I hated Bridget Jones; Mad About The Boy. Here is why: Renee Zellwegar’s twitchy face, fixed smile, brittle movements and weird emotional swings; a ludicrous plot; a great, but detached cast – except for Hugh Grant and Nico Parker; avoidable slip-ups. Investors and filmmakers are cashing in on the franchise because millions of fans are mad about the girl, now in her fifties, a widow and mum of two, but, still, startlingly immature.
A dear friend, a widow, was additionally appalled by the way grief is trivialised. The cure for the pain of losing a loved one isn’t to hop into bed with a toyboy, ‘ You try to see people. But the person you loved and lost is with you all the time.’
For me, it was most galling to see Bridget, now 53, still dependant on the approval of men.
That got me thinking about my own feminist journey which began in 1973, soon after I arrived here from Uganda and began a post-grad course at Oxford.
I was 23, married to a handsome charmer, making new friends. Some were radical feminists, who believed penetrative sex was rape- bewildering for a young woman who was turned on by her man and wanted to have his babies.
One rad-fem took me to fiery meetings in a small, stuffy room. I wore denim dungarees, joined in. One day they lit a bonfire in the garden and asked us to burn our bras ceremoniously. I threw mine, black and lacey, into the flames and cried as it was consumed.
And became a lifelong feminist. In the 60’s, the pill and abortions were legalised. In the 70s we were liberating ourselves from our own autobiographies and fighting for equal rights for women in domestic and public domains. Among my many influencers were the black writer Alice Walker and Britain’s erudite sociologist and historian, Sheila Rowbotham, whose books, Women, Resistance and Revolution ( 1972) and Hidden from History ( 1973) changed my very being. In her Century of Women (1997), she described the fervour of those struggles, ‘… the resolve to break through restraints, defy the taboos around femininity and become new women was fierce and undeniable. The collective culture of the new movement was springing from individual desires for personal transformation which went deeper than any ideology.’. Put simply, the personal was the political for us then.
Margaret Thatcher, not a feminist, was proclaimed as one by those for whom it was all about money and success- the Spice Girls for example. The me-me-me 80s were hedonistic and individualistic. Bridget Jones grew into an adult in this period. In the first film, she’s 33. It is the 90s. Ciggies, booze, sex, regrets, repeat, is the cycle of her disordered life. In the sequel, she is less flighty, only just. By film 3, she settles down with a good guy, Colin Firth, playing Mark Darcy, and has two kids. In this last one, she is a widow. She loves her kids, but is hopeless at parenting. We are expected to believe that the ditzy Ms Jones is such a brilliant TV producer that they ask her back. Like that ever happens in real life. Happiness, again, is delivered by a man who saves her from herself. This is feminism defanged and tamed.
Step back. Look at how women and girls have been faring in Britain. Yes, we have incredibly powerful females in politics, the media and business. Yet, strong females don’t have it all, at all. As Lisa Snowden confessed in this newspaper on Monday: ‘I was in a vicious cycle of attracting narcissistic characters, the wrong people- ending up disappointed, hurt and just used’ . How many females are today in these same traps of ‘love’?
Modern Britain remains unsafe and insecure for females. Rapes, coercion and abuse seem unstoppable. More concerningly, the Internet is normalising casual sex, hard porn and some forms of sexual violence. In an interview in the Sunday Times, Louise Perry the feminist author whose previous book: ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution’, was a bestseller in 2021, argues the sexual revolution has left females exploitable and vulnerable and that society needs to get more prudish. Coming from a culture where there are no sexual freedoms, this ‘solution’ is anathema. But I too feel the free-living sixties, bit, by bit, led to Britain getting hooked on personal gratification and dislocated from progressive movements.
Bridget Jones’s latest film revels in apolitical self-absorption. Peter Bradshaw in his Guardian film review writes: ‘ Zellweger looks as if she’s thinking about something else’ If so, I hope it is, ‘ This is shite. I must grow up, become an independent woman’.
Published in the I paper, February 2025