Welcome back to Book Break! In today's video we are returning to a classic: Bridget Jones's Diary,
which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary and is just as brilliant as ever. So this video
is going to be about why Bridget Jones is still such an icon. 25 years ago when this novel first
came out, and the whole Bridget Jones phenomenon was just completely exploding, there was a running
joke about women saying “I am Bridget Jones”, “no I am Bridget Jones” - because she was just such
a relatable character. And it's pretty amazing that 25 years on, I still feel like I am Bridget
Jones. And here, I think, are the five reasons why. Reason number one is actually best summed
up by something that Helen Fielding wrote in the introduction to this anniversary edition.
She wrote “I think if Bridget Jones is about anything, it's about the gap between how you
feel you're expected to be and how you actually are.” And I think that sums it up perfectly.
Right from the very first page of this book we get a list of Bridget's new year's resolutions,
and they are just hilariously unachievable. She genuinely thinks she'll be able to completely
change everything about her life and personality overnight. Things like “I will go out less and
instead I will stay home and listen to classical music” And I get it, we've all been there,
we've all woken up on the 1st of january or just any other Monday in the year and decided “today
I'm going to be this idea of the perfect person I have somehow developed in my head. I'm going
to learn to play the piano and go horse riding and I'm never going to drink again” Which is
ridiculous! Have any of us ever managed that? She also perfectly skewers that double complication
that not only do we all have this perfect idea of who we think we're supposed to be, we're supposed
to be that person without trying at all. So one of her new years resolutions is to learn to be
perfectly complete on her own without a boyfriend (as the perfect method to get a boyfriend). There
is a lot of talk about weight loss in the book, and the way that Bridget obsesses over numbers
can feel quite jarring to read in our more body-positive modern world - but it's actually
still so relevant. The point is Bridget was trying to force herself to be the person that the world
said she should be - which 25 years ago happens to be “thin”. These days the world is telling us
we have to be proud of our bodies, though also if possible be effortlessly thin, and it's every bit
as confusing. So I think it is easy to look past the calorie counting which can seem a little dated
and find that actually the issues that Bridget Jones is facing are exactly the same as what we
have today - it's just a different version of it. And actually that's shown really perfectly
in the book at the point where Bridget realizes that her obsession with her weight is a problem,
and so she starts congratulating herself in her diary for eating lots of calories,
until she realizes that she's still just obsessing over calories and obsessing over
how she's supposed to be so it isn't any better. The point is Bridget is really hard on herself.
She even starts counting her negative thoughts in her diary and then counting the minutes that she
wastes having negative thoughts - she really feels like nothing she's doing is right. And
there's a really perfect quote to summarize that that says “I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture,
have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor
my body is up to it if left to its own devices.” We know that's not true because she's brilliant,
but that is exactly how so many of us are made to feel. Another even more perfect quote: “whatever
I'm doing I really think I ought to be doing something else.” So that is reason number one why
we are all Bridget Jones and why she is still such an icon: she shows us a mirror of ourselves trying
our best to be anything other than who we are, and then she laughs at the whole situation and
shows how ridiculous the whole thing is. Reason number two why Bridget Jones is my icon is that
on the flip side of being really hard on herself, she is relentlessly optimistic. She keeps trying,
she keeps getting knocked down and getting back up again. The whole way through the year that we read
about in this diary, she is constantly setting these goals for herself, she keeps failing,
and she keeps saying to herself “I'll try again in a bit - when I can be bothered” essentially.
I love the moment where she's so convinced that she's going to get a good day's work done
working from home - something that we are all going through especially this year - and after
completely wasting the morning, it gets to about two in the afternoon before she decides she's now
ready to have a really good afternoon of work, all she needs is a five minute nap, and then she wakes
up and it's five hours later. Even with all this negativity whirling around in her head and from
the people around her, she keeps getting up and she keeps trying. So that is the second reason
why Bridget Jones is my icon. Reason number three is that Bridget Jones is an imperfect feminist.
A lot of the moments in this book actually remind me of the podcast The Guilty Feminist
when they take turns saying “I'm a feminist but…” and then revealing some confession that they do
that isn't very feminist. Bridget Jones is all of that. She knows all the pressures on women,
she knows they're unfair, she goes out to the pub and has long feminist rants with her best friends,
then she wants them to shush because she thinks that feminism might look unattractive to a man,
but ultimately she remembers her principles when it matters, and she does stand up for what she
knows she deserves. Also shout out here to Bridget Jones's mum who has a fabulous feminist moment,
which does apparently come straight from Helen Fielding's own mother, which is when she is
being patronized on the phone by a tax man and replies with “can YOU make a brioche?” Touche,
Bridget Jones's mum. Reason number four why Bridget Jones is my icon is she is hilarious. I
literally laughed out loud the whole way through this book. She so perfectly summarizes what's
going on through your head, but in much funnier words than I could ever think of. She's someone
that you feel you really want to be friends with, I want to go to the pub with her and order way too
many bottles of chardonnay and go off on a drunken feminist rant that doesn't even make sense.
But I think what's great here, and that really adds to the whole “I am Bridget Jones” feeling,
is that she doesn't feel impossibly, unachievably quick-witted, someone that you could never live up
to - because while her diaries are hilarious, when it comes to speaking out loud she often
gets confused and tongue-tied and has to practice several times the funny thing she's going to say
or the funny email she's going to write, and there are so many moments when she instantly
regrets whatever just came out of her mouth - which again, we've all been there! And finally,
reason number five why Bridget Jones is an icon is she is genuinely just doing her best.
She is definitely not a saint-like figure, she's genuinely very helpful to her parents when they're
going through troubles, but she also makes time to feel smug about being so helpful, she really
worries about her friend Tom when no one has seen him for a while but she also has fun daydreaming
about what she might wear to the funeral. She is very much just a human, she is not perfect
by any stretch of the imagination, but my god is she trying. And that is why we will forever love
Bridget Jones. So I absolutely loved returning to this character over the last few days and I
really recommend picking up this 25th anniversary edition, whether you've never read Bridget Jones
before, whether you love the films but haven't read the book, or whether it's an old favourite,
there is so much in here. Beyond the book itself which as I may have mentioned is brilliant, there
is loads of extra writing from Helen Fielding. So she's written an introduction for the book
and then she's also provided loads of context at the end. You get to read some of the original
Bridget Jones newspaper columns, because that's where it all began, you get to read some of Helen
Fielding's other newspaper articles, you even get to see a page of her own diary from university
which looks quite reminiscent of Bridget's, and I think my favourite extract at the end was the
interview that Helen Fielding conducted with Colin Firth. And this is before the movie came
out - so Bridget Jones in the book is obsessed with the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice,
with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, so there's an interview in here where Helen Fielding
genuinely went and met up with Colin Firth and then conducted an interview where she was
in character as Bridget Jones and Colin Firth was in character as a sort of mash-up between
Mr Darcy and himself. The interview is hilarious, it is very cringe-worthy and embarrassing and
Helen Fielding said that she and Colin Firth had a lot of fun doing this interview together,
so it is just too perfect that Colin Firth then did go on to play Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones
movies. He seems like a great guy. So do leave us a comment below if you're also a big Bridget Jones
fan ,and I will leave a link here to a video we made before about books about being a bit
of a hot mess - because what is Bridget Jones if not a bit of a hot mess! See you next time.