Bridget Jones: One member of Gen Z delivers their verdict on fat shaming and cancel culture.
As the fourth instalment of the hit series causes an intergenerational rumpus, watching the original with a teenage girl blew my mind.
I haven’t watched Bridget Jones’ Diary since it came out in 2001, so it’s discombobulating, to say the least, to watch it again with my 14-year-old daughter. Turns out I didn’t die a tragic spinster after all.
It also turns out she first watched it when she was 12, for it is a truth universally acknowledged (if unbeknownst to Mum) that when you have older siblings, you’ll end up watching things you shouldn’t.
As filming for the fourth movie gets under way, plenty of fat has been chewed over whether the first instalment of Helen Fielding’s blockbuster franchise has stood the test of time.
But both my daughters (the eldest just turned 18) would agree that despite Gen Z’s predilection for “cancelling” films that don’t adhere to today’s cultural mores, clangers such as Bridget being called “fat” and her pal Tom being called a “poof” aren’t reason enough not to watch the original film, even though they and their friends would never dream of using either descriptor themselves.
As my 14-year-old, Eliza (wiser for her years than I was at that age), points out: “Those who forget history might repeat it. If you try to erase bad things that happened in the past, there’s nothing to look back on and go, ‘That’s not okay’. Just don’t do it again.”
Settling down on the sofa and pressing play, the two of us set out to see how the script has stood the test of time. The ensuing 97 minutes are informative: at times cringe-making, at times poignant, but never dull, as we watch and debate how today’s most sensitive topics were handled 23 years ago.
Much may have changed, but some things remain the same. Faced with a crisis, I’d still choose vodka and Chaka Khan.
Two minutes and 11 seconds into the film, and Bridget’s mum Pam is exhibiting about the same level of tact as Laurence Fox. “There you are, dumpling!” she trills upon seeing Bridget, a childhood nickname parents now know better than to employ, before going on to call the Japanese “a cruel race” and opining that Bridget will “never get a boyfriend if you look like you wandered out of Auschwitz”.
“Obviously, most people would never say those things now,” notes Eliza. “But that generation at that time was probably less exposed to other people’s point of view, and has become more understanding. Pam says things without thinking, but she also comes from a time when it was more acceptable to judge.”
In 2001, I remember magazines being full of praise for “brave” Renee Zellweger, who’d committed the extreme sacrifice of gaining weight for the role, increasing her tiny size, if memory serves, to what was perceived as a gargantuan UK size 12. When I explain this to Eliza, she is shocked.
“If Bridget is supposed to be fat, you wouldn’t get away with not casting a plus-sized actress nowadays. But it’s ridiculous that she’s going on about her weight anyway. I know that’s the plot, but Renee Zellweger is clearly not fat, or even overweight.”
Eliza also takes umbrage at the scene where Bridget laments her future. “It’s really bad that ‘dying fat’ and ‘dying alone’ are portrayed as being the same - like, God forbid you died fat, when obviously dying alone is the thing that’s actually sad.”
“You appear to have forgotten your skirt,” Daniel Cleaver emails Bridget after she walks into the office in a vanishing black mini. “Is skirt off sick?” It’s one of many comments directed at Bridget’s personal appearance.
Since she’s firmly of a generation that believes women should wear what they want, and it’s a man’s problem if they find it inappropriate, I’m surprised Eliza sees the funny side.
When, in a later scene, Bridget arrives in another short skirt, with a black Wonderbra clearly visible under her gauzy gold top, Eliza is censorious. “To be fair, she’s dressed like she’s going to a club. She probably shouldn’t wear that to work.”
At 14, she’s already experienced the sort of ogling perpetuated by Bridget’s boss, Mr Fitzherbert, and doesn’t think boys today are any less rude or judgmental about women’s bodies than men were in 2001.
“Now, boys will ask for your Snap [Snapchat details], and if you don’t give it to them, they’ll call you a slag, or ugly. But not all boys. Not the boys who have lovely mums and were brought up well.”
We both agree the dinner party scene would likely not feature an all-white cast were it to be filmed now, but the couples might still be exclusively heterosexual.
“You might get a smug gay married couple, because I feel like gay men have been [portrayed] on TV longer than lesbians,” says Eliza. “Lesbians just tend to get killed off.”
Eliza laughs at the scene where Bridget bins all her self-help books, finding the titles funny, but also the notion of self-help books. Her generation has free and unlimited (if somewhat concerning, from a parent’s point of view) access to a cornucopia of advice online.
“No one would ever pick up a self-help book,” she says emphatically. “Honestly, we get good advice on TikTok. There are a lot of ‘big sister’ accounts that give advice on dating and break-ups. They urge you to prioritise your friends and let them help you.”
She says the comments posted on these accounts are also helpful. “People share their own experiences, and it feels like a community.”
When Pam complains about being bored by housework and taken for granted by her husband and family, it went over my head in 2001. Twenty-three years later, I realise I’m Pam. Does Eliza think much has changed for mothers in the intervening years?
“That’s a big question. I mean, where do I begin? No offence, but mums love to complain. Fair enough - society does put a lot [of responsibility] on to mothers. But you do this. At the end of every holiday, you always sigh and say, ‘Back to cooking the Quorn escalopes and doing the laundry’. But we always offer to help with the cooking and the laundry. It’s almost as though you enjoy the struggle.”
So should mums ask for help more, and stop being martyrs? “Yes. I get why you complain, but sometimes it comes off as though you wish you weren’t a mum in the first place.”
When Darcy and Cleaver fight, the scene is more slapstick than violent, and Eliza laughs at all the waiters watching in a neat line outside the Italian restaurant. “No phones,” she observes. “Nowadays, everyone would be filming it.”
I ask whether fights make compelling social media content, and she looks at me as though I’m mad.
“Hell yes,” she says. “There are whole X [formerly Twitter] accounts dedicated to posting people’s fights. X doesn’t have as strict a violations policy as TikTok or Instagram. My friends only go on X to look at fights. On other platforms, I think they’d be taken down.”
When Darcy reads Bridget’s diary and finds the challenging things she’s written about him, it’s a pivotal scene. Watching as a single 30-something, I remember the relief I felt that her musings weren’t a deal-breaker; that Darcy had only gone to buy her another diary, rather than walking off into the sunset forever.
He really did love her just as she was. For Eliza, the idea of anyone having such ready access to your innermost thoughts is anomalous: she has a password-protected iPhone for those.
“I get why you’d keep a diary, though,” she says. “And I couldn’t care less if my friends decided to snoop through my phone - I’m not doing anything dodgy. All they’d find are recipes and videos of cute babies.”
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