Author Helen Fielding says that she recently re-watched the Bridget Jones Diary movies and unfortunately, she wasn’t impressed with what she saw, despite the fact that she created the character and that the films were based on her books. That’s because she was left shocked at how different things were nearly two decades ago compared to the feminist movements that have recently changed the way society thinks and treats women in the work place. Here’s what she has to say!
In a new interview with Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, the author says that her heroine Bridget Jones might be criticized for being vapid, anti-feminist and irrelevant to today’s new generation of millennial women. As a matter of fact, the author herself says that she was shocked by all of the sexism that was in the Bridget Jones Diary films, even though she wrote the books herself.
Helen Fielding Hints Bridget Jones Diary Might Have Become Irrelevant Today
She said during her interview, “I took my kids to see a screening of the movie. I hadn’t seen it for years and years, and I was staggered. You couldn’t write that now. The level of sexism that Bridget was dealing with, the hand on the bum in so many of the scenes, Richard Finch [Bridget’s boss, saying): ‘Let’s have a shot of the boobs.’” Fielding pointed out that “in the end [Bridget] turned around and stuck it to them”, but acknowledged that sexism was “just part and parcel of her life” and that times have certainly but also thankfully changed. Fielding also said that her character Bridget Jones would probably feel more comfortable calling herself a feminist in 2020 than she did almost 20 years ago.
“I think, at the time, Bridget said being a feminist with a capital F was another thing that she felt she wasn’t very good at,” Fielding said. “What’s great now is that feminism has sort of lost its capital F.” The author added, “The way Bridget operates is the way your friends operate,” she said. “When you see your friends at the end of the day, you do not go and say, ‘I’ve been such a marvelous feminist. You say, ‘You’d never believe what happened to me today’ and then you support each other.”
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