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 .

She's not meant to be a role model, she was meant to be a real woman. Its not anti-feminist to portray real women, for fucks sake.

Women who are not fat think they are, shocker, never heard of that in real life!

I'm a little younger than Bridget but of the demographic that read the original columns and books. I loved the first two books; they were satire, attacking things like 'The Rules' and the diet industry that made Bridget realise she was convinced that she should be consuming no calories at all - surprised to be reminded that we actually need some to survive. Bridget felt like the person you would be if you were absorbing all the crap being thrown at young women at the time, and you rooted for her to realise how flawed it all was.

Her height and clothes size are never mentioned in the books, so it's never clear whether she is over or underweight. The comments from her friends when she hits her goals are the only real hint to her actual appearance.

I didn't like the films or the later books (Helen Fielding wrote two different sequels, the first before the third film. She just about manages to make the third and fourth books work together but it's a big stretch.) The fact that the producers spent so much time before the first film had been released talking about how a very slim actress had had to eat HUGE quantities of food (ie fairly normal) to be the same size as the enormous Bridget was an immediate flag that the joke was just being missed. The books are not slapstick. The books centre her friendships day to day, and part of her realisation at the end of the second one is how very important they are to her, over and above a man. Her need for a relationship is very much fear of loneliness, and she is actually never alone. Again, totally lost in the films.

She's not really a hero, but by the end of the original books you are cheering her on to realise how much crap she has bought into and needs to cut loose.

Alternatively, why do female writers feel the need to portray women as incompetent in order to find favour with a female audience?

NEWSFLASH. not all women are perfect paragons of virtue, all things to all people. I'm fucking incompetent quite a lot of the time, and I don't think I'm the only one. What the fuck is wrong with writing about REAL women? Books about REAL women?

Am I missing the point here?
Yes.

Why does a fictional protagonist need to be a role model? Are you twelve?

@Vello

She's not supposed to be a role model. It's not for five year olds.

This.

Why do women portray themselves as incompetent?

They don’t, but, as a writer, it is very blooming dull for people to read about a character with no faults - especially in a silly comedy. Reading a column about a woman who was top of her game, never intimidated by professional acquaintances, who got on perfectly with all colleagues and met a man who she had a sensible thought through relationship with and went on to marry with no issues would make people want to turn the page. There are a huge variety of characters, some caricatures are sillier and more over done than others, but it doesn’t mean all female characters are incompetent. Anyway, Bridget is a more a product of society’s crap, the weight obsession, the ‘oh dear still single at 30’ mindset of the time. It’s weird to always make out every representation of a woman must be positive and well rounded as many women aren’t in real life anyway, there’s a huge variety as there are with men. There are plenty of weird incompetent men in lit too, what about Holden Caulfield or Dick Diver? Yes, we should write to challenge stereotypes and explore new ways of portraying both modern society and its themes, but it doesn’t always have to mean that every female literary character must be held up as some great representation of every woman in that era.

Equally, a Bridget Jones today would be living with mum and dad, have travelled through Asia for 4 years, vape not smoke (but not in pubs), complain about a covid mask, have done 5 years in an unpaid internship living on someone’s uni house sofa (but never got into that industry as no jobs were offered), protested against student fees rising but not been listened to, be doing sober october (but maybe have a sneaky drink and not tell people), make a resolution to do couch to 5k, have people on Facebook she doesn’t know, be failing to get a home covid test and have to do a walk in so catching it anyway, brexit prepping and worrying over whether she can still buy Brie, complaining about Fatimas arts campaign and making resolutions to reduce screen time but never managing to do it.

She wouldn’t be doing those things because she’s incompetent. She’d be doing them because she’s a character used to take the mickey out of certain societal trends and the modern day.

I think you might have the kernel of a book there magpiesong...

She's absolutely not meant to be a role model, though. What she is, is a representation (albeit exaggerated) of the struggles women face when trying to get their life together.

There's this expectation sometimes, whether put on us by ourselves or others, to look good, be in a good relationship, get married and have kids, own a house, have good relationships with our family, have plenty of money and have a good job.

Bridget aims to do all of these things - and the whole point is to see her struggle, and achieve none of them whatsoever. It's not a role model situation, more a reality check for those of us who do expect to have it all. It's saying you shouldn't necessarily aim to BE Bridget, but it's okay if you're more like her than you want to be.

Not every novel or film has to have a lesson in it, you know, but that's my take on it if you're determined to look at it in that way.

She was of her time - but I don't think she was supposed to be a role model - more to validate women who didn't have their lives together in a perfect manner. I guess she was kind of an anti-hero type figure.

I love Bridget 1 & 2, just needs to be viewed as some lighthearted froth. I never considered her a role model.

Ffs!it's fun op,just a Rom com.
Are you going to sit through every film ever made looking for something that's not representing women correctly?
Lighten up.you never know you might have some fun.

@MagpieSong

Why do women portray themselves as incompetent?

