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Bridget
Jones rereads her diaries: Helen
Fielding | The Sunday Times - September 30 2018 “What
did I put up with, without even knowing I had the right to not put up with
it?” Bridget Jones rereads her
old diaries Monday
16 April 2018 9st
2, alcohol units 3, Instagram followers 167. “That
was the most sexist, horrifying, disgusting movie I’ve ever seen,”
ranted Shazzer. “If John Travolta made that
now, he’d never f****** work again.” We
had just got to the end of a 40th-anniversary screening of Saturday Night
Fever. It was an invitation from Jude’s investment bank in a sedate
screening room with drinkies and canapés. “NONE
of them would ever F****** work again!” Shazzer
bellowed, as the credits rolled, and people made to leave their seats.
“Did I actually hear the word ‘c***’ seven times??” “Shazzer.
Shut urrp,” hissed Jude. People were
staring. Tom, meanwhile, was smiling at them as if to say, Everything’s
lovely! She’s our patient, ignoring the fact that he was wearing a tight
white three-piece suit and high heels. “John
Travolta sat in the front seat of the car while they gang-raped his
ex-girlfriend whose only crime was to have some sort of sexual desire and
admit to it!” Shazzer continued to yell.
“And what does he do when he actually wins the Goddess Virgin
Anti-Whore-girl of his dreams? He f****** tries to rape her! Princess
Diana danced with John Travolta, for f***’s sakes! At the White House!
And not the f****** Trumpian White House, either!” “Let’s
get her out of here,” said Jude. It
was all very unnerving, I thought, as we clattered down the stairs. Saturday
Night Fever was a cult classic, surely, like Grease.
We’d gone to have a laugh and sing along to the Bee Gees in very high
voices, not to have our youthful sense of right, wrong and gender
understanding turned upside on its head, leaving us feeling like duped
idiots. “But
wasn’t this the uncut version?” said Jude. “And wasn’t Saturday Night Fever known for being a deliberately provocative
piece, exploring the dark side of youth culture. And the whole ‘c***’
… Oh, hello!” Our host and Jude’s CEO, Johnny Carruthers, was coming
up the stairs. “No,
it f****** wasn’t!” yelled Shazzer,
barging past him. “Saturday Night F****** Fever was known for everyone
thinking John Travolta was hot, the Bee Gees were cool, and it was a
charming teenage dance frenzy. But ACTUALLY
that movie was a celebration of the worst kind of profound, misogynist
sexism when women are treated with utter contempt and casual violation.” By
this time we were weaving through cars and rain
across the Soho street and pushing our way into the warmth and crowded
cosiness of Kettner’s. “AND
WE F****** DIDN’T F****** NOTICE because we are an OPPRESSED RACE!”
finished Shazzer, as we got through the door. “Shhhh,”
I said, suddenly flashing back to shushing Shazzer
in exactly the same manner and bar, 20 years ago, when she went into a
feminist rant in front of someone Jude fancied
and I said, “Shhhh! There is nothing so
unattractive to a man as strident feminism.” This, I insisted and still
maintain, was a multi-layered ironic joke. “We
women are only being treated like shit because we are a pioneer
generation, daring to rely on our own economic power,” Shazzer
had yelled that night. “In 20 years’ time,
men won’t even dare start with f***wittage
because we will just laugh in their faces and they will all just be kept
in kennels as pets.” It
is 20 years later now. Men are not, generally, being kept in kennels as
pets, but everything has both changed and not changed. “Shall
we get ourselves a bol of Chardonnay?” said
Tom. 11.15pm. Back home. Children are asleep. Just having a little nightcap and
looking back through old diaries from 1996. The strident feminist thing
was a multi-layered ironic joke! At that time, I felt like “a
Feminist” was another intimidating thing you were supposed to be: along
with thin, in a relationship, a mother, running your own business and
gliding smoothly from person to person at parties like Tina Brown. Solemn
Feminists like Camille Paglia and Germaine Greer seemed to be always
telling us off, for being less Feminist than them, and for trying to
combine some sort of economic independence with the reality of finding men
attractive and wanting to love and be loved, keep a job, pay the rent and
just sort of manage without pissing everybody off too much to continue. But
it was also the era of Susan Faludi’s marvellous treatise, Backlash,
where (even though I never actually read it but – epic Feminist fail!
