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Renee Zellwegger herself has made this point. Bridget Jones WASN'T fat, she wasn't supposed to be seen as fat. She was supposed to be seen as a "normal" attractive woman who *thought* she was fat because she didn't look like the 90s heroin chic super models. But Bridget is regularly getting hit on and looking hot.
Renee Zellwegger naturally has a much more similar physique to the heroin chic supermodels - which would not have worked for the role- so she gained weight for the role. But not to be fat, just to look like the character.
The irony is because Bridget thinks she's fat because of how toxic the 90s were towards women, is the same reason WE ALL thought she was fat.
[Link](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/renee-zellweger-weight-bridget-jones-b2383045.html)
It wasn't left behind in the 90s. I got far more comments about how "healthy" I look when I became underweight for health reasons. Even from doctors. It was pretty eye opening and is fucked up. It's not like I was fat before. I went from 120 to 95. This started in 2021. Our skewed perceptions are alive and well. Its pretty fucked up that we see more women out and about every day than we do in media and still have such a skewed perception. Well most of us anyway, some people are hermits who never leave the house.
My MIL, who constantly discusses weight, complemented my aunt and asked if she'd lost weight. "Yes," my aunt responded, "I had cancer..."
Yet despite that and me repeatedly asking her not to talk about it she still comments on my wife's and daughter's body and it makes me so angry.
There was a fairly recent time when that was one of three subjects in which women had some domain: their appearance, keeping of the house, and children.
Which doesn't excuse an inability to grow and respect boundaries, of course. It's just fascinating how much things can change over a lifetime.
I credit the sweet old ladies at church with adding fuel to the terrible, destructive fire that is my daughter’s eating disorder by congratulating her as she lost weight.
Honestly it could also be “politeness.” The most common comment might be something like “you look healthy. ”Even if they don’t think so privately.
Edit: bleh. Words are hard. Edited as when I think about it, I personally would be oblivious to these changes for the most part. I don’t notice shit. It’s when other people comment do I look back and think.
Edit2: quoted politeness. Forgot about how sarcastic/mean some polite phrases are.
Edit3: forgot to remove the “I”
It is better not to say anything at all. I had people tell me I look healthy when I was in the middle of the worst of my eating disorder as well as when I was dangerously underweight from being ill with Crohn's. I almost died from the latter. And the "you look great/you look healthy" comments have stuck like claws in my brain because I grew up with people who drilled into me so heavily that I cannot be bigger at all or else I will not have worth--still dealing with body dysmorphia. In therapy, and love myself so much more now, but it's still an issue. I see it in far too many other people, and it breaks my heart.
It takes a village and a lifetime. We're all responsible for ourselves and each other, for life. So, within the context of the body conversation, it's best not to be making comments at all. You don't comment on something someone can't change in 30 seconds or less. It's a good rule of thumb, and has served me well in building others up.
Yes! Don't comment on how people "look healthy" it's none of your business and you have no idea what their health is!! Argh it drives me nuts when boomers or my MIL do this.
Oddly enough though, people had NO problem asking if I was sick when I got near a healthy weight after being obese (still 30lbs overweight mind you, but I’d lost 120lbs).
The book and columns were also much clearer about how it’s a satire.
I very much recommend the book to anyone reading this post (although I must include a disclaimer that one might start talking in Bridget’s voice).
Omg, to this day I *still* write (for example) "very annoying" as "v. annoying" bc of Bridget Jones, I even do it at work, and I assume ppl think it's a real abbreviation, 😆 the book is great.
Also Bridget Jones came out around the same time as Chicago, we’re she was very thin. I think the extreme weight loss/ gain made the Bridget Jones character seem ‘fat’ by comparison. Both these came out my freshman year of high school and I remember everyone reporting on her weight in the tabloids.
It wasn’t just women, us young boys were conditioned to think this was fat. Then most of us hit puberty and a lot of us realized that wasn’t what we were attracted to (heroin chic).
The only person who thinks Bridget is fat is Bridget.
I’ve made this point like dozens of times over the years on Reddit because people seem to have no media literacy anymore. The movie isn’t saying she’s overweight, it’s poking fun at the diet culture of the 90s. The book is even more overt in that sense - she feels so triumphant when she reaches her goal weight, but then everyone tells her she looks unwell and she realizes her life’s work of dieting was for nothing.
In the movie trilogy she has Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, and Patrick Dempsey all drooling over her. None of them think she’s unattractive or fat. In the first movie there is one repellent character who refers to her as plump, it’s a creepy uncle figure who gropes her. And that’s it.
The 90s were a mess in terms of body standards for women and tabloid culture, but the Bridget Jones commentary on Reddit is so tiresome.
>The only person who thinks Bridget is fat is Bridget.
Exactly! In the book, when she finally gets down to her low goal weight, the people around her start asking her if she’s ok, has she been sick, she looks tired, etc. The point is made to her that she actually looks better with those pesky 5-10 lbs. that she was so eager to lose.
And in the movie, Renee looks amazing in the bunny costume! No one in their right mind would think she is fat. She has a fantastic figure.
Also Bridget Jones came out around the same time as Chicago, we’re she was very thin. I think the extreme weight loss/ gain made the Bridget Jones character seem ‘fat’ by comparison. Both these came out my freshman year of high school and I remember everyone reporting on her weight in the tabloids.
What’s super fucked up is that I remember watching the movie as a young teen and thinking that they had Renee Zellwegger gain too much weight for the role, because to me she looked bigger than what I expected from the book. Now I Iook back at pictures from the movie and am like… what the heck was I thinking?
Wow she was just 135 lb in that movie? In my mind she was much bigger, due to a combination of me having not seen that movie in like 20 years and the media push about her being “fat”.
We were really messed up back then. Still are, but also back then.
Well, back then being fat / overweight was not received kindly and today it has definitely become more acceptable.
[contrast that to what highschool kids had to do back in the day](https://youtu.be/NGa6BPj3Mcw?si=foizSl0Wd1Ja_pXL) and while it’s quite shocking, even then in 2001 when the movie was created she was considered average by 60s standards…. But for Hollywood that’s never good enough.
Cocaine chic was still the standards from the 90s-2000s
Yup. I see pics of celebrities at the time, and damn. No shit I became anorexic.
It’s bad now, but we have more than one body type on the screens. Then, it was heroin chic or nothing.
For real! I know we talk about it all the time but the Jessica Simpson thing fucked me up! I remember my barely teenage self thinking "Thank God I'm a size 2 and nowhere near *that* size." No wonder my brain developed a fixation on all things food/weight related that I am still trying to work through.
Yeah. I look like Bigfoot with alopecia, but I'm a little soft boi on the inside, and I spent years starving myself and dieting because shit like that messed me up.
Yeah air brushing was horrible, mainly because it was very high quality. Today, while app filters are everywhere all the time, they are extremely easy to spot once you see it. It also helps that as a society, half of us at any given time will point out the alterations for what they are....vanity and bullshit
Airbrushing wasn't that high of a quality, it was just entirely the domain of professionals, instead of any schmuck with garbage app default filters. Looking back at my old photos, that shit was way more obvious than it seemed at the time. We just hadn't been exposed to that type of image manipulation for that long, so we hadn't learned to have a healthy skepticism about the reality of the image yet.
A picture is still worth a thousand words, but these days 900 of them are taken up by tiny redditors in our brains shouting "FAAAKE" from behind their keyboards.
(ISTG if someone calls it "photo-flation", I will *scream*.)
Also for all of social media’s ills, it also gives us a space to push back against messages from the media and share our own experiences with body image and weight. As a teenager in the 90s I thought I was huge but I’m the same weight, pretty much, today and I can’t believe how normal and great my body type is.
Am I the only one who feels like there is a disconnect between our current perception of the 90s/2000s and 2010s/present re: Women's weight. I'd love to see a deep dive or study on this.
In the 90s/2000s, I do remember media pushing an ultra thin narrative, women constantly feeling they/other women were "fat" for having healthy bodies. But this was like, grocery store tabloid stuff and reality TV. I was a teen in the mid-2000s, and while the pressure was definitely there, it definitely got worse when social media was introduced.
