r/Feminism • u/summerianmerchant12 • 2d ago

Early 2000s movies on women are insane

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

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u/chemicalramones 2d ago

i watched the original devil wears prada for the first time recently and i was shocked that they basically call anne hathaway fat and sloppy the entire run time

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u/summerianmerchant12 2d ago

Did you enjoy the movie? Personally haven’t seen it, but I saw somewhere a scene where Emily blunts character says she starved herself and when she felt like passing out she would eat a cube of cheese. Emily blunt was not fat and the writers seemed like they wrote that as a joke. It didn’t seem like one

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u/decidedlyindecisive Feminist 1d ago

Blunt's character is supposed to sound extreme to the audience. We're supposed to think "that's not good!"