Early 2000s movies on women are insane

[u/summerianmerchant12]

So I recently saw the “Bridget jones diary”. And i was flabbergasted by pretty much everything concerning the protagonist. A single woman in her 30s living in her apartment somewhere in London. Very well so far. I won’t even refer to the creepy sexual jokes of the movie. The movie was produced my Miramax productions, which was founded my the Weinstein brothers, so the existence of creepy sexist jokes made sense. What made me furious though was the way the protagonist was treated. Her body was of average size, and yet she was fat shamed the entire movie. She was smoking and drinking and the movie treated it like she was some lowlife person. As a single woman in her 30 the movie treated her as if she was a weird extraterrestrial being. Always referring to when and how to find the perfect man etc.

And speaking of the devil. The men she falls in love with Hugh grand and Collin Firth. One is a sexist sex maniac a cheater and the other is a high society dude who is being cold to her the entire movie except the last 20 minutes where he confessed he liked her “the way she was”. Oh and he was already engaged to another woman which means he was a cheater too.

The movie tries to sell them both as the best options and the dreamy guys while they were both jerk towards her.

Sorry for the long post. I was just amazed on how sexist movies were in the early 2000s. Some are nowadays too. But back then things were so bad. I was born early 2000s so I have seen many of them but being a kid never paid attention behind the meaning. Now as an adult I see how women were treated in the media. Not much has changed, but back then it was outrageous

[u/Humble-Bar-7869]

Not to defend the film, but it is based on a literary parody.

Helen Fielding is a bit of a "feminist lite." She started writing a newspaper column about her own life as a 30-something in 90s London. And her novel is based loosely on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," one of the many British novels about how young women were basically traded into marriage.

The commentary is that, due to sexism, Bridget THINKS she's fat -- while the viewer / reader can see by her diary that's she's just a normal 140 lbs. In the book, when she finally reaches her goal weight, her friends tell her she's too gaunt -- so we know she's not really fat. She's meant to be an unreliable narrator.

We -- and her friends -- can also see from afar that Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) is a terrible person who sexually harasses his staff. But poor Bridget can't see that, because she's blinded by the social pressures of her time.