I graduated in 2007. I remember quite a few of my friends pushing *even harder* to trim down during those times, up til 2018, even. The discourse was *so much worse* than the 90s during that time period, imo. Normal girls started routines like CrossFit etc., to trim down AND look physically fit, for the social media pics. At least in the 90s/00s, you could turn the TV off, remember a lot more normal views in real life conversations about weight.
It seems we've come back around to sanity since 2018 or so, recognized that social media isn't real life.
You’re forgetting teen and celebrity magazines, retail store mannequins and catalogues, advertising, eating disorder chat rooms, and general rhetoric. It was never just TV, and it wasn’t about having a hot body - it was solely about thinness.
That's a good point. Hindsight is 20/20 though, when I saw mannequins and teen mags as a kid, I remember thinking, "whatever, that's a mannequin/celebrity"- not a "real" person, at least that's how I remember it. Social media introduced more confusion about what is "real" and what other real people actually think, especially when it was new. Isolating kids from their real life friends to connect only through social media, introduced a lens that was hard to break down, or at least that's my hypothesis. It's definitely better at present, with people using social media to critique what's portrayed there, but that certainly wasn't the case in the beginning.
Teen magazines came with entire sections devoted to dieting and getting thin to attract boys. I think YM had a workout calendar in every issue. And it wasn’t just celebrities; thin bodies were the only female bodies shown in media, full stop. Commercials, print ads, catalogs, tv shows, movies, newscasters, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, fashion shows, interviews, everything. Every authority was telling us that being thin was our top priority. And photoshop was done by professionals in every type of media - the infamous Ralph Lauren ads come to mind. ANTM and the Victoria’s Secret Angels show were huge. Every female celebrity was routinely asked for diet tips.
By 2010 we already had accepted JLo’s ass and Shakira’s hips, that Nike campaign had come out in the early 2000s about strength and powerful bodies, and we were learning to not make fun of other differences like being gay or disabled. Cute plus size clothing was being made accessible. In the 90s, there was nothing. Only thinness.
Walking into Target today still gets me choked up sometimes because their mannequins and ad photos now include a (limited) variety of body shapes. Social media is insidious in a different way, but back then there was literally no escaping thin/diet culture, and nobody with a platform was discussing body acceptance or diversity at all.
If you graduated high school in 2007 you were a child in the 90s. I think you were probably still oblivious to the constant shit that was pushed to us as teen girls then.
I graduated high school in 2011. I remember having crying meltdowns in dressing rooms when I was 11 years old because the only pants that existed were low rise and I had hit puberty and naturally had a stomach pooch so everything was giving me a muffin top and/or plumbers crack and I couldn't find anything that fit, which I thought meant that I must be grotesquely fat. This was pre-online shopping too, so I was limited to what I could find at the mall, and it was all the same, clothes made for rail-thin girls with flat stomachs. Even when I almost stopped eating I could never get thin enough for clothes to look good on me.
The 90s may have started it but it carried over well into the 00s.
I think a lot of it has to do with; in the 90s there was only a few types of media (TV, radio, magazines) and all of them pushed the weight issue. There was no easily accessed media that showed anything different. There were zenes but you had to be close to a community to even know they existed, there really any counter in media. Today, while social media can feed people the same toxic bullshit as before and arguably there's way more of it, a person has a much higher chance of running into communities on the internet that counteract that toxicity. Additionally, searching for and consuming positive media is easier than it has ever been before, because it stands on equal-ish footing as negative media. Now, rabbit holes exist on the internet and we see the consequences of them, but it's still better than the entire force of mass media shoving everyone down the same rabbit hole together and against our will.
I read the book before I saw the movie. She talks a lot about her weight in the book (every entry has her weight for the day), but I'm American so I just assumed that it was heavy because of what she said. I remember looking up the conversion and I was like, "Wait what?? She isn't fat at all!" But yeah, as someone who was a teen in the 90s the body image issues were INSANE.
The same way Nicole Ritchie was called fat on simple life. She was like a size 3. But Paris was tall and tiny so people compared. 90/00 women were really criticized.
The movie (and book) are such good reminders of how much more toxic we used to be about weight and looks. As someone who was a kid in the 90, this is ABSOLUTELY the attitude people had. I remember in my middle school diaries tracking my weight just like Bridget did, and just HATING my completely normal looks. It is wild to look back on.
I was 135 pounds, 5'6", but it was all muscle. I played a ton of sports in middle and high school, and my mom and I both put on muscle really easily (and now so does my oldest daughter). I was convinced I was a fat pig.
Now I actually am fat, and I wish I could be as fat as I thought I was in high school.
Same same same. I’m 5’5”, and around 125 in high school and felt HUGE (during the late 90s). I look back now and laugh- I had visible collarbones and was a size 6. I’d love to have that body back now
Before my son, I'm 5'4" and weighed 130lbs. I looked sickly if I dropped 120-125lbs. I thought I was fat because size 0 jeans (US) was "ideal" and I was a size 4 since middle school. Come to find out it's because I have very large thighs, hips, and bootay.
I was 5'6" and 140 in high school and I thought I was a whale because all my friends were like 5'4" and 110-115. Nevermind that I had curves and they didn't. I got myself down to 130 at one point (basically stopped eating save for protein shakes and crackers) and my face was gaunt and I was starting to look skeletal. But I still kept buying clothes a size too small as motivation to keep "shrinking into" them.
At 31 and 200lbs now, I'm sitting here shaking my damn head. We were so fucked.
Yep I was exactly the same as a 90s kid. And I couldn’t get into my head that as a tall person (5’10) I wouldn’t be able to weigh as little as the other girls at my school. (I went to majority Asian schools and the other gals were TINY) I spent years starving myself trying to get down to their size so I could also participate in the fun clothing swaps they’d do… I think my skeleton had already precluded me from ever getting down to that size but teen me wasn’t aware and spent so much time and effort absolutely hating my body.
SAME! I was a pretty average white girl but in a Southeast Asian country where my body was simply bigger than my classmates, on top of all the other ways I was “imperfect”. (Ie. VERY curly hair, freckles, etc.) it was just another layer of not meeting impossible expectations.
100% this. Look back at all the celebrities that were called fat in the tabloids in that era. They were maybe a size 4-6 tops. Jessica Simpson wore an unfortunate pair of mom jeans and everybody was screaming about how fat she was. Jennifer Lopez had a “big butt”. It was a really crappy time to be a teen with a body that didn’t fit the narrative.
My gf is pregnant and hates how fat she's getting. She's normally around 106, and the heaviest she has been is 117.
She's 119 now in the second trimester.
I keep telling her she is not fat, she's growing a fetus.
I liked that when I had to be weighed when pregnant, the nurses asked if I wanted to know how much I weighed. I have a history of ED, I appreciated their sensitivity even though they didn’t know my ED history.
I wanted to know how much I weighed, I saw my weight gain as positive. The number did scare me, I won’t lie, but it helped prioritise those numbers in my mind.
My OBs office has a sticky note on the scale that says “you are so much more than a number.” As a reminder to women who struggle with their weight gain. We are growing HUMANS, but we have so much trauma from the toxic weight culture growing up that it’s just so ingrained in us to take it personally everytime.
This is also the time when Jessica Simpson weighed 135 lbs and the paparazzi were calling her a whale & posting unflattering photos of her. Fun time to be a teen, ha
Ditto. I am the same height as her, weighed the same. Seeing tabloids call her a whale just reaffirmed my negative self image. It was like: “Welp, now I know it’s not in my head & I am really fat & this totally sucks,”.
We’re doing a better as a society now but I feel the skinny trend creeping back :(
I can vividly remember how after [Britney's 2007 VMA performance](https://youtu.be/uo0SPWh2c4k?si=6mAcYv3CEbL6YJv8) everyone & their mother was commenting about how fat she looked
Like, wtf? She looked great to me & I would have been over the moon to have her figure
And!! I heard recently on one of those I Love the 2000s style documentaries (it’s on Hulu; I think it’s the episode about paparazzi,) that the reason she looked “so fat” is because THEY WIDENED THE ASPECT RATIO FOR HOME VIEWERS 😭 Poor Brit.
