MovieChat Forums > Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) Discussion > Was she considered fat in by UK standard...

Was she considered fat in by UK standards?


I mean I think the heaviest the diary had her at was 135. I would guess she the character would be like 5 foot 5. I actually thought she had a nice figure in that movie. I was watching it feeling fatter that she was trying to lose weight at 135.

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No, she's average weight by UK standards.

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I thought the point in the book was that she only thought she was fat but that did not exactly fit reality. She was quite normal weight.

Zellweger turned it into some kind of stunt by highlighting how FAT, FAT, FAT she got for the role. That is the way to miss the point.

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It's kinda meant to be a bit of a joke, most women are on constant diets no matter what their weight.

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I never noticed this until I read the book. She mentions she is, at one point, 9 stones and sliding into obesity. That equals about 126 lbs. That's utterly insane. 126 is not only not fat, it's thin! I'm in the mid 130's and I don't feel fat. Someone like Jennifer Lawrence is supposedly around 133 pounds and she looks nothing like how RZ looked in this film.

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since the time of bridget jones, the weight of the average person has gone up. now the norm for women in britain is size uk 12-14. i'm guessing she was a size 12 so she would be considered on the smaller side now

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let's not go to camelot, it is a silly place

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Isn't Jennifer Lawrence quite tall, 5'10"? While Jones is only 5'5"? That's not the same thing. Joe's seems overweight to me.

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I'm watching it right now, and I feel like she had to weigh more than the character weighed in the book. It's been a while since I saw the movie, but when I read the book, I felt like she was making a big deal about 10 pounds (I also assumed she was average height, not Renee Zellweger short). But in the movie, especially in the scenes where she's wearing bare clothes, she looks very heavy. I found an article that said the actress tried to be a size 14 for the role (supposedly the "average" size). But I am the same height as Renée Zellweger, weigh about what the character in the book weighed, and I am around a size 4-6. Of course, I have muscle tone, which Bridget did not. Still, I thought they got it wrong. I never pictured this character as being that heavy, just a slightly heavy young woman. When they talk about the "average" size, they're factoring in a lot of women who have had babies and never lost the weight. Also, part of the point of the story was that Bridget was holding herself to an unrealistic standard, i.e., "having it all" syndrome. That's not really true if she actually DOES need to lose 30+ lbs.

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I'm pretty confident the people who wrote the movie (and the book) meant for Bridget's obsession with her weight to say more about the character's personality than her body. That is: her idea of what weight she "should" be was unrealistic.

As for Renee Zellwegger in the movie: she looked fine by the standards of the real world. By the standards of Renee Zellwegger in a movie (or most all movie stars in movies) she was on the heavy side, but that standard has little to do with real people. Whatever comments Zellwegger (as opposed to Bridget or the filmmakers) may have made on the subject indicate, I suppose, that she suffers from the same illusions as the character. Then again, if you're in the business of playing ingenues and love interests in movies, I suppose what's an illusion to normal people is kind of a professional qualification.

Also (apropos of another post): 5'5" isn't short. It's pretty much dead-on average (or even slightly over) for UK women of the character's age. Of course, Colin Firth is a pretty tall guy, so that affects perceptions.

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No, only by American standards.

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I'm about 5'5' and I weigh around that range, and I wouldn't call myself fat.

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