Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - Bridget Jones's Diary

Loved the films, enjoyed the book. Dated in places, like current affairs, but funny with hindsight. Not a big fan of the fatphobia/her obsession with her weight and calorie intake, but def a reflection of the time it was written

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fortunaisland's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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strangeeigenfunction's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I think the primary reason I read this was hearing it, or maybe the movie, mentioned in a discussion of '00s fatphobia. I haven't seen the movie.

I don't hate Bridget, but I don't really like her, either. In a certain light, this sort of reads as an averted tragicomedy, with Darcy ex machina wrapping up several of the looming tragic ends... or distracting from other ones. Despite enjoying relatively well-off circumstances, there's a lot wrong in Bridget's life that isn't really examined (by her or other characters) in a constructive way. One of those issues is that despite being at what is almost certainly a perfectly healthy weight, she's fixated on losing weight and erratically dieting, disordered eating masquerading as vanilla diet culture. I would also characterize her approach to alcohol as not so healthy, and at times she leans on cigarettes as a coping mechanism, but, while she does recognize these as issues, her attitude regarding quitting leans heavily on willpower in a way that seems naive in the 2020s. And the array of relationships of varying levels of toxicity surrounding her tend to entwine with the drinking and/or the dieting.

It is rather funny, but I'd consider it a bleak humor shaped by normalized dysfunctions.

(by the by, I'm a little peeved at the numbers summary at the end. While I don't care that much whether anyone went through and touted up the in-entry numbers exactly, and I paid less attention to the alcohol counts while reading (units is not that meaningful to me in the US I think), the averages implied by the totals... beg some questions:

5277=14 cigarettes average per day is possible. I'm not sure I think it's accurate (my impression is that about half the recorded days are 18-20+, with a few around 60), but it's not implausible.
3836=10.5 units alcohol average each day. Now, as I said, I paid less attention to the numbers here, but 10, while it happened, feels like it was somewhat atypically high for Bridget, and there were some days she did not drink, so this seems slightly implausible.
11,090,265= ...30,384 calories/day, or fifteen times the RDA. This is essentially impossible, especially as I don't think Bridget ever exceeded 10,000 calories in a day. I might buy something in the 2500 average range (~912,500 total) or even a round 1 million as the yearly total, although I'd guess that probably requires 3000 calories on unrecorded days. But not 30000 a day)

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