Body Image in Bridget Jones

Originally posted at Fatly Yours on Monday, December 17, 2007

When Bridget Jones' Diary came into the theatres, I saw it twice. I liked its lighthearted humor, and particularly the loveable loser as a lead, which is not all that common for a female protagonist (but is almost always the case for a male protagonist). When I read the books, however, I realized how much better it could have been. What disappointed me the most was probably the choice of Renee Zellweger for the lead, or more generally, the choice of a leading lady who was otherwise skinny and was "fattened up" for the part.

In the novels, Bridget Jones is normalweight - around 130 lbs - and loses and gains the same few pounds all the time, like people do in real life. She's much more intelligent than she comes off in the movies: she's a feminist of sorts, self-ironic and analytical. Her biggest problem is that she's self-absorbed and neurotic, much like in the movie. However, unlike in the movie, her fight against fat is shown as her own private struggle, endless and futile, and in the end, others like her better when she's not skinny. In other words, a surprisingly realistic take on a chubbyish normalweight woman. I wouldn't give the books a size acceptance trophy, but they aren't completely fatphobic either.

In the movies, we see a different reality. They ditched a lot of the body-positive elements from the novels and replaced them with cheap fat jokes. The scene where Bridget realizes 2000 calories is a daily recommendation? Not in the movie. The scene where her friends think she's a bore and less attractive when she finally loses weight? Not in the movie. Instead, they spend most of the first and especially the second movie stuffing her into unfitting and unflattering clothes to purposefully make her look fatter. They have her fall ass first onto a camera to emphasize the size of the ass. Classy.

The books depict Bridget as a vain, neurotic woman made that way by an ambivalent environment, one which - through the media - tells her she's too fat, yet doesn't reward her if she loses weight. The movies depict her as a fat, sloppy girl who, despite her self esteem issues, is pretty oblivious about how she looks in tight clothing.

Is she that much fatter in the movies then? Well, not really. In the first movie, Zellweger does look the size I imagine Bridget to be. Yet it becomes obvious that this size, in the universe of the movie, is a BIG size. In the second movie, Zellweger gained even more weight and looks slightly overweight, bigger than Bridget in the book; cue more fat jokes and tight clothing. She still catches the eye of two handsome suitors - and some lewd older guys -, but somehow this seems to be *despite* her weight, because she's imperfect and clumsy and loveable because of that (and we all know that lewd older guys like a girl with flesh on her bones!)

Renee Zellweger isn't big enough for the role and therefore attracted way too much attention with her weight gain/loss. She talked negatively about her Bridget body in the media, which is a pretty natural reaction, especially if you're used to being so skinny. However, it came off as "OMG 130 lbs is HUGE!". I think this alone made the movie's message of "normal women are OK too" - which was pretty hypocritical to begin with, given how they made fun of Bridget - completely useless. By reacting in this way, she also gave viewers a free pass to laugh at her "fat" size in the film. The same people who would have shrugged to see a woman that size in real life howled with laughter to see skinny Renee Zellweger "blown up" that way. Some of those who laughed were themselves the same size. It's the same effect as the fat suit - it's "funny" to see a skinny star (Courteney Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, "Weird Al" Yankovic) in a fat suit, because it makes them look unnatural and strange all of a sudden. The problem is that it also makes fatness look unnatural and strange and laughable.

So, Zellweger watches Super Size Me and gets panicky about how dangerous a fast weight gain can be. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate Super Size Me? But yeah, that part of it probably does hold true - gaining 20 pounds in one month eating nothing but junk food is not good for you. So she is now health conscious and says she'll wear a fat suit instead, if they make a third movie (which I hope they won't, as even the first sequel was pretty washed-out). Like I said above, her weight gain and loss created a fat suit effect anyway, so it's not so different if she opts for the fat suit this time. I'm not pro-extreme weight gain for the purposes of a movie, at all. If anything, that sort of thing reinforces the stereotype that anyone can gain weight if they just "eat a lot".

What bugs me is that Zellweger seems to have no qualms about extreme dieting, which she engaged in after the movies. Her weight gain was "unhealthy" and the subsequent weight loss was "necessary" and "healthy", even if it made her underweight. She seems to think that rapidly gaining weight is bad, but rapidly losing it is OK; that being underweight contains no risks whatsoever, while being overweight is an immense risk. It's an understandable attitude, since we get far more "watch out for obesity!" stuff in the media. The experts and journalists seem to assume that we don't run a risk of becoming too skinny.

It must be confusing - or rather, reinforcing the wrong beliefs about weight - to hear an underweight actress talk about the health hazards of being normalweight. Because I do worry that this is what some people will take home from all this. Not that forcing your body to gain or lose a lot of weight is always bad, but that looking like Bridget Jones is dangerous and OMGPANIC Super Size Me.

Here's hoping that for the next movie about a normalweight woman, they actually hire a normalweight actress who's proud of who she is.