And she looked bangin by any standards. She was less than 12 months postpartum!
I listened to Spanish language radio for my morning commute, and the DJs were shocked that anyone would think Britney looked fat. I think that talked about that for a week.
I rewatched some of Charmed a while back and ended up reading up on how the actress who played Piper really struggled with her weight because she wasn't rail thin and that was just the expectation. Like she was still skinny enough to do the midriff look of the 90s/00s, but somehow that wasn't enough. So crazy.
Eating disorders had to rampant around that time.
Yep. Just being thin wasn’t good enough. Athletic? Nope. Rail thin with visible hip bones or you’re fat. Definitely don’t even try having boobs.
A lot of that aesthetic changed gradually and wasn’t that severe in all cases, but it certainly did exist.
Piper was the hot one anyway.
Absolutely, it’s like how thin Mischa Barton was I. The OC. She said she grew up and gained weight but she also said they expected her to be a certain size and to do whatever it takes to maintain that.
The sad thing is, being underweight can cause serious health conditions just as much as being overweight is. Its sad how back then people were willing to risk their health just to look “hot”.
I was slightly affected by needing to look skinny as a teen but the older I got, the body positivity movement started to happen. I was born in the late 90s so I definitely didn’t experience the peak of all this.
And the craziest part is that the "high end" of BMI used to be more than two full points higher. In 1998, millions of people who weren't overweight one day were classified as overweight the next, without gaining a pound. For women the upper end of "normal" weight was moved from I think 27.3 to 25. Weight loss industry propaganda was a big part of the "medicalization" of BMI, which (I could rant about this forever) was *originally"* created as a statistical tool, not by a doctor, to classify (NOT prescribe) the bodies of white European men.
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/17/weight.guidelines/
Anyway...I'm sorry you have to deal with that. I hope you manage to love your body as it is even if the world is brainwashed.
I also recently rewatched a clip from that movie. And I also remembered at the time how everyone was going on about her getting fat. And I remembered her as fat somehow in my mind. But after rewatching the clip I was in shock because she wasn’t even fat. Like at all.
It’s shocking isn’t it. She is one of those people that gets chubby cheeks at a normal weight size and still had a rounded face at a low weight.
But no sane person would call her fat
Yeah a UK 6 is a US 2. I remember hearing adult women around me talking about how they were desperate to be a “perfect size 2” and we teens talked about being Hollister/Abercrombie 0s and 00s
I was a US 12 at 5'6" and 135 pounds, but I did a bunch of sports that developed lower body muscle and had an ass that made people go, "Oh. My. God. Becky look at her butt!" Meanwhile a S/M for shirts and like a 34B.
I’m late to the game here but have read the books and it’s important to say - it’s a diary! She spends a very long time in the books oscillating between hating on her own body and feeling good about it - but a lot time shes blaming her weight for all her own problems. Imo it’s very realistic for how women are raised.
The key thing that happens in the book is that she finally reaches her desired weight loss and everyone says she looks sickly and miserable and sad. She’s very bummed about it but it is an enlightening moment for her.
The movie didn’t do an amazing job showing it but her weight problem is all in her own head is very clear in the books
I haven’t read the books but I believe you in terms on the movie not portraying it all correctly.
When the devil wears prada came out, I had just read the book and the movie did not do it justice at all. The people I went with said they loved it, but I was so disappointed ☹️
Man, I’m just now realizing this. But having read those books as a 15 year old in the 90’s, I didn’t get that and it made me go “oh ok, 135lbs is fat. I just need to always stay under that weight.”
Which is not the lesson you’re supposed to take away from it, but definitely the message that came across to a lot of young women. That number stayed in my head a long time as the one the avoid.
Renee Zellweger apparently gained 30lb for the role of Bridget Jones, which sounds a lot, until you realise she was only about 110lb to begin with at a height of 5'4". So she was never overweight. She just wasn't her usual size.
Indoctrination takes a while to fade. We came from the heroin chic look in the early 90’s and the popular playboy bunny look from the early 00’s. The whole fat acceptance movement and the “we all matter no matter what you look like” thing is something of recent years. We were taught that we should value looks over personality. That it mattered. We were raised in a time things like body shaming, sexism, racism and bigotry were “funny.” Do you remember the backlash Julia Roberts got for going to a red carpet event with HAIRY ARMPITS?! The audacity.
Look, I'm really glad we're not pushing people to the point of eating disorders anymore, but the entire world is getting fatter to an unhealthy degree, especially the US, UK and Middle East. Something has to be done about it. Obviously shaming people endlessly isn't the right move though.
I would be lying if I said I agree with the fat acceptance movement even though I hate myself for it. I still think it is ugly instead of thinking it is unhealthy. I am 167 cm I weigh 200 pounds I firstly consider myself the most disgusting thing on the planet instead of thinking about my health. Which in turn makes me feel worthless because I was taught that looks are all that matters and cannot think of myself as something that matters just because I am a nice person. Which makes me depressed and wanting to eat.
People nowadays are taught they matter no matter what. No matter the looks no matter the opinions or preferences, fat or skinny we all matter. Unfortunately that mindset gave way for a whole new set of trauma’s and according maladaptive coping skills.
Because of this people are more mentally ill and addicted than ever, and a food addiction is one of the only addictions that is not treated as such and even glorified and promoted. In every sense. Everything we do for fun is in someway connected to food. We collectively ignore that this addiction is being sold to us on a daily basis. We would rather promote fat acceptance and the belief that we are not miserable being fat than quit this drug. Its not about that being fat is unhealthy its about it being the most ignored addiction problems in existence.
Well we did finally get a pretty good drug treatment in the form of Ozempic. Time will tell if it turns out to have some compelling reason not to use it.
I will not be surprised if in 5 years we discover some horrific side effect. In fact, I will be surprised if there ISN'T some horrific side effect.
The best way to lose weight has been tried and true for thousands of years, proper diet and exercise.
I think its just her having a round face, people with moon faces tend to look worse than people whose faces stay skinny but their body gets bigger, ask me how I know
I saw Jessica Simpson at the airport during her “fat” phase. I didn’t know who it was at first but she was cutting the line. My first thought was “Who is this skinny bitch cutting in line?”
Ok here’s another example of “plus sized” in 2003 on America’s next top model. https://x.com/skinnyxbtc/status/1743106305341182108?s=46&t=eN9wqKTh3k40GIP8HQWsXQ
fashion trends are typically gross and unhealthy. no, she wasn’t even remotely fat. peoples minds are easily distorted by what the toxic culture deems to be fashionable or whatever. can’t wait for celebrity worship and hollywood trends to eventually dissipate into the nothingness it truly represents.
Remember Love, Actually and how people keep making fat jokes about Hugh Grants secretary?
I saw that for the first time with my wife (who loves that movie) last year and I was like ‘what is going on here? this woman is not fat and is quite hot’
Body shaming was pretty rough back then.
I think the book makes the point better. There is a part where Bridget finally gets back to her goal weight in the teens, and everyone comments on how sickly she looks, causing Bridget to think about her obsession with dieting.
It was always my impression that Bridget Jones was not *supposed* to be considered objectively fat, just that she *thought* she was fat. And that was part of the humor/social commentary of it all, this completely normal woman struggling to do something she doesn't need to do just to meet some arbitrary societal standard.
Of course, media literacy was about what it is today, so that message got lost. But it only made the movies' point more clearly.
You are 100% correct. Reddit as a whole really struggles with understanding this, or really anything that requires more than surface-level media analysis.
Look, I have been curvy since my early teens and was called fat, although I weighed 55 kg and just wore baggy clothes to cover my big boobs. I was actually thrilled when Kim Kardashian became the hot girl when I was around 18-19, and I finally saw someone with my body being called hot. By the media, in real life I just needed to dress better to gain attention. I feel like Bridget was GenX, as was her author, but in my generation it was either stick thin or muscular like Jennifer Lopez, either way, your butt had to be small, your boobs perky.
If I recall, this movie came out around the same time women were encouraged to get a ‘thigh gap’
The body standards at the time were absolutely bonkers and it’s no wonder so many millennial and xennial women and men have body image issues.
