Will new Bridget Jones film finally drop the fat-shaming?

• Helen Fielding’s heroine – and her diary – will return to cinema screens next year
• Read more: Bridget Jones is back! Fourth movie begins filming in May and Renee Zellweger’s already looking for a London home

From jokes about big pants to poring over every detail of Renee Zellweger’s weight gain, there was nothing that defined fat shaming in the early noughties than Bridget Jones’s Diary.

The fourth installment of the hit film has been officially confirmed – with Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant set to reprise their roles at Bridget and love rat Daniel Cleaver for the 2025 Valentine’s Day release.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, will not feature Colin Firth but may not be the only significant change fans can expect from the upcoming release, with the original theme of ridiculing a size 12 woman unlikely to go down well with today’s audience.

Bridget was routinely fat-shamed in both the original books by Helen Fielding and the film, despite weighing just over 61 kg – the same size as the average British woman at the time.

Renee Zellweger piled on the pounds twice to play the size 12 heroine – once in 2001 for Bridget Jones Diary and again in 2004 for the sequel The Edge of Reason – before her character reached her ‘ideal weight’ in the third film, albeit briefly before falling pregnant.

Ahead of film number four, we reveal some of the most eyebrow-raising moments of body-shaming from the previous installments.

Bridget Jones’s Diary 2001

Rom com heroine Bridget Jones is set to return to screens next year, with the fourth movie currently in pre-production; it’s hoped the scrutiny over Renee Zellweger’s weight, which plagued the first two films in 2001 and 2004, will no longer be an issue

At the start of the film, Bridget Jones’ Diary, viewers are told she weighs 136 pounds, just over 61 kg, and wears a size 12 dress (Pictured: Zellweger in Bridget Jones’ Diary in 2001)

The actress admitted to struggling to gain the weight for the role and was reported to be on a 4,000-calorie-per-day diet to reach the target quickly (Pictured: Zellweger in Bridget Jones’ Diary in 2001)

Renee Zellweger pictured at the 74th British Academy Film Awards in Los Angeles in  2021

The core premise of the fist film is that Bridget Jones is fat and Renee Zellweger hit the headlines for gaining just over 2st to play the character.

The actress admitted to struggling to gain the weight for the role and was reported to be on a 4,000-calorie-per-day diet to reach the target quickly.

She told The New York Times: ‘I’d have an omelette with cheese and sauce for breakfast with a fatty yoghurt and then 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.’

Bridget was routinely fat-shamed and clearly took it to heart, constantly tracking her weight in her diary.

At the start of the film, viewers were told she weighed 136lbs, or 9.7st, and wore a size 12 dress.

The average weight of a British woman in 2001 was 69.3 kg and by 2021 it was 71.8kg. The average UK dress size is now a 16.

Five minutes in flick, we were confronted by Bridget’s negative body image, as the 32-year-old reflected: ‘If I didn’t change soon, I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine, and I’d finally die fat and alone’, while Celine Dion’s All by Myself blasted in the background.

In another scene, Bridget’s on/off boyfriend Daniel Cleaver’s new girlfriend was heard saying: ‘I thought you said she was thin’ during a scene in his bathroom.

Meanwhile in another scene, her friend asked her: ‘Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer?’ when she Bridget said that her barrister boyfriend Mark Darcy, portrayed by Colin Firth, said he likes her just as she is.

In one of the actual movie posters, the following was listed above a picture of Renée posing as Bridget: ‘Go to the gym three times a week. Don’t flirt with boss. Reduce thighs. Learn to love thighs. Forget about thighs. Stop making lists.’

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason 2004

In Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason we saw more of the same with Bridget’s preoccupation with her weight, which was linked explicitly to her pursuit of a partner

Bridget was constantly told she was fat by others, but she was also self-deprecating about her size

In another scene in the first movie, from 2001, her friend asks her: ‘Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer?’ when she tells her that her barrister boyfriend Mark Darcy, portrayed by Colin Firth (pictured playing Mark), said he likes her just as she is

Renee Zellweger played 30-something singleton Bridget, with Hugh Grant, right, as womaniser Daniel Cleaver, and Colin Firth, left, in the role of barrister Mark Darcy

Meanwhile, in the second installment, we saw even more of Bridget’s preoccupation with her weight, which was linked explicitly to her pursuit of a partner.

Bridget was constantly told she was fat by others, but she was also self-deprecating about her size.

After hearing love interest Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, insulting her to his mother in the second movie, she says of herself: ‘And that was it. Right there. Right there that was the moment.

‘I suddenly realised that unless something changed soon, I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine and I’d finally die fat and alone and be found three weeks later eaten by Alsatians or I was about to turn into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.’

