Bridget Jones: Who We Love, Just As She Is

Fe-liners, it was only a matter of time before I wrote this post. I was 18 when the film adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary was released and, although I don’t think I realised it at the time, it had quite an effect on me. To this day when re-watching it, the memory of how I felt when I first saw it comes flooding back.

My best friend and I spent most of the movie nudging each other and whispering “I totally do that!” and continued in pretty much the same vein during the weeks that followed when reminiscing (and, funnily enough, in a conversation we had the other day). The wonderful thing about Bridget Jones was that she isn’t an aspirational character. She makes silly mistakes, she gets the wrong end of the stick, she dates the wrong men, she’s clumsy, she drinks, she smokes, she swears, and she makes grand lifestyle declarations knowing full well she won’t be able to follow them through. She obsessively watches her weight even though she isn’t even remotely chubby, has a tendency to be a tad self-involved, and regularly jumps to conclusions without checking her facts properly.

So what’s so great about that? Well, I don’t know about anybody else, but I find it exhausting trying to live up to all these unrealistic images of perfection we’re bombarded with and Bridget is, in short, the very definition of an imperfect heroine. Even with her many flaws, she is completely adorable and we are still rooting for her to get her man in a way that I don’t think I’ve rooted for any character before or since (with the possible exception of Miranda). What a brilliant lesson for the teenage me to learn, with all my insecurities and worries over not fitting in: just because you’re not perfect, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be loved just like everybody else.

I remember that there was a lot of buzz when Bridget Jones’s Diary – both the film, the book, and probably the column in The Independent – came out. Although there have been a whole army of “Bridget Clones” (see what I did there?) in both chic flicks and chic lit since, Bridget was different to everything that had come before.

I recently dusted down my copies of the books and settled in to re-read them (research is tough, Fe-liners). I am now a thirty-something myself so Bridget has become a peer rather than an elder or possible future. It was interesting to have that perspective change as, although the text was all very familiar and the now-not-so-current events she mentions were tinged with nostalgia, I found there were various aspects of Bridget’s world that had simply gone over my head as a teen. For example, I am now all-too familiar with the horrors of thirty-something hangovers and know exactly what Bridget’s referring to when she talks about hangover guilt; but back then I was happy (and deluded) in the knowledge that I didn’t “really get hung-over”. And I have now, of course, experienced the joys of trying to decode male behaviour whilst receiving conflicting advice from various friend groups for myself, so am able to empathise with the whole Daniel Cleaver/Mark Darcy conundrum in a way I couldn’t in my teens.

Finally, I didn’t feel I could write this without at least mentioning the latest book, Mad About The Boy. I didn’t know what to expect from it having heard all the fuss in the press (I won’t say any more than that in case you haven’t heard) but I thought Helen Fielding handled the challenge she’d set herself incredibly well. Bridget is now a fifty-something and, although in many ways she is still the same old Bridget with mostly the same friends around her, the intervening years have inevitably changed life for her somewhat; for one thing she now has two young children. It’s a really good book, however, I do have the following advice should you decide to read it:

• Don’t start reading it when tired.
• Don’t start reading it when hormonal.
• Don’t start reading it immediately after you’ve finished reading Edge of Reason.

I broke all three of these rules, cried a lot, and couldn’t pick it up again for two days.

There will always be a special place in my heart (and bookshelf. And DVD rack) for Miss Jones. She was the first character I saw who taught me that it’s ok to be me, neuroses and all (v.g.).

Hurrah!

 

 

 

 

Image Credit: Miramax Films