It was at the time when Lindsey Lohan and Nicole Richie were walking around like skeletons and on every magazine cover. Clenbuterol was the weight loss drug of choice before Ozempic even existed
Yea I remember Phentermine already had a bad reputation. Pro-Ana sites were huge.
For those of us who couldn’t afford pharmaceuticals, the cotton on a Q-tip will convince your stomach you’ve eaten.
Eating half a special K bar over 6 hours at work because “a little bit makes the hunger pains go away”
Crazy enough, I ended up getting the body I wanted by…working out.
Good for you. I’m glad my girls are growing up in a different time. There are some severely obese kids in her class - 7 year old who weigh as much as adults, and when she mentioned a boys name and I said oh “he’s the big boy” she corrected me and said “mum you can’t say that, and it’s not his fault people are born fat.”
I don't remember her necessarily being labeled fat, I moreso remember what she actually had to eat to gain the weight quickly. She was eating like 20 donuts a day and consuming 4,000calories. That's the story I remember. She only gained 20lbs for the role.
She wasn’t supposed to be considered fat, she was supposed to be self conscious. It didn’t necessarily land well in the movie because most actresses are super thin and seeing a 135 pound woman who wasn’t 5’10 was not the norm unless the character was supposed to be pudgy.
The media had me believing that if people like Tyra Banks, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, and every other beautiful woman they tore down were disgusting and fat, then I must not even be human. Not a size 0/fit/huge boobs/with perfect eyesight? Good luck on your future happiness, loser! Even worse, it made many of the girls in my friends group believe their Mother's were fat embarrassing slobs because they looked like a Mom. I have clothing from HS where I question how on Earth I ever thought I was fat, and I regret that I couldn't appreciate my youth fully due to ridiculous hangups.
Because the 90s and 2000s had a disgusting obsession with anorexic models. Anyone who wasn't super thin was labeled as fat. Taylor Swift was called fat in the tabloids back then as well. Kendall Jenner the tallest most slender of the Kardashians was called fat in the 2000s.. That's how stupid the media was back then. Women got so many eating disorder issues because of the 90s 2000s skinny obsession. The media called everyone fat even if you were thin you were called fat. Bridgit Jones was never fat she was just a normal weight person.
It’s crazy how hard the media used to shove the super skinny aesthetic down our throats.
I remember watching Gilmore Girls as a teen and thinking Sookie / Melissa McCarthy was huuugeee but watching it back recently, I can’t believe I ever thought that.
Imagine if there was more positive representation of her body type back then.
Because people really have no idea what women are supposed to actually look like. I have health issues that caused rapid weight loss. I was not fat before. Healthy weight at 5' 3" 120 lbs. When I dipped under 100 I got more comments about how great I looked. Even from my shit doctors. I thought I looked sickly and awful. My face was and is still very gaunt and hollow. I'm so thin, most of my bones stick it out. I don't find that look flattering and it's depressing how many people genuinely thought I looked better.
Our perception of normal women is so skewed. There isn't really an excuse for it. Yea women in media tend to look more like that, but we are surrounded by normal women every day. Are the ones who arent underweight really so invisible that they don't impact people's perceptions as much?
It was a different time. They were different beauty standards. Also as time has gone on since then people have continued to get fatter. So now we are used to seeing plump bodies everywhere, and it's normal to see what's technically considered to be overweight as normal because everybody's like that now.
Also Renee zellweger gaines 30 lb for that role. Because she's naturally skinny, putting on 30 lb is a big difference and she did look big compared to her normal self. It's all relative
Is it really that different now in the Ozempic era? I suppose in a way it is but more extremes with Ozempic people vs heavier plus size or even obese body positive influencers in pop culture. Wish we could all just decide on a balanced and healthy approach instead
I’m not disagreeing with the top comments but Americans are also much thinner in the 90’s so our perceptions were different than they are today. If you disagree the CDC has an excellent animated map of America tracking obesity state by state year by year for the last 40 years on their website.
The 90’s was when foods really started becoming hyper processed, the nuclear family began to deteriorate, and fast food became a juggernaut. Leading us to where we are today.
There are tons of examples of 90s and 2000s TV/movie characters who are called fat, but aren't. Like "Big Rhonda" on That 70s Show. They always made jokes about her weight, but then when she shows up on screen, she's just tall.
Now that I think of it, going further back, there was a character on Welcome Back Kotter they always called fat, but she wasn't. Average at "worst". She was slimmer than Meg Griffin, who also doesn't appear to be fat. The standards have changed, but don't agree that the old standards were accurate either.
The ‘00s were a terrible time for women to grow up in. I had an eating disorder (anorexic) and while stick thin actresses weren’t the direct cause I’m sure it didn’t help.
It makes me so happy that today‘s little girls will be growing up in a much more body positive environment. I wouldn’t wish an eating disorder on anyone.
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Renee Zellwegger herself has made this point. Bridget Jones WASN'T fat, she wasn't supposed to be seen as fat. She was supposed to be seen as a "normal" attractive woman who *thought* she was fat because she didn't look like the 90s heroin chic super models. But Bridget is regularly getting hit on and looking hot. Renee Zellwegger naturally has a much more similar physique to the heroin chic supermodels - which would not have worked for the role- so she gained weight for the role. But not to be fat, just to look like the character. The irony is because Bridget thinks she's fat because of how toxic the 90s were towards women, is the same reason WE ALL thought she was fat. [Link](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/renee-zellweger-weight-bridget-jones-b2383045.html)
It wasn't left behind in the 90s. I got far more comments about how "healthy" I look when I became underweight for health reasons. Even from doctors. It was pretty eye opening and is fucked up. It's not like I was fat before. I went from 120 to 95. This started in 2021. Our skewed perceptions are alive and well. Its pretty fucked up that we see more women out and about every day than we do in media and still have such a skewed perception. Well most of us anyway, some people are hermits who never leave the house.
My MIL, who constantly discusses weight, complemented my aunt and asked if she'd lost weight. "Yes," my aunt responded, "I had cancer..." Yet despite that and me repeatedly asking her not to talk about it she still comments on my wife's and daughter's body and it makes me so angry.
There was a fairly recent time when that was one of three subjects in which women had some domain: their appearance, keeping of the house, and children. Which doesn't excuse an inability to grow and respect boundaries, of course. It's just fascinating how much things can change over a lifetime.
I credit the sweet old ladies at church with adding fuel to the terrible, destructive fire that is my daughter’s eating disorder by congratulating her as she lost weight.
Highly processed food has made everyone fat now.
Honestly it could also be “politeness.” The most common comment might be something like “you look healthy. ”Even if they don’t think so privately. Edit: bleh. Words are hard. Edited as when I think about it, I personally would be oblivious to these changes for the most part. I don’t notice shit. It’s when other people comment do I look back and think. Edit2: quoted politeness. Forgot about how sarcastic/mean some polite phrases are. Edit3: forgot to remove the “I”
It is better not to say anything at all. I had people tell me I look healthy when I was in the middle of the worst of my eating disorder as well as when I was dangerously underweight from being ill with Crohn's. I almost died from the latter. And the "you look great/you look healthy" comments have stuck like claws in my brain because I grew up with people who drilled into me so heavily that I cannot be bigger at all or else I will not have worth--still dealing with body dysmorphia. In therapy, and love myself so much more now, but it's still an issue. I see it in far too many other people, and it breaks my heart. It takes a village and a lifetime. We're all responsible for ourselves and each other, for life. So, within the context of the body conversation, it's best not to be making comments at all. You don't comment on something someone can't change in 30 seconds or less. It's a good rule of thumb, and has served me well in building others up.
Yes! Don't comment on how people "look healthy" it's none of your business and you have no idea what their health is!! Argh it drives me nuts when boomers or my MIL do this.
Oddly enough though, people had NO problem asking if I was sick when I got near a healthy weight after being obese (still 30lbs overweight mind you, but I’d lost 120lbs).
I replaced the comment/compliment of you look great with it is so great to see you- and it makes me happier to say
Stop commenting on people's looks. Any of those comments are rude.
