With baby in one hand and Rushdie novel in the other, she lets us laugh at ourselves for believing in her
Saturday, March 30th. 9st 6 (why? why? from where?), alcohol units 7 (drowning sorrows in Chilean Chardonnay), cigarettes 19 (fumigating sorrows), calories 3,983 (suffocating sorrows with fat duvet). Film coming out about my life. V.g. Me not played by cool, self-possessed, ethereal Michelle Pfeiffer. Aargh. Will learn to love Renee Zelwegger.
There are singleton women so self-possessed and with such interesting careers that for them being single is an adventure. This is not Bridget Jones.
Sloane goddess. Feminist hate figure. "Brilliant comic creation" (Salman Rushdie said that. I dropped that one in for any smug-married literary snobs who might be reading this in their perfectly appointed designer kitchens over cafe latte and freshly-made brioche.)
And yet . . . Bridget Jones (born of Helen Fielding at the age of 30-something, going on 13, in a column in the UK Independent, then to the Daily Telegraph) won't be happy until she becomes a Calvin-Klein style smug-married mother figure, possibly wearing a crop-top or throwing her baby in the air, laughing fulfilledly in advert for designer gas cooker while simultaneously reading latest Salman Rushdie.
Yet she knows, deep down, that this would never make her truly happy.
Bridget longs to be a "woman of substance", an "aloof, unavailable ice queen" who doesn't need love. Right. Like when Notting Hell freezes over.
Bridget can't resist her need for love, just as she can't resist spilling cappucino on her new cashmere jumper or sending off sour e-mails to her boss. (Boss: "Isn't that skirt too skimpy for the office?" Bridget: "Bought as much skirt as I could on the poor salary you pay me.")
She is burdened with rampant selfdoubt, accident proneness, an inability to read a pregnancy test, and a tendency to drink just a tad too much. Type of trouble landed in: getting drunk alone after delivery of too-large Christmas tree and writing personalised confessional letters on Christmas cards to near-strangers (ooops! as she would say).
She also has a boyfriend-stealing exfriend with thighs like a baby giraffe.
Among Bridget's daily resolutions: "Will learn to love my thighs as just the sort of thighs many men love lying between - especially those alive in the 18th century."
Bridget Jones is living proof that a girl can neither be too rich nor too neurotic.
Then there is the little problem of poor judgment.
Such as letting her boss Daniel (charming but non-committal - obvious role for Hugh Grant) sleep with her whenever he likes, even though he doesn't act like a boyfriend. She'll spend an entire day exfoliating for him ("being a woman is worse than being a farmer - there is so much harvesting and crop-spraying to be done.") Then he won't turn up.
Such as landing a job as a TV journalist and being late all the time, missing deadlines, and producing brilliant, quirky stories only through complete fluke.
Other people take the credit, she gets fired, then manages - somehow, through the astounding good luck that shines on her when all is looking bleakest - to be rehired as a star TV assistant producer (on freelance consultant level, to avoid the troublesome timekeeping issue).
Not that she won't ditch it all for man of her dreams if given the opportunity.
Keep in mind that the man must be handsome enough to be played by Colin Firth (not difficult), as well as rich, principled and strong barrister/hero-figure acceptable to Bridget's mother.
He must have a mansion on Holland Park. He must also be able to save overwrought singletons from drowning and put out small fires (oops! That chargrilled Belgian endive salad went up in flames - again!).
Almost forgot. Man who rescues Bridget must not just be Firthy rich, principled and strong. He must also be achingly, desperately in love with Bridget.
That would be the fabulous, posh, passionate Mark Darcy, then. Any of you Bridgets out there spot the Jane Austen reference? No? Ooops.
With this goal in mind, Bridget follows The Rules. She knows that Men Are from Mars and Women Diet. She is in touch with her inner child/inner Elephant God/inner hardboiled egg. Put it this way, if Beverley Cooper-Flynn wrote a self-help book, Bridget would read it.
Not just read it, take it to heart.
For about 24 hours, until the next selfhelp book came along.
At 30-something, Bridget has been traumatised by her parents' divorce (mother ran off with Julio met on safari).
"Though heartbroken by my parents' distress, I have a new role as carer and, though I say it myself, wise counsellor. It is so long since I have done anything at all for anyone else that it is a totally new and heady sensation.
"This is what has been missing in my life. I am having fantasies about becoming a Samaritan or Sunday school teacher, making soup for the homeless (or, as my friend Tom suggested, darling little mini-bruschettas with pesto sauce), or even retraining as a doctor. "Maybe going out with a doctor would be better still, both sexually and spiritually fulfilling.
"I even began wondering about putting an ad in the lonely hearts column of the Lancet. I could take his messages, tell patients wanting night visits to bugger off, cook him little goats cheese souffles, then end up in a foul mood with him when I'm 60, like Mum."
This is the sort of contradictory thought process that goes through Bridget's head on an hourly basis. It does take about an hour to go through, though.
Her reality never meets her aspirations, usually because her aspirations are not in touch with reality. This isn't entirely her fault. Bridget is living proof that if you want your daughters to be psychologically healthy, never let them read a teen magazine, women's magazine, self-help book or cookbook.
Say she's planning an intimate dinner party for, conservatively speaking, 19 of her closest friends in her one-room apartment. She wants a "warm, Third World, ethnic-style" gathering. So, lacking in confidence, she plans a five-course cordon bleu meal. This takes confidence.
Inevitably, five minutes before guests arrive she's stepping in mashed potatoes in her kitten heels from pied a terre ("pied-apomme-de-terre more like"). She spends so much time mulling over her entertaining inadequacies (guests will laugh at me, guests will laugh at tube of contraceptive gel mistakenly left on sink), that dinner explodes. Guests get blue soup, sliced pan, marmalade.
Her life is emptiness masked by lifestyle choices. She spends, she shops, she tries to go to "scary" parties in the media business but ends up at home alone with a bottle of Chardonnay and EastEnders.
She is as lonely and despairing as her readers sometimes are. Which is why they love her.
Those of us who love her, love her because she's like us. Competent on the outside, insecure on the inside. We want what she wants: to be loved as much for our flaws as for our talents.
Major flaw: Mr Right will make everything all right.
Bridget knows deep down that unconditional love does not exist outside the nursery. Bridget knows that romance will die as soon as he discovers she's neurotic and she discovers he never does the washing up. Yet she colludes with the fairy-tale.
The quality that makes Bridget likeable is that she laughs at herself for believing the fairy-tale. So she lets us laugh at ourselves for believing it too. And when her fairy-tale comes true - we wait for the sequel, secretly hoping the happy ending won't be so happy after all because it never is, is it?
Except maybe, for Bridget, it will be.
How Bridget Jones are you? Go to http:// underwire.msn.com/underwire/social/ quiz/109quiz.asp and find out!