Bridget Jones

[aprilfools19]

I saw this on Instagram today

“In Bridget Jones’ Diary, We’re supposed to believe that she‘a a failure and overweight when shes 10 stone, Got dead good mates, walks her way into a TV job, owns her own flat in central London and is fancied by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.”

So true. I recently watched the first one for the first time in years and I noticed the weight thing right away! In one diary entry you can clearly see “weight: 133lbs” 😂😂

Still absolutely love the books and movies. It’s interesting watching them all again in my late 20s seeing how much my perceptions have changed. However it’s not aged terribly well considering the only reason she’s a “failure” is that she’s single. Not sure a movie centred around that would go down terrible well in 2020😅

The whole point of the books is she’s not fat, she just has low self-esteem and is fixated on being really skinny and fixated on diet as something she can control. When she loses half a stone (which isn’t masses of weight) everyone tells her she looks really drawn and too skinny, and she has a lightbulb moment of realisation. The quote is something like “I feel like a scientist who’s just been told his life work has no meaning” or something.

blurpityblurp oh interesting! I admit I’ve never read the books but that would make a lot more sense. They don’t really cover it in that way in the film.

The books are a million times better than the films which are actually quite shit. The whole point in the books is that she is NOT fat and every single day she lists her weight, her number if cigarettes smoked etc and then makes comments like ' 8 stone 10, the slide into obesity begins'

She has a pregnancy scare and worries that she won't be able to wear her agnes b acid green jeans.
Seriously read the books.

Daniel cleaver is a much bigger nob in the books too.

ooh i'm a 90s girl and never read the books either. i probably thought i was too cool for them or something crappy like that.

I watched the edge of reason yesterday and it was silly/funny but totally crap :D I will read the book.

The books are laugh out loud funny

Just don't read the very last book, Mad About The Boy?, because it was shit

Was just about to say what blurpity said! I was in my mid 20s and single when the books came out and they written Just For Me. I know that because a friend of a friend said as much when I was the only tragic spinster/fabulous singleton surrounded by smug marrieds at a hen do and she thrust her copy at me "you should read this!". I laughed all the way home on the train.

The first film's ok but at the time I thought so much was wrong - Bridget should have had dark hair, her flat was all wrong, as were her friends and her parents' house and she shouldn't have been that posh. Overinvested? Possibly. I should read them again actually though

I also highly recommend the books, but I think I must have been a teen when I read them. Genuinely laugh out loud funny, especially her obsession with Colin Firth. And yes, she’s not fat, just thinks she is and has a certain amount of social anxiety and verbal diarrhoea. A lot of the funny bits are entirely her own doing, and she’s a very real and loveable character because of it.

I think you also have to bear in mind that it's a very loose adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the desperation to get married and so being seen as some kind of failure for still being single, despite being successful in other ways makes a bit more sense when you read it with that in mind.

I love St. Bridget. Those books have seen me through some seriously dark times.

"Either go out with me and treat me nicely or leave me alone. I am not interested in emotional fuckwittage" pre-dates app dating but it could have been written about it!

I watched the first film the other night. It is totally of it’s time and parts of it including the attitude towards singles and men/women in general seemed a bit dated .... you sort of want to jog everyone on a bit in their attitudes towards women, equality etc. Bit cringey in that respect.
But as someone who was mostly single until her late thirties in 2014, I’d say it’s not too far off the mark. In most parts of society, a woman’s place is still to find the husband (or at least partner) and settle down with kids if she wants to be seen as truly successful and a real woman.

Another recommendation to read the books. At one stage she actually gets down to the weight she thinks she should be any everyone comments that she looks gaunt and ill.

@KittyFantastico

Just don't read the very last book, Mad About The Boy?, because it was shit

Totally agree

Yeah, I think the point of the books is that it’s all told through her own interpretation so she’s an unreliable narrator as it’s coloured by her low self esteem. Obviously you can’t really carry this over into film as easily.

The fictional Bridget is about 5 years older than me. The books are a fantastic social documentary of their time. I knew a lot of “Bridgets”. The underlying commentary is that some are not good enough until they’re married. Despite education, independence, career, Bridget just wants to be married and puts up with a lot in pursuit of this - including unrealistic ideas about her weight.

Do read the books. Apart from the last one.

I remember Renee Zelwegger getting the role and grumbling about having to put on weight for the role!

Which was wrong because she SHOULD have been thin!

Only read the first two books IMO. Even the second isn't as good as the first which was absolutely of its time and unique. The later ones (I've read them all, just in case HF taps into that zeitgeist again-she doesn't) are awful. Cringingly so.

It's a shame it spawned so much rubbish chick-lit by women who thought you could write a best seller just by having your main character get pissed and sleep with twats. Even the language HF uses as she writes Bridget is brilliant- it was certainly the way my diaries were written and the way I spoke to my friends.

The Hollywood treatment of it, from casting an American and making Bridget overweight (when the whole point of the diet thing was that she wasn't!) was such a sell out by HF.

And of course, before the books, the diary entries were columns in the independent (?)
Which is where I first read them.

you sort of want to jog everyone on a bit in their attitudes towards women, equality etc

You do but also a lot of still is how some people think, even of they wouldn't voice it - Daniel Cleaver's hideous ladder of sexual conquest for example - I know extremely "woke" "nice guys" in their late twenties that DEFIANTLY think that way about women still.

I read the first one on 6th January 1997 in one sitting, at Milan airport during an 8 hour stopover.
I laughed out loud so many times and it's still my go to comfort food reading.

Defiantly or definitely?

Why can't I ever spell definitely !

133 lbs is 9.5 st not 10 st.

Like thousands of women I was nicknamed Bridget. Even my own DM called me Bridge for a few years. The character will always be special to me because literally the whole point was she’s brilliant and just doesn’t realise it. The “exactly as you are” line is perfect. Bridget helped me with my own self esteem because I could see that she wasn’t fat and it made me realise that neither was I. I was just built differently to my size 8 willowy friends. Off to start re-reading them now - minus the last one which as every else says is rubbish