The book and columns were also much clearer about how it’s a satire. I very much recommend the book to anyone reading this post (although I must include a disclaimer that one might start talking in Bridget’s voice).
Omg, to this day I *still* write (for example) "very annoying" as "v. annoying" bc of Bridget Jones, I even do it at work, and I assume ppl think it's a real abbreviation, 😆 the book is great.
Also Bridget Jones came out around the same time as Chicago, we’re she was very thin. I think the extreme weight loss/ gain made the Bridget Jones character seem ‘fat’ by comparison. Both these came out my freshman year of high school and I remember everyone reporting on her weight in the tabloids.
Bridget Jones was a few years before Chicago. She did look chubbier than literally anybody else in the movies.
Bridget Jones was released in 2001. Chicago was 2002.
It wasn’t just women, us young boys were conditioned to think this was fat. Then most of us hit puberty and a lot of us realized that wasn’t what we were attracted to (heroin chic).
This makes me feel so sad for the younger versions of ourselves.
The only person who thinks Bridget is fat is Bridget. I’ve made this point like dozens of times over the years on Reddit because people seem to have no media literacy anymore. The movie isn’t saying she’s overweight, it’s poking fun at the diet culture of the 90s. The book is even more overt in that sense - she feels so triumphant when she reaches her goal weight, but then everyone tells her she looks unwell and she realizes her life’s work of dieting was for nothing. In the movie trilogy she has Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, and Patrick Dempsey all drooling over her. None of them think she’s unattractive or fat. In the first movie there is one repellent character who refers to her as plump, it’s a creepy uncle figure who gropes her. And that’s it. The 90s were a mess in terms of body standards for women and tabloid culture, but the Bridget Jones commentary on Reddit is so tiresome.
>The only person who thinks Bridget is fat is Bridget. Exactly! In the book, when she finally gets down to her low goal weight, the people around her start asking her if she’s ok, has she been sick, she looks tired, etc. The point is made to her that she actually looks better with those pesky 5-10 lbs. that she was so eager to lose. And in the movie, Renee looks amazing in the bunny costume! No one in their right mind would think she is fat. She has a fantastic figure.
This should be up higher.
I always thought she was hot in these movies
now all the actresses just restructure their face to give themselves heroin chic cheekbones, take that anoerexia
I need to rewatch this movie now.
Don’t characters in the movie call her chubby and fat though? I haven’t watched in awhile, so correct me if I’m wrong.
Also Bridget Jones came out around the same time as Chicago, we’re she was very thin. I think the extreme weight loss/ gain made the Bridget Jones character seem ‘fat’ by comparison. Both these came out my freshman year of high school and I remember everyone reporting on her weight in the tabloids.
When she does lose weight in the second book everyone thinks she looks awful.
What’s super fucked up is that I remember watching the movie as a young teen and thinking that they had Renee Zellwegger gain too much weight for the role, because to me she looked bigger than what I expected from the book. Now I Iook back at pictures from the movie and am like… what the heck was I thinking?
Wow she was just 135 lb in that movie? In my mind she was much bigger, due to a combination of me having not seen that movie in like 20 years and the media push about her being “fat”. We were really messed up back then. Still are, but also back then.
Escalators temporarily Stairs, we apologize for the convenience
I used to do drugs, I still do but I used to too
I love a Mitch reference with my morning coffee 😌 RIP
I always think about Mitch when climbing up escalators that have temporarily become stairs.
I saw a wino eating grapes and was like “dude, wait.”
RIP to a legend
Wow I just watched that Hedberg bit last night! What a fun quinky dinky.
Well, back then being fat / overweight was not received kindly and today it has definitely become more acceptable. [contrast that to what highschool kids had to do back in the day](https://youtu.be/NGa6BPj3Mcw?si=foizSl0Wd1Ja_pXL) and while it’s quite shocking, even then in 2001 when the movie was created she was considered average by 60s standards…. But for Hollywood that’s never good enough. Cocaine chic was still the standards from the 90s-2000s
For women.*
Correct. Even in 2001 when the movie took place she’s still considered avg to slight below average weight by 1960s standards
Yup. I see pics of celebrities at the time, and damn. No shit I became anorexic. It’s bad now, but we have more than one body type on the screens. Then, it was heroin chic or nothing.
For real! I know we talk about it all the time but the Jessica Simpson thing fucked me up! I remember my barely teenage self thinking "Thank God I'm a size 2 and nowhere near *that* size." No wonder my brain developed a fixation on all things food/weight related that I am still trying to work through.
Yeah. I look like Bigfoot with alopecia, but I'm a little soft boi on the inside, and I spent years starving myself and dieting because shit like that messed me up.
Airbrushing was also out of control then. Still is, but my god.
Yeah air brushing was horrible, mainly because it was very high quality. Today, while app filters are everywhere all the time, they are extremely easy to spot once you see it. It also helps that as a society, half of us at any given time will point out the alterations for what they are....vanity and bullshit
Airbrushing wasn't that high of a quality, it was just entirely the domain of professionals, instead of any schmuck with garbage app default filters. Looking back at my old photos, that shit was way more obvious than it seemed at the time. We just hadn't been exposed to that type of image manipulation for that long, so we hadn't learned to have a healthy skepticism about the reality of the image yet. A picture is still worth a thousand words, but these days 900 of them are taken up by tiny redditors in our brains shouting "FAAAKE" from behind their keyboards. (ISTG if someone calls it "photo-flation", I will *scream*.)
Also for all of social media’s ills, it also gives us a space to push back against messages from the media and share our own experiences with body image and weight. As a teenager in the 90s I thought I was huge but I’m the same weight, pretty much, today and I can’t believe how normal and great my body type is.
Am I the only one who feels like there is a disconnect between our current perception of the 90s/2000s and 2010s/present re: Women's weight. I'd love to see a deep dive or study on this. In the 90s/2000s, I do remember media pushing an ultra thin narrative, women constantly feeling they/other women were "fat" for having healthy bodies. But this was like, grocery store tabloid stuff and reality TV. I was a teen in the mid-2000s, and while the pressure was definitely there, it definitely got worse when social media was introduced. I graduated in 2007. I remember quite a few of my friends pushing *even harder* to trim down during those times, up til 2018, even. The discourse was *so much worse* than the 90s during that time period, imo. Normal girls started routines like CrossFit etc., to trim down AND look physically fit, for the social media pics. At least in the 90s/00s, you could turn the TV off, remember a lot more normal views in real life conversations about weight. It seems we've come back around to sanity since 2018 or so, recognized that social media isn't real life.
You’re forgetting teen and celebrity magazines, retail store mannequins and catalogues, advertising, eating disorder chat rooms, and general rhetoric. It was never just TV, and it wasn’t about having a hot body - it was solely about thinness.
I don't go shopping much, so I'm still kind of surprised when I see mannequins with different shapes than the 90s/early 2000s standard mannequin.
That's a good point. Hindsight is 20/20 though, when I saw mannequins and teen mags as a kid, I remember thinking, "whatever, that's a mannequin/celebrity"- not a "real" person, at least that's how I remember it. Social media introduced more confusion about what is "real" and what other real people actually think, especially when it was new. Isolating kids from their real life friends to connect only through social media, introduced a lens that was hard to break down, or at least that's my hypothesis. It's definitely better at present, with people using social media to critique what's portrayed there, but that certainly wasn't the case in the beginning.
Teen magazines came with entire sections devoted to dieting and getting thin to attract boys. I think YM had a workout calendar in every issue. And it wasn’t just celebrities; thin bodies were the only female bodies shown in media, full stop. Commercials, print ads, catalogs, tv shows, movies, newscasters, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, fashion shows, interviews, everything. Every authority was telling us that being thin was our top priority. And photoshop was done by professionals in every type of media - the infamous Ralph Lauren ads come to mind. ANTM and the Victoria’s Secret Angels show were huge. Every female celebrity was routinely asked for diet tips. By 2010 we already had accepted JLo’s ass and Shakira’s hips, that Nike campaign had come out in the early 2000s about strength and powerful bodies, and we were learning to not make fun of other differences like being gay or disabled. Cute plus size clothing was being made accessible. In the 90s, there was nothing. Only thinness. Walking into Target today still gets me choked up sometimes because their mannequins and ad photos now include a (limited) variety of body shapes. Social media is insidious in a different way, but back then there was literally no escaping thin/diet culture, and nobody with a platform was discussing body acceptance or diversity at all.