They don’t, but, as a writer, it is very blooming dull for people to read about a character with no faults - especially in a silly comedy. Reading a column about a woman who was top of her game, never intimidated by professional acquaintances, who got on perfectly with all colleagues and met a man who she had a sensible thought through relationship with and went on to marry with no issues would make people want to turn the page. There are a huge variety of characters, some caricatures are sillier and more over done than others, but it doesn’t mean all female characters are incompetent. Anyway, Bridget is a more a product of society’s crap, the weight obsession, the ‘oh dear still single at 30’ mindset of the time. It’s weird to always make out every representation of a woman must be positive and well rounded as many women aren’t in real life anyway, there’s a huge variety as there are with men. There are plenty of weird incompetent men in lit too, what about Holden Caulfield or Dick Diver? Yes, we should write to challenge stereotypes and explore new ways of portraying both modern society and its themes, but it doesn’t always have to mean that every female literary character must be held up as some great representation of every woman in that era.

Equally, a Bridget Jones today would be living with mum and dad, have travelled through Asia for 4 years, vape not smoke (but not in pubs), complain about a covid mask, have done 5 years in an unpaid internship living on someone’s uni house sofa (but never got into that industry as no jobs were offered), protested against student fees rising but not been listened to, be doing sober october (but maybe have a sneaky drink and not tell people), make a resolution to do couch to 5k, have people on Facebook she doesn’t know, be failing to get a home covid test and have to do a walk in so catching it anyway, brexit prepping and worrying over whether she can still buy Brie, complaining about Fatimas arts campaign and making resolutions to reduce screen time but never managing to do it.

She wouldn’t be doing those things because she’s incompetent. She’d be doing them because she’s a character used to take the mickey out of certain societal trends and the modern day.

So it’s either incompetent or no faults is it?

Good writers’ characters have interesting, idiosyncratic flaws. Bad writers’ characters have stereotyped flaws.

but it doesn’t mean all female characters are incompetent.

It’s weird to always make out every representation of a woman must be positive

Sorry what?

It is SATIRE dude. Go read the book it’s much clearer in there that they are fondly making fun of a certain type of woman.

Only the films tried to make her a ‘heroine’ which you’re right didn’t work at all.

Agree with others that she was never meant to be a role model. For many of us, she was a reflection of who we were despite trying ever so hard to be sophisticated and successful. I never wanted to be Bridget. I just was very much like her when I was aged between 18-25 so she really resonated with me. I loved the books. Bridget made me laugh at myself and the silly things that I did a lot more.

@Newkitchen123

Why can't you just watch it for what it is? A lighthearted film! Why does everything have to be analysed to death!

THIS!!!! With bells on!!!

That fear of dying alone and being eaten by your own Alsatian was both a fairly real thing, but also a thing exacerbated by media coverage of all the young single women who might never find a man before their biological clock ran out. It was at a time when the press had first started talking a lot about fertility issues of ageing, as society was seeing the average age of mothers rise, and created a new sort of pressure to FIND A MAN.

Bridget Jones is reflecting all of that.

Yeah because find-a-man quick before you get old has not been part of literature for women since Jane Austen...

Not that BridgetJones counts as literature.

@TatianaBis

Yeah because find-a-man quick before you get old has not been part of literature for women since Jane Austen...

Not that BridgetJones counts as literature.

Well, (a) Bridget Jones was of course a conscious re-working of Pride and Prejudice and (b) Jane Austen's focus was economic. That pressure also emerged at a different point in someone's life; by the 90s it was perfectly possible for a woman to be economically independent and live alone, well into your 30s, which was the age that Bridget was. At which point the media was making a big deal of women who had missed the bus and would therefore die alone, and would be too old to have kids. So some things had shifted and created a new narrative which Bridget as a character reflected.

Though fewer people would admit to identifying with Adrian.

I was about the same age as Adrian when I read the first two books and though I'm female, I found myself identifying with him quite often - he, or rather, Sue Townsend, did speak to insecure teenage geeky types with intellectual pretensions and terror of imminent nuclear war.

As i mentioned on page 1 of this thread....I missed the point....she is not a role model. Case dismissed!

I'm the same age as Bridget and I loved her at the time... Because we were a similar age/class etc, and shared experience.

Times do change of course. And she was never held up as a role model unless I've missed something?

Well, (a) Bridget Jones was of course a conscious re-working of Pride and Prejudice and (b) Jane Austen's focus was economic. That pressure also emerged at a different point in someone's life; by the 90s it was perfectly possible for a woman to be economically independent and live alone, well into your 30s, which was the age that Bridget was. At which point the media was making a big deal of women who had missed the bus and would therefore die alone, and would be too old to have kids. So some things had shifted and created a new narrative which Bridget as a character reflected.

What you mean is that it’s a cartoon version of P&P along with many others - Clueless, P&P and Zombies, Bride and Prejudice etc. Less original and inventive than Clueless imo.

There is nothing new about misogynists cawing about women dying alone. BJ’s focus was partly economic - Mark Darcy is of course a rich lawyer.

@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.

This has absolutely blown my mind, but also so spot on! KS does come across as very decent, and would wear the jumper his Mum got him.

I so hope it’s true!