Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Mark your calendars, here's an occasion where the movie is better than the book.

Not a lot. Just enough to not be a tie.

But that's not to say that the book isn't good, because it is. Sometimes? I'm not sure how to organize my thoughts here.

...

Okay, I've got it.

Things I liked:

I liked the honesty of the relationships between Bridget and her friends, like how Bridget's friend Jude stays with her boyfriend Vile Richard despite his vile-ness and all of her friends saying she'd be better off without him. We all have that friend: miserable but just can't let go for whatever reason.

And I liked the honesty of the relationships between Bridget and her family, and family friends-- like the unending parade of parties, picnics, and celebrations you're forced to attend, plastering a smile to your face. And Bridget, like all single women, are hounded with the same question by them all: When are you going to get married? I was only 14 when Arthur and Janet got married and even then I was getting "When's it going to be your turn?" Bridget really is the voice of single women everywhere, it's not an exaggeration.

Bridget's relationships with men are spot-on, as well: waiting for the phone to ring, checking 100 times to see if maybe you missed a call when you weren't paying attention, and the flirty first stages of getting together and the constant nagging doubts, "Does he really like me? Really? No, I mean, but really?"

And Fielding summed up the amount of work that goes into womanhood better than anyone or anything else I've ever seen:

6 p.m. Completely exhausted by entire day of date preparation. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer- there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature- with a full beard and handlebar mustache on each shin, Dennis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwwelpeter, blind as a bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses, flabby body flobbering around. Ugh, ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?

How right is that? She's inside my head.

Also inside my head, and also a little inside Mia's from The Princess Diaries head (the novels, not the movies), Bridget thinks it's hot when boys get authoritative-- and Lord, ain't it the truth. Whew.

Thing I mostly liked but really sort of didn't:

The deal with Bridget's weight. This is delicate because Bridget's obsession and confusion and struggle and up, down, up up up up, down, up, down, down, up up up up, down, up, down, down, down dance with the scale are all deeply realistic, the amount of weight being talked about (and sneered about) is paltry. Bridget spends the book at about 125 pounds and is fixated on losing 6.

And I know when you're slender and always have been that those few pounds really seem to make a difference but we need to collectively, as a world, start getting realistic about numbers. Nobody, no matter how cruel, will say about 123 pound woman that's over 5 feet tall, "I thought you said she was thin." This is the kind of thing that fuels eating disorders and shouldn't be portrayed as "normal", like everywoman Bridget Jones.

To rectify this situation with myself I mentally added 30 pounds to each of the weights Bridget claimed. Made me feel much better.

Things I didn't like:

Certain elements of the story bothered me. In fact, the worst subplot of them all was excluded from the movie and the movie was the better for it, it was just too, too unrealistic.

I also didn't like some of the style Fielding used for Bridget's writings, at times it felt far too slangy...but then, I was never the type to doodle or shorthand in my own diaries, and it grated me in The Princess Diaries, too. That's probably just a personal thing...

And I wasn't a fan of Mark Darcy's part in the book, I think his character was also handled better by the movie. While I liked how he loved Bridget all along, flaws and all, he was colder in the book, and when he comes through for her in the end it seems to almost come out of nowhere. Especially what he goes through for her before they're even properly dating! Not kidding, he goes to Portugal. I felt like a queen when Herbert once stopped at Wawa for me on his way to my house and he didn't have to go a foot out of his way to do it. AND we were dating at the time.

Another thing, that was a complete surprise, was the confrontation (read: fight) between Mark and Daniel doesn't happen in the book. That was surprising. Maybe it's in the following books, I don't know, I'm just saying that it doesn't happen in this book. And I was disappointed.

In the end, it's a good book-- a light, entertaining read with genuine heart and solid writing.

3 stars out of 5.

See Blauthor, Blauthor! for more of my reviews.

Still Quivering a Little, and Monkey Hookers

Holllly crap, I've actually got some page views that aren't just me! Hi, people that aren't me! 


Soooo...oh, tying in to yesterday, the No Longer Quivering blog had an incredible article on it that I just had to bring attention to (I'll give it a rest after this, I promise) called "Crushing Daisies: Ways in Which Patriarchal Fundamentalism Harms its Children Part 2: The Little House on the Prairie Fashion Club" (click here for the full article). What a mouthful. In it the author includes a section on what her daughter told her were the effects of the modest dress code enforced while they were living Quiverfull...ly. Quiverfully? While they were Quivering. 

