Photograph: c.Miramax/Everett/Rexīut the film as a cultural entity amplified those impossible standards in a nastier sense. The endless brilliant comedic set pieces drove home the farce of gendered expectations and made us vigilant against them.īurning ember … Colin Firth. To me, she wasn’t an imbecile, but emblematic of these impossible standards, ones that Zellweger bore with painfully apologetic brightness. In his original review from 2001, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw says the film makes Bridget “look like the world’s biggest prat, and an egregious emotional imbecile”. Even if, aged 12, you had not yet been tricked into dressing as a Playboy bunny for a garden party and subject to the patronising biological clock “tick-tock” of smug marrieds called – sorry, what – Cosmo and Woney (what the hell was going on in London), these horrors resonated in skirts tucked in knickers, in being frogmarched by a teacher to the loos to wipe off what was evidently not a discreet application of mascara. Workplace harassment, impromptu public speaking. If a tense, noir surf riff out of a spy film didn’t emphasise the absurd stealth manoeuvres that underpin female beauty standards, the Spanx wedgie drove home the indignity.Īnd god, the indignities. “First, look gorgeous,” Zellweger says in voiceover over a montage of her waxing, wincing, primping and comparing the potential success rates of control pants and a thong. Seduced by her boss, Daniel Cleaver (a no-flies-on-me Hugh Grant), Bridget attempts to transform herself from chaotic lush to ideal woman. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features ‘I didn’t see a template but a warning’ … Hugh Grant with Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Plus my beloved Geri Halliwell was on the soundtrack: what could anyone have to complain about? The trailer quickly became a communal classroom obsession, the line “wanton sex goddess with a very bad man between her thighs – mum, hi!” quickly deposing childish Simpsons catchphrases, because pre-teen girls are ardent perverts. When the film was announced, I knew some people were annoyed that an American actor had been cast as Bridget but I had no idea who Zellweger was either way so I didn’t care. (I felt let down by The Cappuccino Years: Mole cooking offal in some restaurant was much less interesting than measuring his willy with a ruler.) It was rude and funny – I loved it. But in many ways Bridget was a sound guide through those formative years.Īged 12 I had already read the book, assuming it – probably not incorrectly – to be a kind of adult version of Adrian Mole. Plenty has been written about how Helen Fielding’s creation is antifeminist and perpetuates outdated ideas about body image and marriage as the ultimate goal for a woman. Bridget watched over us as we slept back-to-back at sleepovers, analysed whether it was worth spending 10p of precious phone credit replying to an SMS from a boy off the bus and built a brains trust of everything we knew about sex. B ridget Jones loomed large over my early adolescence, by which I mean that a seven-foot-tall poster of Renée Zellweger in character hung behind my best friend’s bed.
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