Renee Zellweger repeated the weight gain process to star as Bridget, after losing the 2st she’d gained following the first film.

Speaking to Closer magazine at the time she said: ‘ It would be silly if Bridget was talking about her chubby thighs and they weren’t chubby.’

Bridget Jones’s Baby 2016

During an interview with British Vogue, Renee explained her character in the third film was a ‘perfectly normal weight’. However the actress did wear prosthetic breasts and a baby bump

The film saw Bridget shocked when she found out she was pregnant. It ended with her marrying Mark

She ended up with Mark, the high-flying lawyer who she’d had on and off feelings for across the three movies. It was also revealed that he was the father to her baby

In 2016, Zellweger revealed that while she wanted to gain weight for the third movie, the idea was rejected by directors.

She explained writers wanted Bridget Jones’s Baby to show her on-screen character had ‘achieved her ideal weight’.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Renee revealed: ‘Sharon was hoping we could show that Bridget had achieved her ideal weight, but at the same time it didn’t mean her life was perfect.

‘I wasn’t sure about that one though because we all have something we think is wrong, that needs fixing, that in our own minds represents the ideal that we are meant to obtain. And I like the idea that that stays with us throughout our lives.’

During an interview with British Vogue, Renee explained her character in the third film was a ‘perfectly normal weight’.

‘I put on a few pounds. I also put on some breasts and a baby bump,’ the actress laughed.

‘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.’

Bridget’s weight was also referenced constantly in her diary entries in Fielding’s original books, something that was resolutely carried over into the films, the exception being the third movie, in which the character of Bridget is pregnant.

But there are even references there; a friend of Bridget’s mother Pamela congratulates her on her surprise pregnancy, saying: ‘Wonderful, we thought you’d just got all fat again.’

In the years after the first two films, Zellweger spoke out about the scrutiny of her body in the role.

She told The Today Show in 2016: ‘I never thought she [Bridget] had a weight issue. I thought that was just something that, all of us, we think: “Oh, I’d love to change this thing about myself’ when in fact nobody notices it but you”.

A year later, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Zellweger said, in a clip that resurfaced last year, that the question she was asked most about her appearances in the first two Bridget Jones’ films was about her weight.

The star said: ‘It saddens me so much because it seems to imply that one way of being is acceptable and the other isn’t valuable, and that’s just not true.’

‘I don’t want to answer the question when I get asked, I don’t want to answer it,’ Renée went on, with Oprah interjecting to point out that Bridget’s heaviest size ‘is the normal size for Americans.’

Renée replied: ‘And did you know, I was told this while we were filming, did you know that Bridget Jones was voted the most sexy personality in England? I thought wow, that right there completely nullifies the notion that you’re supposed to be a size 0 in order to be considered attractive, don’t you think?’

The film saw Bridget shocked when she found out she was pregnant. It ended with her marrying Mark, the high-flying lawyer who she’d had on and off feelings for across the three movies. It was also revealed that he was the father to her baby.

Grant didn’t appear in that movie as Cleaver was presumed dead at the beginning. At the end, though, there was a newspaper report that said he had been found alive.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy 2025

Pictured Patrick Dempsey and Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Baby Film – 2016

The new film comes eight years after the last instalment, Bridget Jones’s Baby and is to be based on Ms Fielding’s 2013 novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy

With all the talk around the characters weight over the years, many are wondering will the fourth installment finally drop the fat-shaming.

In a world dominated by social media and unrealistic beauty standards, body shaming has become a destructive epidemic in recent years.

However now that we know more about the devastating psychological impacts of body shaming maybe producers will opt for a narrative focused more on body positivity and self-acceptance.

Bridges Jones Diary writer Richard Curtis even admitted that jibes about women’s weight ‘aren’t any longer funny’,

Last year, Curtis, who also wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral said it was ‘stupid and wrong’ for joking about people’s size in his films.

His comments came after he was confronted by his daughter Scarlett, who  has been open with her own battles with anorexia, at The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival.

The 67-year-old director said he regrets much of his work and he was ‘unobservant’ and ‘not as clever’ as he should have been. He added that he would never use the words ‘fat’ and ‘chubby’ again.

Ahead of filming in May, Renee is reportedly already searching for a home to live in while she’s in Britain, according to sources.

The new film comes eight years after the last instalment, Bridget Jones’s Baby and is to be based on Ms Fielding’s 2013 novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which saw her raising young children as a single mother while navigating social media and dating apps.

Emma Thompson- who played Doctor Rawlings in 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby is also back, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and White Lotus and One Day star Leo Woodall also set to star, per THR.

To Leslie director Michael Morris will helm the film and it is not known if Mark Darcy actor Colin Firth will appear in any capacity – his character was revealed to have been killed off in the novel.

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