Messy, Imperfect And Chaotic — Why Gen Z Can't Get Enough Of Bridget Jones
The year is 1995 and Helen Fielding, a then-unknown writer, has just published her first column for The Independent under the pseudonymous, Bridget Jones. Bridget is a 30-something woman in media who lives alone in Notting Hill and whose hapless attempts at self-improvement invariably crash on the rocks of reality.
Fast forward 30 years, and you'd be forgiven for assuming that audiences once enraptured by Bridget Jones, the archetypal chain-smoking, calorie-counting female anti-hero, had petered out, perhaps had their love for the character watered down. Yet, if social media — for the most part, the modern-day mortal enemy of truth — is to be believed, Bridget Jones is back, and actually bigger and better than ever before.
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On TikTok — whose largest demographic of users are between the ages of 18 - 24, many born after the first film was released in 2001 — there are over 3 million posts under 'Bridget Jones'. There are videos dedicated to her aesthetic, her home, her style. Even Fielding said recently that at her book signings 'half the audience are Gen Zs'. 'I’m really happy when 18-year-olds and 20-year-olds talk to me about it and say that they find it comforting to laugh at these things,' she said. Make no bones about it: the beloved franchise's fourth film, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which is released in UK cinemas on February 13 is making a generation not raised on diet culture or toxic attitudes weak at the knees for the pre-digital — and pre-virtual perfection — age.
It's ironic, of course, that Bridget should have found a fanbase in the icy hallows of social media, for she is the antithesis of all that the digital realm has come to represent. Her life is imperfect, her attempts to define it as anything other are comedic. Bridget fumbles recipes, serving her guests feasts of blue soup, omelette and marmalade; aesthetic dinner parties have become fodder for younger generations, with Pinterest's 2024 Summer Trends report noting a 6000% increase in searches for 'dinner party inspiration'. Bridget haphazardly applies make-up in the back of dimly-lit cars; Gen Z are a generation known for being tireless in their pursuit of beauty perfection. She drinks, smokes and messes up. Her make-up is rarely perfect, and her hair is invariably disastrous, but therein lies her appeal: watching Bridget Jones is a reminder that, despite your best efforts, life will never be perfect. In many ways, she is the female anti-hero; a physical embodiment of what it is to defy the straightjacket that our digital avatars on social media have come to represent about ourselves.
In Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which is based on Fielding's fourth book in the franchise that was originally released in 2013, we meet Bridget as a 50-something widowed mother to two children, Billy and Mabel. Grief, love, and loss are the beating heart of the new film, which plays women a symphony — life has the power to chew, chomp and spit you out again, but the roaring testament of a life well-lived, like Bridget's, is how well those obstacles are navigated. How compatible you can make your pain with the very real process of living and existing peacefully and happily.
In a recent interview with British Vogue, Hugh Grant (who plays the ever-alluring Daniel Cleaver in the film franchise), perfectly summarised the appeal of Bridget Jones. 'In a nutshell, I say it is the antidote to Instagram,' he said. 'Instagram is telling people, especially women, “Your life’s not good enough.” It’s not as good as this woman’s or this woman’s, making you insecure. Whereas what Helen did with Bridget is to celebrate failure, while making it funny and joyful.'
Fatigue with perceived notions of perfection perpetuated by social media have undoubtedly fueled people's interest in Bridget's affable return. There's also the 30-year trend theory, which dictates that cultural trends, including fashion, music, and movies, tend to find a new generation of fans in cycles roughly every 30 years, driven by nostalgia. The 1990s, while imperfect, were easy by today's terms. They were the last decade before we viewed our lives through our phones, when we could smoke indoors, the economy was booming and our options felt plentiful. Life felt easy in ways that it doesn't for younger people now. The revival of other 1990s cultural touch points — Oasis, Tamagotchis (yes, really) and the remakes of nineties classics Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cruel Intentions and Ghost — also nod to the bottomless pit of desire for another, easier time.
The creation of messier female characters in film of late has also cemented our desire for art that depicts women as multi-faceted beings. Women that are heroes by virtue of the fact that they embrace, and lean into, the chaos and mess of their characters. Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, Demi Moore in The Substance; it feels timely that Bridge makes her return to the cultural conversation at a time such as this, when women are finally being shown in all of their unfiltered glory, because she has long been the arbiter of just that. Bridget Jones isn't just a character, but rather a way of being, living and moving through the world. Bridget Jones proves that life isn't about being perfect, she's a character that singularly is an ode to life being a perfectly imperfect journey that is sweetened by love, laughter and, let's be honest, lashings of Sauvignon Blanc, Silk Cuts and even silkier pants.
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