BRIDGE TOO FAR?
I’m 62 and almost everyone I know is on skinny jabs like Ozempic – Bridget Jones would be too, says Vanessa Feltz
So how would Bridget really be keeping off the pounds in 2024?
BRIDGET Jones’s obsession with losing weight is to be “played down” in the upcoming film, I hear.
Producers are said to be fearful she might be a bad influence on sensitive cinema-goers, and apparently want to be more reflective of what today’s audiences think about body image.
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So they’re ditching references to Bridget’s famous attempts at weight loss, saying it’s “the right thing to do”.
The fourth film in the Bridget Jones’s Diary franchise will show Bridget — played by Renee Zellweger, 55 — not panicking over putting on a pound or two, as she has done before.
Instead, she’ll have taken up Zumba and will be a healthy size ten.
But I think it is ridiculous to depict a woman once so obsessed with her weight as suddenly being indifferent to it.
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It’s totally not relatable and it’s unrealistic.
She should either be plump and resigned to it, or admit to what she’s done to be as skinny as Renee, the very slender actress who plays her.
In order to be truly relatable, today’s Bridget should be on weight loss jabs like Wegovy and Ozempic — or have taken a leaf out of my book and gone down the gastric bypass route.
No woman I know suddenly just becomes comfortable with their body, especially if it’s something they have been self-conscious about their entire life.
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Earlier this week, Barbra Streisand posted a comment on Melissa McCarthy’s Instagram asking her if she was on Ozempic after Melissa shared snaps of herself looking svelte.
Barbra is 82, and my point is that she is obviously still obsessing over body image.
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It’s not something that just goes away.
You don’t spend your teens, twenties, thirties and forties being obsessed with fat, only for that obsession to suddenly disappear in your fifties.
My journey with my body has been well documented.
I slimmed down from a size 22 to a size ten between 1999 and 2000, but I ended up putting it all back on.
Then, after years of going up and down with my weight, I was at my wits’ end and decided to get a gastric band fitted in 2010.
It didn’t work very well so, in 2019, I decided to have a gastric bypass.
But I’ve always been happiest and my most exuberant self when I’m at my largest.
Usually, if I am smaller, it’s because I’m miserable, broken-hearted or I’ve just had some kind of bariatric surgery.
Or I’ve been on some punitive diet for two years.
None of this is to say that people aren’t gorgeous at all sizes, because I think everyone is.
My point is, if you are a woman who has always been trying to keep the weight off, you don’t just suddenly change your mind — and that’s the point this new film is missing.
Bridget Jones has been counting pounds, accidentally eating KitKats, then indulging in ice cream after heartbreak — only to regret it later.
That is why she is so incredibly relatable.
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It’s the whole thing of vowing to not overeat, but then going the complete opposite way — just like those of us who munched packets of biscuits while reading the book, then stuffed ourselves with popcorn while watching her agonise about her weight in the cinema, all going: “Yeah, that’s exactly how we feel.”
That was one of the best bits about it.
I don’t believe that Bridget can just suddenly “self-accept”.
Almost everyone I know, from my school mates to my showbiz friends, have done either Wegovy or Ozempic.
I’m 62 and I have friends who have been wrestling with their weight since school.
But now they’ve hit my age, they’ve suddenly lost 4st.
I’ll normally ask on a coffee date, “What the hell is going on?”, and then, at some point before the coffee even arrives, they’ll confess they are on Ozempic or Wegovy.
And that’s more what Bridget Jones should be like, because that’s what us women are doing right now.
It’s so much more relatable, and so much more accurate than pretending she simply doesn’t care about her weight any more.
In the last movie, we saw Bridget have a baby.
'LOAD OF RUBBISH'
But the movie producers’ new stance implies that motherhood means your priorities shift and suddenly you’re content with your body.
What a load of rubbish.
In reality, it brings up a whole host of new body image issues.
Yes, you are certainly grateful to your body for creating your baby.
But one of the most shocking moments ever is standing in front of the mirror and staring at your unrecognisable body after giving birth.
I couldn’t help but despair at my sagging skin with stretch marks.
Your boobs are completely different, somehow your bum looks completely different and you can’t believe that carrying one small, 6lb 10oz baby could have done that to your body.
But it does.
What’s more, Bridget will now be around the corner of hitting menopause, or going through perimenopause.
That can play havoc with your weight — and your body shape — even if you were someone who managed to be slim all your life.
For Bridget to say she is totally happy with her body now would be a complete character change.
One of the most important things to realise is that, throughout your life, you basically remain the same person.
So I think the film’s producers have really missed a trick here and they’ve got it wrong if they think it’s more in tune with the way people are feeling.
As a woman who has battled with weight throughout her whole life, it makes it LESS in tune.
Bridget is flawed, she’s vain and she can be really silly.
That’s the great thing about her.
She is not this perfectly poised person who gets everything right.
She looks like an idiot most of the time and makes a fool of herself, and we can all relate to that.
That’s the genius of it.
I think the real winner here is actually Renee, who won’t have to put on weight for the thousandth time.
But it’s just not real life, is it?
Star Renee’s ups and downs as size-obsessed character
Bridget Jones’s Diary, 2001
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WHEN Renee made headlines after gaining more than 2st to play unlucky-in-love Bridget, it was reported she had to munch 4,000 calories a day to reach the target quickly.
She said: “I’d have an omelette with cheese and sauce for breakfast, with a fatty yoghurt, a fruit salad with a topping and juice and coffee and cream and a bagel with butter, and a few hours later a chocolate shake with weight-gain powder in it.”
At the start of the film, viewers were told Bridget was 9st 10lb – and a size 12.
Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, 2004
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HAVING lost the weight she gained for the first film, Renee had to bulk up again.
She said: “It would be silly if Bridget was talking about her chubby thighs and they weren’t chubby.”
But she defended her character’s fuller frame, saying: “She has a different body type to me, but it reflects the different lifestyles that we lead, and that’s what she chooses.
"It makes her happy to have Chardonnay and some extra Milk Tray, so why shouldn’t she?”
Bridget Jones’s Baby, 2016
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COMING 12 years after Edge Of Reason, Renee said she only had to gain a little extra padding, as directors believed that in the movie Bridget had now achieved “her ideal weight” – a size 10 figure.
She said: “I put on a few pounds.
"I also put on some (fake) breasts and a baby bump.
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"Bridget is a perfectly normal weight and I’ve never understood why it matters so much.
“No male actor would get such scrutiny if he did the same thing for a role.”
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