To what extent does “Bridget Jones’ Diary” present an image of changing and non-traditional gender identities?
...strong attitude. Bridget is always able to pick herself up and start again after her life has been turned upside down, e.g. cheating boyfriend. Whelehan also looks at how women are gaining power and strength by adopting male aggression. In the film we see how strong Bridget acts when she finds out her boyfriend had been cheating on her. Bridget quits her job because he was the boss and moves on, leaving the past behind her. Bridget was able to just walk away this shows us how females today are changing. They are having more strength to stand up for themselves and not letting men over power them. If we look at the idea of ‘retrosexism’ another thing that whelehan believes in, we see that in the past women weren’t as strong as Bridget is nowadays. Women in the past wouldn’t dare tell a man to his face what she really thought of him if it was bad, whereas Bridget doesn’t hold back, she says what she thinks. Women also in the past tended to marry younger, it was very unusual to see a single woman in her 30’s still having ‘fun’ and even the idea of ‘fun’ was looked down upon 50 years ago. The way in which Bridget’s is gender socialised could be put down to the primary socialisation within the family, however when we look at Bridget’s family we see that it was pretty well organised when Bridget was younger, however as her parents got older, the mother especially started to realise how much of life she had missed out on by having children at a young age. This statement would most probably affect the younger audiences of the film and society could result in having a dramatic decrease in marriage. The main male dominant characters in the film are Darcy and Daniel. They are two very completely contrasting people. Daniel is a typical man who we see only views Bridget as a sex object. Daniels’s only interested in sex and nothing-long term between him and Bridget. Whelehan says that lads magazines crates this idea of women as sex objects and this idea is viewed as ‘laddism,’ the idea that men are into, drugs, sports, sex, booze, soft porn etc. The other male character Darcy on the other hand is exploited as being the perfect man/gentlemen, however does behave in a rude manner when he first meets Bridget. He represents true likeness to Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, and Bridget links these two Darcy’s in her diary. Darcy is interested in having a long-term relationship with Bridget and he opens up his feelings to her. Men nowadays put on a macho front and tend not to show their emotions like Daniel, however Darcy does. Darcy does not just view Bridget as a sex object and this isn’t really a traditional type of male behaviour on the whole these days. The film Bridget Jones’ diary itself can be seen as a gender socialising process in society. The characters in the film portray different personalities, which affect their audience. Young girls might say they want to be like Bridget, and young boys may want to be just like Daniel or Darcy. Bridget Jones’ diary presents the family at first as being a happy loving place and the parents wanting the best for their children. However this soon changes with Bridget’s mother running off and having an affair in order to try and find happiness. This results in Bridget’s father becoming miserable and in the end her mother finding out that flings aren’t as great as she thought. The mother returns home putting her marriage first and trying to love her husband again. The actions o...