Bridget Jones is a welcome reminder of a much more comfortable era | Zoe Williams
She worried about her drinking, smoking and weight – but there was never any doubt she would have a job and be able to pay her rent. It’s a very different world for gen Z
It is 29 years since the book Bridget Jones’s Diary was published, but the column itself, which ran in the Independent (without a byline for Helen Fielding, although everyone knew it was her) and the Daily Telegraph, is 30 years old this year. That’s two years younger than our heroine when she first appears, a patchwork wreck of singleton-anxiety, professional disaster, chardonnay, Silk Cut and weighing scales. And maybe being old enough to remember with clarity anything from 30 years ago predisposes you to think of it affectionately. But, actually, no: some things were better for women, better for young people, better for everyone, in 1995. And some things were worse. To coincide with the fourth film, out on Valentine’s Day, here’s the audit.
The startling thing about the comic creation was how completely she lacked any kind of self-discipline – always drinking more than she meant to, always weighing more than she intended, always determined not to smoke yet somehow also smoking. At the time, this had long been a staple for male self-fashioning: lad-mag culture was focused (ironically) on birds, but fuelled by benders. If you woke up somewhere and couldn’t remember how you got there, that was social nirvana, the ultimate night out. Ladette culture was in many ways built as a mirror to that, though a distorted one, in the sense that you had to be off your head but you couldn’t look sloppy or ill-kempt. You were meant to drink like Johnny Vegas but look like Kate Moss.
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