has named his brainchild after his favorite poem by Lord Tennyson... Sweet’N’Low. The poem itself is only a small part of a bigger story called “The Princess”. And who is daddy’s princess is FRIENDS? Right, neither Phoebe, nor Monica, but miss Rachel Green.

Yet the biggest highlight of that poem reference lies not in the title, but in the content itself.
Lord Tennysnon wrote the story about the princess in the mid-19th century. He intended it as proof to the critics that no-no, he was not afraid to touch a risky topic! And the risky hot topic of that time in England was spinning around higher education for women. Is it okay for universities to mess with lady's head at all, you know?

So the title, The Princess is kind of deceiving. The poem is not about some Rapunzel, who is imprisoned in a tower, waiting and waiting and waiting for salvation from her prince. The actual hero is a king's daughter Ida, who is much more proactive. She rebels by breaking off an imposed engagement and runs away to... give me a moment to catch my breath... She runs away to found the First Women's University. Do you hear it? How awesome is that princess?! Hey, Disney! You, could've pick this story! 

And yet, the prince does exist. But what is he to do, if the princess doesn't need his rescuing? Well, the prince follows the princess. In the spirit of a 90s comedy, he dresses up as a woman and... And gets himself into the newly founded university of the rebel princess. There, a princess and prince in disguise debate gender equality. Bare with me a bit more, I promise it all is going to come down to Rachel and Ross.

By the end of the story, our princess, caring for the exhausted prince, falls in love with him, they get married and are already hand in hand fight for women's rights. 

Isn't that a perfect reflection of Rachel's arc? Miss Green was born to marry a doctor, but in America this often means a financially successful individual, and to live a well-fed but passive life as a status picture wife. But like Princess Ida, Rachel breaks the family pattern and runs away. Then Rachel finds herself in a business of fashion and becomes really successful at it. And then Ross, like the prince, in his already leveled-up version, where he understands the importance of her own self for the princess, suddenly becomes vulnerable. Now it is time for the princess to make a choice and Rachel chooses Ross over job offer in Paris.

You would think this is it about Sweet'N'Low joke, wouldn't you? But no, I've got one more Easter egg for you. 

Already in the eighth episode of the first season, Monica and Ross's grandmother dies. Together with his mother and aunt, Ross helps clear up the apartment of his deceased grandmother. Up in the storage room, Ross finds a shoebox of Sweet'N'Low. A hundred pink bags shower him from head to toe.The scene isn a way refers the attentive viewer to the first episode. Rachel drops in cafe right after Ross cries out his wish to be married again. Yes, now we have our message, no matter what, these two still have to be together. 

If only everything in life were so obvious! What if you just need to take a closer look?