Bridget Jones was the perfect scrappy heroine – how can Gen Z possibly relate?

Independent

27-01-2025

There is only one place I intend to be this Valentine's – and that's firmly ensconced in a cinema, with wine and a bevy of girlfriends to watch the opening night of Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy.
We've waited eight years for our big pants-wearing, wine-quaffing blonde heroine to return. And Renée Zellweger is finally back in a fourth outing as Bridget: aged 51, with two teenage children, having sex with a 28-year-old toy-boy. So far, so brilliant. This time around she's menopausal, a successful screenwriter and there's no Colin Firth (I'm just hoping she hasn't swapped Chardonnay for matcha lattes – please, no...).
I was just leaving university when Bridget Jones began her life in the pages of this newspaper in 1995, 30 years ago. Mirroring Bridget, over the next decade I engaged in Nineties excess and ambitious career paths; chasing – or warding off – disreputable young men, while trying to nurture a glittering career in a male-dominated media world.
As Bridget moved to the big screen, my personal (and our collective) adoration of this swashbuckling, cleavage-baring, fictional best friend never waned. She smoked Silk Cut, got drunk, warded off suggestive emails from her boss and bumbled her way hopelessly through the sexist world of daytime TV. We saw our own failures and successes in her antics – and celebrated them.
Now Jonesy is back and has apparently drawn in a whole host of new Gen Z fans, who have adopted our 1990s pin-up with the same love and enthusiasm as we did, despite the fact many of those reading this would not even have been born when the first book came out in 1996; nor watched the 2001 inaugural film on the big screen.
So, what it is about Bridget that still makes her so relatable? If she was beginning her life today – in 2025, as a young twenty-something – what would be her advantages over 90s Bridget?
Well, you drink less. You also scroll a hell of a lot more, express yourselves more freely and don't put up with lusty emails from male bosses (Bridget's workplace preceeded #MeToo).
There are more women in sport; women in the media; women in STEM careers, women in boardrooms and women directing on big and small screens, rather just being objectified. There are far more women in politics and a greater diversity of women achieving in nearly every field. Violence against women is still endemic, but change is happening, thanks to role models like Gisele Pelicot. Awareness is improving.
We receive proper maternity leave (thanks, Tony Blair). A third of women in relationships are the breadwinners, with more men sharing their load of child rearing. Mental health is openly talked about, and we've had waves of body positivity campaigns. Female health at all ages is finally being acknowledged in a vastly male dominated healthcare system.
I love the fact we hear every day of 50 and 40-something women celebrating hot sex with young toy boys, life on dating apps, enjoying life after children – and even after divorce. Why should men have all the fun with their younger wives and second families? Becoming wealthier personally – because we are earning more – has also given us greater say over the trajectory of our lives. So far, so great. But what has not changed?
As much I hate looking at the lines collecting around my eyes, I repeatedly think how lucky I was to have grown up before the tyranny of Instagram and Tik Tok. Because what made Bridget Jones so accessible to all of us was her consistent failed attempts at being Miss Perfect.
We may celebrate body positive advertising and body positive influencers – and as parents we are far more attuned to telling young girls they are clever, rather than focusing on their looks – but young women appear more body conscious than ever.
Any scroll through social media and women are posing, pouting and touting (and trouting) perfection as never before. As Helen Fielding noted herself recently: 'With Bridget, it was about the gap between how you feel you're expected to be and how you actually are, this idea that whatever you're like, it's not quite good enough, and there's something you've got to fix. And for [Gen Z] it's a million times worse, because they go on TikTok and they're looking at people who are filtered, and they're looking at all these impossible things that they're supposed to be.'
And yes, we might have improved maternity leave, but childcare has become prohibitively expensive. Having a family frequently involves financial dread. Post-pandemic flexible working helps, but it will still leave women at a disadvantage in many careers.
Many must still accept they can't have it all. The battle is not yet over. Hence why Bridget is portrayed as single – again: the breadwinner, a mother and still haphazardly trying to juggle it all, with hilarious consequences.
But these are not the core reasons so many women young and mature will flock to the cinema. Bridget connects to the happy constants in our lives: female friendship; dreams and chasing them; consistently failing to spot the bad boys (while also loving them). Bodies that never do what we want them to. Coping with failure and most importantly, having the sense to laugh at ourselves.