To think that Bridget Jones is a terrible role model for women?

[malificent7]

I quite like the films...they are funny... but they do make me cringe.
Bridget overhears Mark Darcy slag her off. ( calling her a spinster- terrible sexist word) then ends up obsessed with him.
She has a perfectly lovely figure but we are led to believe she is fat as she permanently struggles to loose weight and become like her "stick insect" love rivals..
She is quite inept and bumbling....adorable but useless.
That bloody song " all by myself!"

I know as women we can probably all relate to Bridget on some level ..especially her insecueities but bloody hell...we should not want to be like her!

Am I missing the point here? Are the films/ book sexist or are they trying to highlight sexism? Either way...Bridget Jones is anti feminist .

[TatianaBis]

I don’t think she’s a role model but any famous female character represents women in some way - OP has a point.

I could never identify with her insecurities, fuck ups and falling over. I just don’t know any women in real life that maladaptive. I never understood why so many women appeared to identify with her. I didn’t find it funny just tedious.

[ShebaShimmyShake]

The books were better, and they captured a lot of the contradictions people were trying to resolve at the time. The first one was, as PPs have said, a modern (as it was then) take on Pride and Prejudice.

She learned and changed. By book 2, she had seen Cleaver for who he was and rejected him when he tried to seduce her, even though he was being very very charming and she was at a low ebb.

[ShebaShimmyShake]

Also...it was comedy. She wasn't meant to be taken completely literally, none of them were. They were all exaggerated for comic effect.

[MrsGRamsay]

Oh FFS, OP has a valid point - it wasn't written in ye olde years - however, women were (as now) expected to be up for it, working in interesting, well paid (read - makes him look good) job, financially independent with own flat.

Yet incredibly needy and only validated when with bloke.

I remember reading and aghast that every chapter started with weight. I've never owned a set of scales in my life yet somehow know if lost or gained - yup, have to complain to dry cleaner for shrinking third work dress in a row - doh.

Not as bad as Sex in the City. Talk about mixed messages - strong, independent women; shag married blokes in the marital bed, are married for a day and demand prime New York real estate as alimony, think it's cute they use kitchen as storage unit for clothes and spent equivalent of house deposit on shoes, obsessed with getting married and then go all weird over wearing engagement ring, be awarded with jewellery for almost shagging ex, shag anything that moved as 'revenge' against lover? Etc.

[NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]

The books are quite different.

The weight thing in particular - the point isnt really her actual size (in the books she hardly ever even hits 10 st so is clearly slim), but her attitude to it - perpetually on a diet despite being slim. The funny bit being that like many of us, she is crap at being on diet and lives on milk tray and booze.

In the books Mark Darcy isnt an arsehole to her. He is possibly a bit shy/reserved & confused about the fact that she is often bonkers.

The books are much much better than the films. They are SO funny. I'm now about Bridget's age in the original book and a) I think I might be turning into a weird mix of bridget and magda (mummy says NO! In the potty!) And b) my mother has definitely turned into bridgets mother.

[borntobequiet]

It's strange how people are influenced by literature, taking obviously damaged and disturbed or merely deluded and unwise individuals as role models. I rather hero worshipped Dorothea Casaubon for a brief time in my late teens. On re-reading Middlemarch as an adult I realised she was an idiot and an intellectual snob, and that her allegedly empty headed sister Celia was far nicer. Now I'm old, I've pretty much given up reading novels because I find most characters irritating.

[ShebaShimmyShake]

I think the books were laughing at the times rather than women themselves. There was one bit where she was having a conversation with Magda, a married, wealthy SAHM who was also unhappy, and Bridget was trying to wonder what the solution was for women. It was still kind of "all or nothing" back then.

[MaskingForIt]

@Mulderitssme

YANBU, I enjoyed the first film as an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and I don't mind the second. They're both silly and a bit of fluff. The last one annoyed me as it was clear that the character had no development and was still making the same mistakes as she had fifteen years prior.

I think her having made no development in 15 years makes it quite life-like. Mumsnet is full of women making the same mistakes around men for years on end and wondering why it all just happens to them!

[WeddingGrump]

I don't think she was meant to be a role model? I was in my late teens when the books came out and I think it was clear then that she was meant to be relatable - constant neurotic detailing of her weight, smoking, drinking habits etc - but not admirable or aspirational.

[VirginiaWolverine]

She's a terrible role midel, but she isn't meant to be a role model. She is a character with flaws a lot of women identify with. You don't read about her and think, "I must be more like Bridget", you think "Bridget is a disaster much like I am, but she's also funny and caring and does her best and she's loveable even though she's a disaster, so maybe I can actually feel OK about my own flawed personality, too".

