If I had a daughter, I would take her to a Bridget Jones movie and say: 'Don’t be like Bridget'
Renée Zellweger and Leo Woodall in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
I saw the new Bridget Jones film on Saturday with low expectations, but it left me in a strangely wistful mood. Watching craggy-faced characters you first met in the nineties and realising you are the same age provoked nostalgia. In one scene, where they dance to Fat Boy Slim, it’s like being put in a time machine. And in the closing sequence watching the characters at a party, happy despite their challenges, sickness, death, and divorce, you can’t help but reflect that you, too, have survived the shit the years have doled out.
Helen Fielding’s , which launched the entire franchise, had intimate, -style writing that drew you in. It was a smashing commercial success, selling over 15 million copies, so hats off to the smart, savvy Ms Fielding.
The latest offering in the franchise became the best-performing romcom in the UK ever on its opening weekend. Honestly, the hapless Bridget Jones always left me lukewarm.
Mildly amusing, her casual attitude to her career and her cutesy professional blunders were irritating. In various incarnations, Bridget was a PR in a publishing house, a television producer, and a television presenter. She messed up every job she was given and didn’t seem that bothered. Furthermore, she let the boys, barrister Mark Darcy (played by Colin Firth) and publisher Daniel Cleaver (played by Hugh Grant), do all the thinking.
She had zero intellectual curiosity; her brain power was directed towards bagging a partner. I don’t think every woman must have a big career. Readers of this column will know that I believe that leaning out to care for your family is admirable; it’s just a crime that we don’t get paid for the caregiving that contributes valuably to society.
But Bridget has a one-track mind, and that’s romance and men. Sample quote, “Perhaps this is the mysterious Mr Right I have been waiting my whole life to meet.” She is a smiley, cute, neurotic woman you would panic about getting stuck in a lift unless you had a crate of Chardonnay to see you through. She would crack into the Chardonnay, and I would too if I had to listen to her wittering. But I would insist she sit on the floor because she falls a lot. Why would you keep tumbling unless you had a bona fide medical condition? Well, I guess it signals that as a woman, you can’t cope, and you need a hand up, preferably from a hot man.
Sitting in the lovely cinema in Bantry, I admitted to myself that the topic of grief (Bridget’s Mr Darcy is dead) gave the film some much-needed affecting heft. Yet many of Bridge’s irritating trademark tics remain. She still struggles with basic tasks like cooking pasta, unzipping her dress, gurning a lot, and finding walking challenging. Best guess she is one of those women who grew up thinking men would find her ditziness attractive. We all know those women who pretend to be less smart to soothe their male partners and the dunderheads who fall for it or run a mile from independent, educated, and capable women.
The audience was mainly small groups of female friends my age, with the odd brave husband and one or two older gentlemen in peaked caps. Fair play. There were some Gen Z couples because, apparently, the marriage-obsessed Bridget Jones is a Gen Z icon. Maybe that’s not a huge surprise when you think about it. Feminism was associated with the left in the latter half of the 20th century, but it’s becoming more right-leaning.
Last week, a survey suggested that almost two-thirds of young adults believe that marriage is still an important institution; they are far more conservative than the millennial generation that preceded them. A third of those surveyed thought it better for a couple to be married before having children. According to a Gallup poll, Zoomers are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents than millennials were 20 years ago. One theory is that Gen Z social conservatism is a response to the liberalisation of Western society, including the breakdown of the traditional family, the decline of religion, the pressures of online existence, and the bombardment of porn.
Hugh Grant, who plays Daniel Cleaver in the movies, has a theory that Gen Z loves ‘Bridge’ because she supposedly represents the opposite of the pressure on younger women in Instagram culture to have perfect bodies, even though she was a woman who was so obsessed by her weight that she kept a diary of her weight and calories consumed and thought being 9 stone 4 pounds was fat. I hated that about Bridget probably because that aspect of her was realistic, and rankled.
The 90s were hardcore for body shaming and weight regulation. There was zero body positivity. It was ‘be thin or go home’. In the current movie, they have thankfully jettisoned the fat person deserves to be shamed theme, presumably because it’s verboten to admit that women still bend themselves into various idealised shapes to be ornamental. The only difference is that you don’t have to be a cadaver.
The central message of the four Bridget Jones movies is, broadly speaking, that it’s enough for Briget to flap around in her pyjamas with tousled hair, hoping to be rescued by a younger man, an older man, or any man with a pulse because getting a man is the holy grail in Bridge’s world.
If I had a daughter, I would take her to a Bridget Jones movie and say, "Don’t be like Bridget. Focus on your career and dreams. Do your job to a high standard because you owe it to your employer and, most of all, yourself. Never pretend to be less intelligent to attract a male. While you legitimately might want to meet a partner and have a family and stay at home to raise your children (sorry, 1970s liberal egalitarian feminists, feminism has broadened to incorporate many different choices), don’t waste your life plotting how to tie down a man and have your fairytale wedding. And should your union not work out because of divorce or death, then think about how it might be to pass through the world on your own, to be the boss of your own yard.”
So many young women spend so much of their precious time attracting the male gaze and engaging in damaging mental gymnastics, trying to corner elusive, emotionally unavailable males. What a waste of time.
Bridget Jones is kind. But she is also a privileged, incompetent peabrain with suspiciously bad coordination and far from the relatable every woman in her big house in Leafy Hamstead. On the other hand, we live in a crazy world. Every second person I meet says, "Can you believe what happened in America? Where is this all going to end?" We are all seeking comfort at the moment.
There were tears and laughter in the cinema. At the end, I spoke to many female cinemagoers, and they unanimously loved it. As we say in Cork, how bad girl.
