Is Bridget Jones the new social taboo?

Posted by Katy Regan at 12:33 on 27 Jul 2009

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Apparently, there is to be a third Bridget Jones film and possibly even a musical. ( A drunken, out of tune rendition of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, anyone? )

Lucy Rock, writing in The Observer last week (it often takes me a week to read these things ) headine of: 'You're Yesterday's Woman Bridget'  was all-of-a-groan about this: 'So not much has changed for Bridget' she said, “she’s still self-obsessing, tottering tipsily from crisis to crisis.'

Her point was that this portrayal of a single woman in her thirties  'who set back feminism by four decades' was now  outmoded and  irrelevant: 'The world has moved on and so has the Bridget Jones generation' she says. 'We are now in our late 30s and early 40s, many of us married, perhaps juggling the demands of office life with raising children or looking after elderly parents…'

So far so fair enough, but what of the Bridget Jonest generation, who a decade on, for whatever reason, are still single?

Well, according to Lucy Rock, they are certainly not allowed to cry into their Chardonnay about this: 'What was amusing then would be infuriating and sad in a woman 10 years older…'  she says.
'We don’t need her whining about men, as though a woman without a husband is incomplete, putting back the female cause another ten years..'

Of course in theory, she is right. There are far worse fates than being single in ones 30s and it would, indeed, be sad and depressing if 'singletons'  were to spend more than perhaps one pre-menstrual, indulgent night a month singing and drinking alone in their pyjamas.

But, I can’t help but feel every time this we're-so-over-Bridget-Jones-predicament lark comes up that commentators miss the point, somewhat. Just because a decade has passed, doesn’t mean that human nature has changed. It’s perfectly sane and normal and human, whether you are man or woman, to want to share your life with someone and yet single woman all over the country feel they can’t lament their single status and that they somehow have to constantly defensively proclaim: 'Oh I love being single! I love my single life!'

I would hazard a guess, as controversial as this may be, that the vast majority of people – male andd female, single in their late thirties and forties are not single by choice. Indeed ALL my female friends and my male friends for that matter who are single, wish they weren’t.

'A new fictional heroine is needed: a woman with backbone, to inspire us in a time of global recession' trumpets Lucy Rock. 'She would be clever and witty, cultured and confident. She would enjoy fashion, flirting and parties but these things wouldn’t rule her life.'  (No shit, Sherlock.)

But she might, damn her, that entirely normal woman who is setting back the female cause by a decade,  still want a boyfriend.

I wonder if single thirty-somethings still have more in common with Bridget Jones than modern society allows them to admit and whether that by pretending that is not the case, we have created a new social taboo.

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