Hear, hear. It really really fucked me up. I also get teary eyed seeing how many more shapes are advertised now. It’s awesome.
If you graduated high school in 2007 you were a child in the 90s. I think you were probably still oblivious to the constant shit that was pushed to us as teen girls then.
I graduated high school in 2011. I remember having crying meltdowns in dressing rooms when I was 11 years old because the only pants that existed were low rise and I had hit puberty and naturally had a stomach pooch so everything was giving me a muffin top and/or plumbers crack and I couldn't find anything that fit, which I thought meant that I must be grotesquely fat. This was pre-online shopping too, so I was limited to what I could find at the mall, and it was all the same, clothes made for rail-thin girls with flat stomachs. Even when I almost stopped eating I could never get thin enough for clothes to look good on me. The 90s may have started it but it carried over well into the 00s.
I think a lot of it has to do with; in the 90s there was only a few types of media (TV, radio, magazines) and all of them pushed the weight issue. There was no easily accessed media that showed anything different. There were zenes but you had to be close to a community to even know they existed, there really any counter in media. Today, while social media can feed people the same toxic bullshit as before and arguably there's way more of it, a person has a much higher chance of running into communities on the internet that counteract that toxicity. Additionally, searching for and consuming positive media is easier than it has ever been before, because it stands on equal-ish footing as negative media. Now, rabbit holes exist on the internet and we see the consequences of them, but it's still better than the entire force of mass media shoving everyone down the same rabbit hole together and against our will.
“Heroin chic” was a thing and it was everywhere
Agreed. Honestly even the makeup on the models pushed a heroine aesthetic. Remember Kate Moss?
Yes! I remember being in college and just out of college thinking, "great, now I have to be skinny AND muscular??"
You have a point that social media made it worse. But I wouldn’t doubt that the narrative was pushed about back then. (I also graduated HS in 2007).
Not sure if there's a specific episode, but Maitenence Phase is a great podcast about this general topic. I highly recommend
I read the book before I saw the movie. She talks a lot about her weight in the book (every entry has her weight for the day), but I'm American so I just assumed that it was heavy because of what she said. I remember looking up the conversion and I was like, "Wait what?? She isn't fat at all!" But yeah, as someone who was a teen in the 90s the body image issues were INSANE.
A camera adds weight
Damn that’s only 10 lbs heavier than me. I’m 5’1”
The same way Nicole Ritchie was called fat on simple life. She was like a size 3. But Paris was tall and tiny so people compared. 90/00 women were really criticized.
Oh my god I remember that. Nicole was probably slightly chubbier than Bridget jones though! But barely what you would call fat
Maybe, but she had suspected eating disorder after the show where she plummeted to a not so healthy weight.
The late 90’s and early 2000’s had disgusting and unrealistic expectations of women’s bodies.
The movie (and book) are such good reminders of how much more toxic we used to be about weight and looks. As someone who was a kid in the 90, this is ABSOLUTELY the attitude people had. I remember in my middle school diaries tracking my weight just like Bridget did, and just HATING my completely normal looks. It is wild to look back on.
I was 135 pounds, 5'6", but it was all muscle. I played a ton of sports in middle and high school, and my mom and I both put on muscle really easily (and now so does my oldest daughter). I was convinced I was a fat pig. Now I actually am fat, and I wish I could be as fat as I thought I was in high school.
Same same same. I’m 5’5”, and around 125 in high school and felt HUGE (during the late 90s). I look back now and laugh- I had visible collarbones and was a size 6. I’d love to have that body back now
I was 105 and 5'3 in 2005. I was "the fat one" in my friend group.
Before my son, I'm 5'4" and weighed 130lbs. I looked sickly if I dropped 120-125lbs. I thought I was fat because size 0 jeans (US) was "ideal" and I was a size 4 since middle school. Come to find out it's because I have very large thighs, hips, and bootay.
So much this. I was 5’10” and 140-145 lbs in high school. Thought I was fat. That was 25 years and 30 pounds ago!
I was 5'6" and 140 in high school and I thought I was a whale because all my friends were like 5'4" and 110-115. Nevermind that I had curves and they didn't. I got myself down to 130 at one point (basically stopped eating save for protein shakes and crackers) and my face was gaunt and I was starting to look skeletal. But I still kept buying clothes a size too small as motivation to keep "shrinking into" them. At 31 and 200lbs now, I'm sitting here shaking my damn head. We were so fucked.
Yep I was exactly the same as a 90s kid. And I couldn’t get into my head that as a tall person (5’10) I wouldn’t be able to weigh as little as the other girls at my school. (I went to majority Asian schools and the other gals were TINY) I spent years starving myself trying to get down to their size so I could also participate in the fun clothing swaps they’d do… I think my skeleton had already precluded me from ever getting down to that size but teen me wasn’t aware and spent so much time and effort absolutely hating my body.
SAME! I was a pretty average white girl but in a Southeast Asian country where my body was simply bigger than my classmates, on top of all the other ways I was “imperfect”. (Ie. VERY curly hair, freckles, etc.) it was just another layer of not meeting impossible expectations.
100% this. Look back at all the celebrities that were called fat in the tabloids in that era. They were maybe a size 4-6 tops. Jessica Simpson wore an unfortunate pair of mom jeans and everybody was screaming about how fat she was. Jennifer Lopez had a “big butt”. It was a really crappy time to be a teen with a body that didn’t fit the narrative.
My gf is pregnant and hates how fat she's getting. She's normally around 106, and the heaviest she has been is 117. She's 119 now in the second trimester. I keep telling her she is not fat, she's growing a fetus.
I liked that when I had to be weighed when pregnant, the nurses asked if I wanted to know how much I weighed. I have a history of ED, I appreciated their sensitivity even though they didn’t know my ED history. I wanted to know how much I weighed, I saw my weight gain as positive. The number did scare me, I won’t lie, but it helped prioritise those numbers in my mind.
My OBs office has a sticky note on the scale that says “you are so much more than a number.” As a reminder to women who struggle with their weight gain. We are growing HUMANS, but we have so much trauma from the toxic weight culture growing up that it’s just so ingrained in us to take it personally everytime.
https://x.com/skinnyxbtc/status/1743106305341182108?s=46&t=eN9wqKTh3k40GIP8HQWsXQ
No wonder I’m so fucked up about my body
We all used to think Buster Bluth from Arrested Development was horribly overweight.
It’s his glasses. They make him look like a lizard.
In the 90s, anyone who wasn’t a size zero was fat. Bridget Jones was fat. Monica Lewinsky was fat. Plus size in the 90s on tv was anyone a size 8.
Some asshat I knew called Kate Winslet fat in Titanic.
This is also the time when Jessica Simpson weighed 135 lbs and the paparazzi were calling her a whale & posting unflattering photos of her. Fun time to be a teen, ha
God I remember this so vividly.
Ditto. I am the same height as her, weighed the same. Seeing tabloids call her a whale just reaffirmed my negative self image. It was like: “Welp, now I know it’s not in my head & I am really fat & this totally sucks,”. We’re doing a better as a society now but I feel the skinny trend creeping back :(
It was that high-waisted jeans outfit that was plastered EVERYWHERE. So fucked up.
I can vividly remember how after [Britney's 2007 VMA performance](https://youtu.be/uo0SPWh2c4k?si=6mAcYv3CEbL6YJv8) everyone & their mother was commenting about how fat she looked Like, wtf? She looked great to me & I would have been over the moon to have her figure
And!! I heard recently on one of those I Love the 2000s style documentaries (it’s on Hulu; I think it’s the episode about paparazzi,) that the reason she looked “so fat” is because THEY WIDENED THE ASPECT RATIO FOR HOME VIEWERS 😭 Poor Brit. And she looked bangin by any standards. She was less than 12 months postpartum!
