You will find moments if the motion picture bites back from this, regardless of if. Bridget says to their unique social gathering companions this within the five ple, and her relationships are showed as their particular core relatives vibrant, because if she does not need to conform to personal standards. She never really contemplates singleness just like the a long-term way of becoming around the world, rather than a lot of women today, contributes Dr Taylor.
Although it could well be very easy to look back towards viewpoints one Bridget Jones’s Log perpetuates for women and you will call them archaic, several persist today. The concept you to definitely a woman you are going to positively choose a life of offered singleness has been mostly perhaps not illustrated, notes Dr Taylor. It’s still recognized as a bit of a good gap stop’ on the road to the brand new delighted actually ever just after from relationships and people. Within this experience, Bridget’s relevance you may simply be that she is grappling having factors one to single women are however up against today.
The film successfully taps into a deep-rooted social trend known as amatonormativity, coined by philosophy african hot women professor Elizabeth Brake. It describes the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship, she writes on her website. Romantic relationships are persistently privileged over all other forms of intimacy, says Dr Taylor.
There are basic economic and sociological explanations for this. Take the numerous laws and policies that favour couples over single people, which can make life far more expensive for those without a romantic partner. According to one analysis by the An effective Cleaning Institute, being single can set you back at least ?2,000 a year due to higher costs on everything from holidays to insurance.
Another Western study found that, over a lifetime, unmarried women can pay as much as $1m (?726,325) more than their married counterparts on healthcare, taxes, and more. These are just some of the reasons that led psychologist Bella DePaulo to money the phrase singlism to describe the myriad ways in which single women are disadvantaged in society. And while singlism isn’t explicitly examined in Bridget Jones’s Diary, the threat of it arguably permeates the entire plot.
Our female heroes in 2021 are no longer quite like Bridget: one thing that exists now that did not in 2001 is the single positivity movement, for example. Often attached to celebrities who champion female empowerment like Lizzo (in her 2017 hit Truth Hurts, she sings that she ain’t worried ’bout a ring on my finger) and Emma Watson, who famously explained herself as the self-partnered in 2019, the movement illustrates a growing number of people who are rejecting romantic norms and redefining singleness so that it is not so much a state of wanting but one of contentment.
Would it not getting wonderful when the singleness for females try so seriously normalised into the preferred community your unmarried lady from inside the real world gets unremarkable?
Even with all this, Bridget Jones obviously still taps towards the some thing strong within lots of women now, even in the event it’s simply a natural fear of ending up alone on holiday Eve, seeing It is a stunning Lives and you may drunkenly throwing mince pies at the tv. But surely it’s time to possess yet another motivational unmarried lady in order to grace the house windows, person who could become exactly as iconic once the Bridget.