Bridget, Get A Clue

Today is the third and final introductory post for Christina, our latest FFFs candidate. You can vote on whether she’s FFFs material in the poll on the right side of the page. The poll will be open for one week.

As a fat person, I have never liked this film. I hated the way Renée Zellweger spoke to the press about how hard it was for her to gain, and then lose, the 30 pounds she put on for the film. I hated the way the press made her seem so heroic for braving the added pounds, and then having the willpower to lose the weight. I hated how in her very next film, Chicago, she was so thin that it aroused suspicions that she might actually have an eating disorder. I have suffered through Bridget Jones’s Diary several times (at the request of friends) and I suffered through it again just for this review. You’re welcome.

Bridget is the only person who ever mentions her weight. Even in the beginning of the film, when Darcy is critical of her, the subject of weight is never brought up. The characters in the film discuss her age more than her weight, which is strange because Bridget’s weight is such a major source of her discontent.

We see her making faces at the scale, cringing when watching her bottom sliding down the fire station’s pole on TV, and wearing a girdle to make her stomach smaller than what it already is. What does this tell women? It tells them that it’s normal to obsess over their weight and that even being slightly rounded (not even overweight) is cause for concern.

Bridget feels that in order to be noticed (and receive that ever-elusive love and attention) she has to flaunt her curves by wearing mini-skirts, see-through blouses, and push-up bras. She does not do this out of self-confidence, but as an attempt to receive some sort of validation from male attention. This tells larger women that in order to attract a man they have to objectify their bodies because, after all, without showing off her breasts, a larger woman really has nothing else to attract a man with.

All of this is in vain, though, as Bridget discovers Daniel having an affair with a thin, attractive co-worker. The fact that Daniel eventually leaves Bridget for a thinner woman conveys the message to a larger woman that she needs to be cautious when in a relationship because a thinner woman could steal her man away at any moment.

Bridget Jones’s Diary does not embrace Size Acceptance. It does not teach women that it does not matter what size they are, it teaches women to obsess about their bodies. It teaches women that men might love them in spite of their weight, and, if they found a man willing to do so, they should run through the snowy streets wearing nothing but panties and a sweater to chase him down.

The way Bridget and her friends obsess over Darcy’s proclamation that he loves her “just the way she is” is excruciating to watch. Every man should love a woman just the way she is! Women should not have to change themselves to attract or keep a love interest. This film is one big stereotype and does absolutely nothing for the Size Acceptance movement. It’s just another mindless chick flick and one that I won’t be watching again.