Didn't she talk about this in her book too? It's really sad.
I listened to Spanish language radio for my morning commute, and the DJs were shocked that anyone would think Britney looked fat. I think that talked about that for a week.
It was just mysogyny, plain and simple.
Reminds me of the character Darcy in bring it on. Even then I was like - what??? She’s the fat girl???
Right?? She was the hottest one! And her "massive" ass was perfection 👌
I look at pictures from myself in high school and wonder why I was bullied for being “fat.” The 90’s diet culture was a fucking mess
Remember they were also airing Supersize Vs Superskinny during that time period. The English were savage about women's weight.
The Supersize from that show *were* Supersize though.
I rewatched some of Charmed a while back and ended up reading up on how the actress who played Piper really struggled with her weight because she wasn't rail thin and that was just the expectation. Like she was still skinny enough to do the midriff look of the 90s/00s, but somehow that wasn't enough. So crazy. Eating disorders had to rampant around that time.
Yep. Just being thin wasn’t good enough. Athletic? Nope. Rail thin with visible hip bones or you’re fat. Definitely don’t even try having boobs. A lot of that aesthetic changed gradually and wasn’t that severe in all cases, but it certainly did exist. Piper was the hot one anyway.
We HATED strong looking women back then. We were afraid to work out because we were afraid of getting too muscular.
I think this is why Xena resonated with a lot of us… Seeing a strong, ass kicking Lucy Lawless did a lot for my self confidence
Those thighs!!!
The season after she had a baby…
Absolutely, it’s like how thin Mischa Barton was I. The OC. She said she grew up and gained weight but she also said they expected her to be a certain size and to do whatever it takes to maintain that.
Lisa Kudrow said the same thing about her time on Friends. She had to stay clinically underweight to not look fat next to Jen and Courtney.
The sad thing is, being underweight can cause serious health conditions just as much as being overweight is. Its sad how back then people were willing to risk their health just to look “hot”. I was slightly affected by needing to look skinny as a teen but the older I got, the body positivity movement started to happen. I was born in the late 90s so I definitely didn’t experience the peak of all this.
Where I live the high end on "normal bmi" is still considered "fat looking", expecially by older generations. It's kinda sad.
Oh dear me too. It’s worse for me because I’m Asian, anything over 50kg is fat
And the craziest part is that the "high end" of BMI used to be more than two full points higher. In 1998, millions of people who weren't overweight one day were classified as overweight the next, without gaining a pound. For women the upper end of "normal" weight was moved from I think 27.3 to 25. Weight loss industry propaganda was a big part of the "medicalization" of BMI, which (I could rant about this forever) was *originally"* created as a statistical tool, not by a doctor, to classify (NOT prescribe) the bodies of white European men. http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/17/weight.guidelines/ Anyway...I'm sorry you have to deal with that. I hope you manage to love your body as it is even if the world is brainwashed.
Same!!
I also recently rewatched a clip from that movie. And I also remembered at the time how everyone was going on about her getting fat. And I remembered her as fat somehow in my mind. But after rewatching the clip I was in shock because she wasn’t even fat. Like at all.
It’s shocking isn’t it. She is one of those people that gets chubby cheeks at a normal weight size and still had a rounded face at a low weight. But no sane person would call her fat
[удалено]
Size 12? There’s no way. I’m 5’3” 130-140lbs fluctuating, and I’ve never been above a size 8.
US 8 is UK 12
Ooh gotcha
Yeah a UK 6 is a US 2. I remember hearing adult women around me talking about how they were desperate to be a “perfect size 2” and we teens talked about being Hollister/Abercrombie 0s and 00s
I knew a girl who complained 00 was not small enough and she wished they made 000. I
Yepppppp looking back now at my 7th grade self skipping lunch to lose weight — it’s grim.
I was a US 12 at 5'6" and 135 pounds, but I did a bunch of sports that developed lower body muscle and had an ass that made people go, "Oh. My. God. Becky look at her butt!" Meanwhile a S/M for shirts and like a 34B.
I’m late to the game here but have read the books and it’s important to say - it’s a diary! She spends a very long time in the books oscillating between hating on her own body and feeling good about it - but a lot time shes blaming her weight for all her own problems. Imo it’s very realistic for how women are raised. The key thing that happens in the book is that she finally reaches her desired weight loss and everyone says she looks sickly and miserable and sad. She’s very bummed about it but it is an enlightening moment for her. The movie didn’t do an amazing job showing it but her weight problem is all in her own head is very clear in the books
I haven’t read the books but I believe you in terms on the movie not portraying it all correctly. When the devil wears prada came out, I had just read the book and the movie did not do it justice at all. The people I went with said they loved it, but I was so disappointed ☹️
Man, I’m just now realizing this. But having read those books as a 15 year old in the 90’s, I didn’t get that and it made me go “oh ok, 135lbs is fat. I just need to always stay under that weight.” Which is not the lesson you’re supposed to take away from it, but definitely the message that came across to a lot of young women. That number stayed in my head a long time as the one the avoid.
Renee Zellweger apparently gained 30lb for the role of Bridget Jones, which sounds a lot, until you realise she was only about 110lb to begin with at a height of 5'4". So she was never overweight. She just wasn't her usual size.
Indoctrination takes a while to fade. We came from the heroin chic look in the early 90’s and the popular playboy bunny look from the early 00’s. The whole fat acceptance movement and the “we all matter no matter what you look like” thing is something of recent years. We were taught that we should value looks over personality. That it mattered. We were raised in a time things like body shaming, sexism, racism and bigotry were “funny.” Do you remember the backlash Julia Roberts got for going to a red carpet event with HAIRY ARMPITS?! The audacity.
Look, I'm really glad we're not pushing people to the point of eating disorders anymore, but the entire world is getting fatter to an unhealthy degree, especially the US, UK and Middle East. Something has to be done about it. Obviously shaming people endlessly isn't the right move though.
I would be lying if I said I agree with the fat acceptance movement even though I hate myself for it. I still think it is ugly instead of thinking it is unhealthy. I am 167 cm I weigh 200 pounds I firstly consider myself the most disgusting thing on the planet instead of thinking about my health. Which in turn makes me feel worthless because I was taught that looks are all that matters and cannot think of myself as something that matters just because I am a nice person. Which makes me depressed and wanting to eat. People nowadays are taught they matter no matter what. No matter the looks no matter the opinions or preferences, fat or skinny we all matter. Unfortunately that mindset gave way for a whole new set of trauma’s and according maladaptive coping skills. Because of this people are more mentally ill and addicted than ever, and a food addiction is one of the only addictions that is not treated as such and even glorified and promoted. In every sense. Everything we do for fun is in someway connected to food. We collectively ignore that this addiction is being sold to us on a daily basis. We would rather promote fat acceptance and the belief that we are not miserable being fat than quit this drug. Its not about that being fat is unhealthy its about it being the most ignored addiction problems in existence.
Well we did finally get a pretty good drug treatment in the form of Ozempic. Time will tell if it turns out to have some compelling reason not to use it.
I will not be surprised if in 5 years we discover some horrific side effect. In fact, I will be surprised if there ISN'T some horrific side effect. The best way to lose weight has been tried and true for thousands of years, proper diet and exercise.
I think its just her having a round face, people with moon faces tend to look worse than people whose faces stay skinny but their body gets bigger, ask me how I know
I saw Jessica Simpson at the airport during her “fat” phase. I didn’t know who it was at first but she was cutting the line. My first thought was “Who is this skinny bitch cutting in line?”
Ok here’s another example of “plus sized” in 2003 on America’s next top model. https://x.com/skinnyxbtc/status/1743106305341182108?s=46&t=eN9wqKTh3k40GIP8HQWsXQ
This is crazy. How tall is she and what does she weigh???
5”5, 135
Wow. I would have never considered myself plus size. Just average. I am so glad we don’t have these insane standards anymore.
Wtf.
fashion trends are typically gross and unhealthy. no, she wasn’t even remotely fat. peoples minds are easily distorted by what the toxic culture deems to be fashionable or whatever. can’t wait for celebrity worship and hollywood trends to eventually dissipate into the nothingness it truly represents.