[eaglejulesk]

She's not supposed to be a role model - it's fun. Why must people take things so seriously

[Iwouldlikesomecake]

When she hits her target weight in the books she is so happy and then her friends are concerned for her and say she looks ‘tired’. And she starts wondering what the point was.

As someone who spent her 20s and 30s dating wholly unsuitable men and being asked with a head tilt by friends and colleagues ‘but WHY are you single when you’re so lovely/clever/whatever?’ I really got it. And feeling like if a nice man was interested it was because he’d got the wrong impression about me and when he found out what an idiot I was he would be off.

It was that feeling of growing up in the 80s and 90s with lots of ‘strong women’ as role models and feeling like you don’t really measure up when really you’re doing fine.

[Etinox]

@BrizNiz

Did you know that Helen Fielding based the Mr Darcy character on Keir Starmer and she knew him in real life? Little early morning something to chew on for you...

I know what you mean about BJ but it was a book written 20 years agp. Not every character has to be a feminist role model.

Apparently that’s what he says and she says she didn’t know him, which is very funny!

[Poppingnostopping]

*I never understood why so many women appeared to identify with her8

The point of the columns was to reflect a lifestyle that previously most women had not had- of living by themselves, having their own flat, having a career (Bridget works in publishing/TV producing), going out a lot with a big group of friends and having sex for fun.

This doesn't look revolutionary now but it was very different than the 20's and 30's of my mum and my grandma's life. See Friends and Sex and the City for similar datedness.

Bridget is actually reasonably successful in her life, but wants to settle down by early thirties but is, like lots of women/men including lots on mumsnet, easily led by lust and flattery, she makes stupid mistakes in love.

Given the thread on here today about living at home til late twenties/early thirties, Bridget looks pretty darn successful. People forget that women having sex for fun and having more than one potential boyfriend would have been hugely judged or just not possible in the generation before- it was a really fun time to be a single professional female living in London, and Bridget reflects that, with a bit of modern neuroses on the side.

[Graciebobcat]

Erm, she isn't fat in the films either, just larger than normal for RZ at the time. I thought the adaptation was perfect and prefer the first film to the book.

[crochetmonkey74]

no! I loved it - especially at the time when there were no women like her represented- she was messy , disorganised etc

[NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]

I could never identify with her insecurities, fuck ups and falling over. I just don’t know any women in real life that maladaptive.

Horses for courses. I know loads and I really identify with the constantly "dieting" yet eating chocolate & biscuits, not actually doing any real exercise, being (in all likelihood) perfectly competent in a professional job but insecure about it regardless

[crochetmonkey74]

@Iwouldlikesomecake

When she hits her target weight in the books she is so happy and then her friends are concerned for her and say she looks ‘tired’. And she starts wondering what the point was.

As someone who spent her 20s and 30s dating wholly unsuitable men and being asked with a head tilt by friends and colleagues ‘but WHY are you single when you’re so lovely/clever/whatever?’ I really got it. And feeling like if a nice man was interested it was because he’d got the wrong impression about me and when he found out what an idiot I was he would be off.

It was that feeling of growing up in the 80s and 90s with lots of ‘strong women’ as role models and feeling like you don’t really measure up when really you’re doing fine.

exactly how I felt about it

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

She was saying the things quite a few women thought but didn’t dare say, because they weren’t what women were supposed to think any more.

I read somewhere that at least some of P&P’s original success stemmed from the fact of Mrs B saying at once of Mr Bingley, before even meeting him, ‘He has five thousand a year!’ - and ditto the £10k of Mr D - because that was the first thing so many people thought - but it wasn’t done to say it openly.

[megletthesecond]

Well yes, that's the point. She was just meant to be a normal woman.

[MJMG2015]

🙄🙄

Seriously?

It was very much 'of its time'. It's a FILM. Not everything has to be a bloody life lesson!

[alphabetsoup1980]

She's not a character to aspire to but rather identify either! But corrrrrrr Mark Darcey 😉

[alphabetsoup1980]

*with

[MushMonster]

I agree with PP, she is no role model.
I think she is an exaggerated version of what women think about themselves, I am fat/ a bit useless- helpless/ not good enough/ will never find the one.... But behind all that, she is good in her career(she gets her own program), she is funny, and she finds a good loving partner who takes her as she is. An anti-hero like other poster said.

[MotherPiglet]

Does anyone want to be like her?!

Shes not supposed to be a role model..