– Mark Darcy did) Susan Faludi flagged up that our faltering steps
towards gender equality were being stamped upon by movies like Fatal
Attraction, and that hideous quote from Newsweek magazine saying a
woman over the age of 40 was statistically more likely to be killed by a
terrorist than find a husband. And look at my mother’s dreaded Turkey
Curry Buffet! Uncle Geoffrey and even Smug Married couples my own age were
still saying, “Why aren’t you married?” and “Tick-tock tick-tock!”
when I was only 32. It was as if I was some freakish Miss Havisham figure
who was going to end up dying alone and be found three weeks later
half-eaten by an Alsatian, so much so that I felt moved to say, “It’s
because actually underneath my clothes my entire body is covered with
scales,” because that’s what they actually suspected, or made me feel
like. We
all got angry, and I seem to remember that leading to a time when being a
Feminist started to lose its capitalisation and went without saying. You
wouldn’t go around asserting that you were “a Feminist” because that
seemed like an insult to all the other women around you. Things weren’t
perfect but, to draw the general from the particular, no one would dare
ask a 32-year-old woman why she wasn’t married any
more, because it would sound ridiculous. Single women in their
thirties were Singletons, not Miss Havisham. We’re
not talking about the real gender equality issue here – the developing
world, women living below the poverty line who are not trying to avoid
being insulted but rather raped, mutilated, killed or starved. We’re
talking about reasonably well-off women in the developed world. And on
that level, in the decade after I first wrote those diaries, things were
not at all perfect, but we seemed to be doing better. Gender equality
issues were at least being aired, progress was being made. “You
thought!” as Billy, my 12-year-old son (see? shove your tick-tock up
your arse and smoke it, Uncle Geoffrey) says all the time. 11.40pm. Still reading my diaries. OMG. Trump. Weinstein. The last two, three
years have seen a Backlash bigger than anything Susan Faludi could have
imagined and a corresponding wake-up call, telling everyone exactly how
well we aren’t and weren’t doing, and turning our view of the past on
its head. What
did I put up with, in the days of these diaries, without even knowing I
had the right to not put up with it? Talk about #MeToo. Mr Tits Pervert!
(aka the head of our publishing house, Mr Fitzherbert.) Ieuwwww.
I just accepted that part and parcel of having a job was that my boss
would stare freely at my breasts, not know my name, and ask me to put a
tight dress on to make an idiotic speech. I suppose I did eventually turn
around and tell them all to shove their job, but then I walked straight
into another one with Richard Finch. And said Richard Finch – who gave
me my big break in television – still spent his entire time trying to
get shots of my bum or my tits and generate ratings by humiliating me on
camera (not that that was particularly difficult, let’s face it). None
of that could happen now. Mr Fitzherbert and Richard Finch would lose
their jobs, no question. No studio would touch Saturday
Night Fever, as it was written, with a bargepole. And
Feminism is once again – as Billy would say – a Thing. It’s a
different thing. It’s not appropriated by solemn, self-righteous
intellectuals. It’s everywoman’s now. 11.45pm. Just Googled “Feminist Clothing” and got 24m results:
sweatshirts, jewellery, hats, mugs, badges, with every tone – angry,
witty, playful, self-mocking and, yes, it’s finally acceptable, multi-layeredly
ironic: “Pro Choice, Pro Feminism, Pro Unicorns.” “My Marxist
feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” “‘I really want
to marry the guy that whistled at me from his car.’ – No One, Ever.”
