What I Learned When I Listened to Bridget Jones with my Daughter

My TikTok teen is more self-aware, inclusive and critical of socially imposed misogyny than I ever was

It was 1998 when I first read Bridget Jones’ Diary. Google had recently been founded; Bill Clinton was in hot water due to his affair with Monica Lewinsky; and, unrelatedly, the FDA just approved Viagra. I was 22 years old and in England, visiting my boyfriend. Every bookstore displayed stacks of Bridget Jones’ Diary and so I snapped one up for our train journey to Stirling, Scotland. I was instantly immersed and was right there beside Bridget — a thirty-something Londoner — who was unabashedly neurotic, geographically ignorant and deeply romantic. She was all the things that I -- schooled in the 1990s ethos of Chandler Bing sarcasm and suspicious irony -- tried to pretend I wasn’t. 

Bridget was a mess. A nightmare who turned soup blue, drank too much, obsessed about her weight in a desperate and uncool way (instead of quietly and viciously policing herself as the rest of us did). She smoked a staggering amount and tied her self-worth completely and utterly to her relationships with men. She was a quixotic, sweet girl doomed to make bad decisions in  a confusing, misogynistic society she didn’t even recognize as such. This world of sexually harassing bosses, spinster shaming and relentless body surveillance felt both comically over the top and disturbingly familiar. 

Part of the charm of Bridget was feeling a bit more together than her. I was a little smarter, slightly less neurotic and a tad less messed up about relationships, but the truth is, the things she wondered about --  Why were men emotional fuckwits? How did that extra weight sneak onto my hips? What exactly WAS going on in Yugoslavia? Those were questions I had asked myself at one point or another. 

Deeply Human – And and Absolute Wreck

The thing about Bridget that is so compelling is that in addition to being an absolute wreck, she’s also deeply human. She learns, she grows, but not in a straight line. At one point, fairly early in the book, she, through the effects of stress and unhealthy behavior, loses some weight. She is euphoric and triumphantly takes herself to a party to be celebrated for finally reaching the most elusive “win” of all: her ideal weight. Instead, her friends are unanimously concerned, telling her she looks both sick and tired. For a moment Bridget is able to see behind the curtain and understand the monitoring of women’s bodies for the bullshit patriarchal oppression that it is, but a few pages later, she’s back on her nonsense and worrying about how many Milk Tray boxes she’s consumed. 

I wasn’t the only one to respond to Bridget. The book became a cultural phenomenon, selling more than 2 million copies, launching the genre of “Chick Lit” and producing sequels and three movies of diminishing returns. I watched the movies when they came out and enjoyed them enough, but aside from that, I hadn't thought about Bridget and her ciggies and alcohol units in the intervening decades.

Then this year, casting about for a good audiobook for the family’s Christmas road trip, I considered Bridget Jones. I hesitated. I knew it was funny and I thought my 13 year old daughter would get some of the jokes, but I also knew that those messages —about Bridget’s weight obsession, her binge drinking, and the way her self-esteem was inextricably intertwined with who she was dating — were dangerous ideas;  ones I’d been very careful to keep from my newly teenage daughter. 

I needn’t have worried. My TikTok teen is more self-aware, inclusive and critical of socially imposed misogyny than I ever was. She gasped the first time Bridget ticked off her self-worth in that rattling list —  10 stone, 15 cigarettes (v.g) , 14 alcohol units (oh dear); calories (1520, mostly biscuits) — and immediately knew that those measures were nonsensical markers of self-worth. She found the book hilarious and unlike me reading it on that train to Scotland, her laughter was not tinged with a painful recognition of horrible truths. 

Bridget Jones Works Because it's Romantic

More than the humor, the neuroses, or the snapshot of 1990s England with all the Tony Blair promise and Princess Diana admiration, Bridget Jones works because it's romantic. Mark Darcy is an ideal boyfriend. Sure he is undemonstrative and a bit sneery, but that makes the fact that he sees and loves Bridget all the more compelling.

After we finished listening to the book and then watched the first movie, I told my daughter it was based on a Jane Austen novel. She was intrigued. We watched the miniseries (the Jennifer Ehls, Colin Firth one) and then we watched the Kiera Knightley movie. She loved both, though the miniseries more. Now my kiddo is reading Pride and Prejudice. There are bits of the novel — the parts about entails and ballroom etiquette — that are as foreign to her as indoor smoking and answerphones, but as she did with the 27-year old Bridget Jones’ Diary, she’s able to decipher those “historical” bits and enjoy the humor and the romance. 

Both Helen Fielding  and -- yup, I’m talking about her in the same breath — Jane Austen, find the perfect balance for a smart, satisfying rom-com: satire, laughter, sentimentality and compelling characters you identify with. They’re both writing about worlds where flawed women attempt to navigate unfair systems with humanity and humor. They are also matched with men who overlook what the world tells them they should desire in order to respect and fall in love with the authentic and courageous women before them. Whether it’s Lizzie Bennet’s muddy petticoats and gauche family or Bridget Jones’ enormous knickers and tendency to blurt-- you’re rooting for these characters to find love.

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Amy Tector is an archivist and novelist. Speak for the Dead, the second in her Dominion Archives Mystery series is out in March.