"One day, some months after we’d come out, my then-17-year-old daughter K reminded me how damaged she had felt by this over-emphasis. She told me that in her view it had three significant effects – none of which I had intended to convey. For one, she grew to have an abiding disrespect for men and boys who apparently couldn’t keep their minds away from her private parts. K says she felt disgusted at male weakness and their apparent obsession with all things sexual. For years she struggled even to imagine enjoying a healthy partnership with a man.

In addition to helping us spot like-minded families in a crowd, dressing as we did had served, conveniently, to keep a distance between us and ‘the world’. K tells me that, even though she ended up going to school for grades 11 and 12, and is now happily managing university, for a long time she felt 16 years behind the eight ball when with her peers. Dress and other conservative choices we made kept my kids from engaging with their own culture. In an effort to follow the advice of patriarchal teachers such as Jonathan Lindvall we ‘dared to shelter’ our kids from many things that would help them function in a 21st world.

Finally, and perhaps most disturbing is that K says she grew up believing that there was something very wrong with her body. Having to hide herself away under a veritable mountain of denim, and promptly being admonished when any bits weren’t properly covered left her confused and, she says, appalled at her own foulness. She tells me that, before she even came to the dreadful realisation that God planned a very limited range of life choices for her, she knew she hated it that he had made her a girl. It’s impossible not to connect the dots and see this as a factor in K’s subsequent fight with Anorexia Nervosa."

Wow. WOW. All the hours spent watching 19 (...18...17...) Kids and Counting and marveling at those poor little J Duggar girls it never occurred to me- I mean, I never even considered for a second-

I don't know, I considered myself sensitive to that sort of thing having been through it myself, but it never occurred to me how DAMAGING the clothes are. I mean, regardless of how damaging the rest of it must be, the strictly enforced modest dress code never even crossed my mind. I suppose it's because the Duggars seem so happy all the time. 

I dress modestly- I'm no Duggar but I do, generally, cover up. It's self-imposed, though, is the difference. And, really, a decent portion of the reason why is I do absolutely despise my body. If I don't want to see it like this, surely no one else does, right? So if the outside influence is overwhelmingly "I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR BODY" Of course that's how it's going to manifest to a young girl. Or, rather, some young girls...most?...anyway, it seems so logical now that I'm a little embarrassed I didn't  think of it earlier. 

I did, though, grab on to that first part...sort of. The one about men being so sex obsessed...but the thought came in regards to burqas...but not the prairie dresses or the Duggars. 


...I think Jim Bob might be gay. You know, like those "cured" religious homosexuals? Yeah. Just saying. It's a theory of mine. 

Anyway. 

The universe may actually be against this blog. It might be. Point being that the day I started it I wasn't feeling well because a storm was coming- little did I know that it was a series of intense storms that have been coming and going EVERY DAY since I started this blog...um...4 days ago? Whatever. The point is, there's nasty storms here and I don't feel well. 

Herbert gives lovely massages, and while I could surely use one, I don't see him very often. We live six blogs away from each other and I see him maybe once a month...sigh...don't go for the smart ones, girls, they're always too busy. At some point I'll explain more about Herbert, he's an interesting fellow. 

Oh, another from mental_floss for you: Monkey Business. Scientists taught monkeys how to use "money" in exchange for food. The most interesting part of the article, the most interesting part of the experiment, is a little note at the end (the implication of that being, I think, that scientists concentrate too heavily on the experiment they're doing and not enough on the...I don't want to say consequences, let's say..."periphery". They don't focus enough on the "periphery".) that THE MONKEYS EXCHANGED MONEY FOR SEX. Hello! Scientists, hello! Ignore the economics of grapes and Jello and gambling (further experiments they performed), AND LOOK AT THE MONKEY HOOKERS. That's fucking amazing, pardon the pun and French. No wonder they call it the oldest profession in the world- they teach monkeys to use money and BAM! Prostitution. 

I find that awesome. 

Why do I always end up finishing these before I go to sleep? At least today it's for a nap. Mixing things up a bit.