“Eve was framed.” “F*** your patriarchal bullshit.” “Has anyone
tried turning the US on and off again?” Though
I’m still not sure we could get away with Shazzer’s
favourite line: “Anyone who could actually sleep with Harvey Weinstein
deserves an Oscar.” Will just have another little snifter of wine. Midnight. Probably quite right too, because thass
sexist against The sexual attraction at work s
not simple and looking back I’s did sexually harass Daniel Cleaver. But,
thas different because I fancied him and, er,
I was a woman and he was a man? It was resiprocal?
Also, it was really boring in that office and we wanted to have fun.
Crucially, I wouldn’t have dissed another man professionally for not
being attractive. It’s not just people treating “attractive” women
as sex objects that’s the problem, it’s what that means when they’re
“not” – and there’s no one better to explain THAT, than
our eSTEEMED US president, Mr Trump. Am gon
Google cut anpaste. 1991
in Esquire re: the media “You know, it
doesn’t really matter what [they] write as long as you’ve got a young
and beautiful piece of ass.” 2005
Miss USA beauty pageant “If you’re
looking for a rocket scientist, don’t tune in tonight, but if you’re
looking for a really beautiful woman, you should watch.” 2006
re: Rosie O’Donnell “If I were
running The View, I’d fire Rosie. I’d look her right in that fat, ugly
face of hers and say, ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’” April
2015 “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her
husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” September
2015 re: Carly Fiorina “Look at that face.
Would anyone vote for that?” 12.15am. Pah! Actually
maybe I’ll post those quotes on Instagram. 12.20am. Ugh. The only good thing that can be said about all terribleness is
that it makes people rise up and own their
opinions, instead of being… just checkin’
Instagram followers… Shit
I just lost 4 followers. Why? Dids I have
Trumpian followers? Maybe, as Tom says, my whole feed needs to have a
uniform palette. Not just random things of this that and the other. And I
should just post pictures of calm interiors in quiet neutrals and greys
that read white and stuff. Hmm. Anyway,
t point is, about Harvey Weinstein, Saturday
Night Live, I mean Fever,
etc. is that all this hideousness had come out of the woodwork in
Hollywood – but whereas books and things reflect what is happening in
the world, Hollywood movies DICTATE IT and MOULD what people think. And
these SEXIST F***WITTED BASTARDS are in charge of
MAKING THE MOVIES! F*** them! I’m going to screenshot this and POST IT
ON INSTAGRAM. 12.30am. Humph. No wonder everyone thinkst seventyyear
old men can play successful romantically viable parts whereas any woman
over the age of 45 apart from MerylS Streep,
or “unattractive” has to be some sort of
OPPRESSIVE STEREOTYPE. Xactly, nagging mothers, resentful ex-wives,
villainesses, icy corporate no-characters. Hollywood men stars are 30
YEARS older than their women-stars and if it’s the other way round
that’s the subject of the WHOLE MOVIE like the Mother or Film Stars
Don’t Die in Liverpool. Pah! Thas
the new thing – women sex-ageism. Tuesday
17 April 2018 11st,
alcohol units 167, Instagram followers 3. Prepared
breakfast for the children, gaily pretending head was not hurting and did
not desire to be sick in oatmeal. Was still fired up by messianic new
feminist fervour. “Billy,”
I said. “Tonight, we’re going to watch Thelma and Louise.” “What?” “I
want you to learn about how to treat women and what happens if you don’t
treat them as equals and …” “I
know about Thelma and Louise, Mummy,” said Billy. “Are you talking
about sexism and gender inequality?” “Yes,”
I said slightly sulkily. “It really is the scourge of the future and
…” “You
thought. That’s just for old people,” he said. “If you’re our age,
Mummy, sexism just isn’t a Thing.” Maybe
there is hope in the new generation. Or maybe I should take away his
Instagram for trying to insinuate that I am somehow not 32. |