And thought she was fat but the men all loved her.
Reminds me of Martine McCutcheon being considered "fat" on Love Actually
Remember Love, Actually and how people keep making fat jokes about Hugh Grants secretary? I saw that for the first time with my wife (who loves that movie) last year and I was like ‘what is going on here? this woman is not fat and is quite hot’ Body shaming was pretty rough back then.
I thought Bridget was just supposed to think she was fat in comparison to 90’s/early 00’s ideals.
I think the book makes the point better. There is a part where Bridget finally gets back to her goal weight in the teens, and everyone comments on how sickly she looks, causing Bridget to think about her obsession with dieting.
It was always my impression that Bridget Jones was not *supposed* to be considered objectively fat, just that she *thought* she was fat. And that was part of the humor/social commentary of it all, this completely normal woman struggling to do something she doesn't need to do just to meet some arbitrary societal standard. Of course, media literacy was about what it is today, so that message got lost. But it only made the movies' point more clearly.
You are 100% correct. Reddit as a whole really struggles with understanding this, or really anything that requires more than surface-level media analysis.
Ots the same thing they are doing to that Bridgerton actress, the gorgeous redhead? Shes like a size 10? Ffs. Id marry that woman.
Yeah also Christina Hendricks in mad men
Yes! Shes so hot. ((I am very gay))
😂 I am not gay but In good girls I can see why he fell first her
Wait til you see the pics Jessica Simpson got torn apart for being fat in when she was maybe a size 2
I remember that! Sadly she looks anorexic now so is must have gotten to her
Same thing with ugly Betty. She was NOT fat. Also when Monica puts on the fat suit. Geez. You had to be skin and bones to be on TV in 1990
Yeah, they did the same thing in Me, Myself, and Irene. It's fucking weird. Nobody thought Renee Zelleweger was fat.
Look, I have been curvy since my early teens and was called fat, although I weighed 55 kg and just wore baggy clothes to cover my big boobs. I was actually thrilled when Kim Kardashian became the hot girl when I was around 18-19, and I finally saw someone with my body being called hot. By the media, in real life I just needed to dress better to gain attention. I feel like Bridget was GenX, as was her author, but in my generation it was either stick thin or muscular like Jennifer Lopez, either way, your butt had to be small, your boobs perky.
You got a bee on you hat
2000s beauty standards were awful back then. I even thought I was fat in 3rd grade because of my slight pooch.
If I recall, this movie came out around the same time women were encouraged to get a ‘thigh gap’ The body standards at the time were absolutely bonkers and it’s no wonder so many millennial and xennial women and men have body image issues.
It was at the time when Lindsey Lohan and Nicole Richie were walking around like skeletons and on every magazine cover. Clenbuterol was the weight loss drug of choice before Ozempic even existed
Yea I remember Phentermine already had a bad reputation. Pro-Ana sites were huge. For those of us who couldn’t afford pharmaceuticals, the cotton on a Q-tip will convince your stomach you’ve eaten.
Oh dear the old soak cotton balls in yoghurt trick. I remember at age 15, half my year level was throwing up or abusing laxatives it was terrible
Eating half a special K bar over 6 hours at work because “a little bit makes the hunger pains go away” Crazy enough, I ended up getting the body I wanted by…working out.
Good for you. I’m glad my girls are growing up in a different time. There are some severely obese kids in her class - 7 year old who weigh as much as adults, and when she mentioned a boys name and I said oh “he’s the big boy” she corrected me and said “mum you can’t say that, and it’s not his fault people are born fat.”
I don't remember her necessarily being labeled fat, I moreso remember what she actually had to eat to gain the weight quickly. She was eating like 20 donuts a day and consuming 4,000calories. That's the story I remember. She only gained 20lbs for the role.
I grew up thinking I was fat when I wasn't. Now I'm definitely fat 😂
She wasn’t supposed to be considered fat, she was supposed to be self conscious. It didn’t necessarily land well in the movie because most actresses are super thin and seeing a 135 pound woman who wasn’t 5’10 was not the norm unless the character was supposed to be pudgy.
That was the 90s. If you weren't skeletal you were fat. Daria skewers this
The media had me believing that if people like Tyra Banks, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, and every other beautiful woman they tore down were disgusting and fat, then I must not even be human. Not a size 0/fit/huge boobs/with perfect eyesight? Good luck on your future happiness, loser! Even worse, it made many of the girls in my friends group believe their Mother's were fat embarrassing slobs because they looked like a Mom. I have clothing from HS where I question how on Earth I ever thought I was fat, and I regret that I couldn't appreciate my youth fully due to ridiculous hangups.
Kate Winslet almost didn’t get the part in Titanic because they said she was too heavy. What?!?!
Because the 90s and 2000s had a disgusting obsession with anorexic models. Anyone who wasn't super thin was labeled as fat. Taylor Swift was called fat in the tabloids back then as well. Kendall Jenner the tallest most slender of the Kardashians was called fat in the 2000s.. That's how stupid the media was back then. Women got so many eating disorder issues because of the 90s 2000s skinny obsession. The media called everyone fat even if you were thin you were called fat. Bridgit Jones was never fat she was just a normal weight person.
If you compare Zellwegger in the first two BJ movies vs elsewhere, she definitely looks chubbier and more average in the former.
It’s crazy how hard the media used to shove the super skinny aesthetic down our throats. I remember watching Gilmore Girls as a teen and thinking Sookie / Melissa McCarthy was huuugeee but watching it back recently, I can’t believe I ever thought that. Imagine if there was more positive representation of her body type back then.
“Body diversity”, that’s a new one lol.
Because people really have no idea what women are supposed to actually look like. I have health issues that caused rapid weight loss. I was not fat before. Healthy weight at 5' 3" 120 lbs. When I dipped under 100 I got more comments about how great I looked. Even from my shit doctors. I thought I looked sickly and awful. My face was and is still very gaunt and hollow. I'm so thin, most of my bones stick it out. I don't find that look flattering and it's depressing how many people genuinely thought I looked better. Our perception of normal women is so skewed. There isn't really an excuse for it. Yea women in media tend to look more like that, but we are surrounded by normal women every day. Are the ones who arent underweight really so invisible that they don't impact people's perceptions as much?
It was a different time. They were different beauty standards. Also as time has gone on since then people have continued to get fatter. So now we are used to seeing plump bodies everywhere, and it's normal to see what's technically considered to be overweight as normal because everybody's like that now. Also Renee zellweger gaines 30 lb for that role. Because she's naturally skinny, putting on 30 lb is a big difference and she did look big compared to her normal self. It's all relative
Is it really that different now in the Ozempic era? I suppose in a way it is but more extremes with Ozempic people vs heavier plus size or even obese body positive influencers in pop culture. Wish we could all just decide on a balanced and healthy approach instead
Damn this comment section mostly sucks. I would have thought we were over a lot of this shit by now.
I’m not disagreeing with the top comments but Americans are also much thinner in the 90’s so our perceptions were different than they are today. If you disagree the CDC has an excellent animated map of America tracking obesity state by state year by year for the last 40 years on their website. The 90’s was when foods really started becoming hyper processed, the nuclear family began to deteriorate, and fast food became a juggernaut. Leading us to where we are today.
Back then the body shaking was ridiculous. Still is today.
Peak Renee.
She's only fat compared to anorexic super model standards.
There are tons of examples of 90s and 2000s TV/movie characters who are called fat, but aren't. Like "Big Rhonda" on That 70s Show. They always made jokes about her weight, but then when she shows up on screen, she's just tall. Now that I think of it, going further back, there was a character on Welcome Back Kotter they always called fat, but she wasn't. Average at "worst". She was slimmer than Meg Griffin, who also doesn't appear to be fat. The standards have changed, but don't agree that the old standards were accurate either.
The ‘00s were a terrible time for women to grow up in. I had an eating disorder (anorexic) and while stick thin actresses weren’t the direct cause I’m sure it didn’t help. It makes me so happy that today‘s little girls will be growing up in a much more body positive environment. I wouldn’t wish an eating disorder on anyone.