What if Bridget Jones was a Gen Z?

(Diary of Olivia Jones (Age 24)

With the imminent release of the fourth instalment the Bridget Jones franchise, Mad about the Boy, there has been a lot of chatter about how Gen Z (1997-2010) have fallen in love with Bridget Jones, loving her imperfection, messiness, body hang-ups and her chaotic love life. These are of course the timeless appeals of the character, meaning Boomer and Gen X women found her highly relatable when the book was published nearly thirty years ago in 1996 (just as Gen Z were starting to be born) and millennial women cheered on her romantic adventures when the films came out and they were teenagers.

As Gen Z get ready to flock to the cinema on Galentine’s Day, there has been an interesting reappraisal of Bridget Jones. When the book was published and the films were released, thirty and twenty-five years ago, respectively, Bridget Jones was viewed as a bit of a figure of fun precisely because of her aforementioned imperfections. I distinctly remember as a teenager Tim Lovejoy on the then wildly popular Soccer Am, calling her the “fat bird with the diary” and in the body fascist noughties she was the butt of a lot of fat jokes because of the fact Renee Zellweger famously gained weight for the role, and in both the film and book there are loads of jokes and shenanigans that wouldn’t fly today including sexual harassment in the office and bonking the boss.

However, through the lens of today’s standards, with our more forgiving attitudes to body, and less forgiving economic standards, where older Gen Z’s are struggling to get out of childhood bedrooms, secure decent jobs, find partners, or even afford a decent social life, suddenly Bridget, with her lovely London flat (you learn in the book she owns), great job first in publishing and then in television, great crew of friends and the fact she is courting the attentions of Colin Firth and Hugh Grant suddenly looks less like a figure of fun and more of a fantasy one – especially to Gen Z.

So, for a bit of fun, but also with a serious edge, I decided to imagine what Bridget Jones would sound like if it was written by a Gen Z today – I’m sure Helen Fielding will forgive the plagiarism – so let’s take a look at the Diary of Olivia Jones (age 24)….

February 5^th 2025

Awoken with the usual whoosh of anxiety and to the competing sounds of Radio 4 and the Joe Rogan podcast. Dad, a relic of a long-gone past will only listen to Radio 4 on his radio he’s had since before I was born, but Mum since getting a personal trainer called Hunter has ‘discovered’ podcasts, I suspect to impress Hunter. I can hear the drone of some American neuroscientist being interviewed who sounds like he’s been lobotomised himself, and this drives me to take a morning sneaky hit of my watermelon vape (not v.g.) that best friend, Zach, tells me is actually worse for me than smoking. VV not vg.

Check messages on Tinder and one looks promising in that he has his shirt on, hasn’t demanded nudes, and is a trainee architect rather than the usual influencer/part-time DJ, but then check his interests which he lists as ‘Jordan Peterson, Dragon Energy and MMA’ so delete with a sigh without bothering to reply.

Drag self out of bed for ‘work’ which is a temporary one and approaching state of emergency as I wait to hear about job in publishing, I did my sixth round of interviews for last week with one hundred and thirty-seven other applicants in the same room – most humiliating. I’m currently working for a startup called Can U Not Try which I gather is something to do with wellness or productivity at work, but no one seems to really know, including the founder. It pays an absolute pittance, despite the founder, Zeke, telling everyone on LinkedIn he got nine-figures of seed funding. Take a shaky breath and try to manifest getting publishing job at proper publishing house even though have no idea how manifesting works or whether it works – even though other best friend, Sadie, swears by it. But Sadie is also single and currently unemployed, and trying to find a job in journalism, so not convinced she is best advocate for manifesting.

Check emails and immensely cheered by the fact I have one from one of the bosses, Emmanuel Cleaver, telling me how much he enjoyed meeting me at Round 4 of publishing house interviews, and though I’m pretty sure this tramples on acceptable workplace boundaries, in the face of little to be cheery about, I’ll take it. Oooh – wonder if Emmanuel fancies me? Hope not the case, and it’s just because I stood out, though not blind to the fact Emmanuel was quite attractive in an entirely inappropriate way.

After answering emails, I neither understand nor care about, venture downstairs where Dad is eating Kellogg’s cereal – something I’m pretty sure no one has done since the nineties. Mum is in a yoga pose with her leg ninety degrees in the air, that I have a worrying suspicion Hunter might have taught her. Joe Rogan and Radio 4 are still battling it out, which raises anxiety levels exponentially. Despite racket, she opens one eye and says in a breathy voice.

“Darling, you haven’t forgotten about the vegan, organic buffet I’m throwing for the Darcy’s this evening, have you?”

Ah, the Darcys. They are old friends of my parents who have a son, Noah, who apparently I used to hang around with when I was about five. Unlike all my friends, Noah, disgustingly sounds like he’s got it all figured out. He went to Cambridge, then to Yale Law School and is already practicing human rights law at some top place in London, and apparently earning bank. Is it bad I’m slightly suspicious of anyone who is that together at our age, as it seems unnatural and wrong in the year of our lord, that is 2025.

“You remember Noah Darcy, darling,” she says breathlessly, putting her foot alarmingly behind her head, “you used to run around his lawn together. Top human rights barrister. Already own his own house in London…”

I shake my head at this exotic sounding creature and check Tinder where I’m matched with an Uber drive/Part-time DJ and wonder if Noah might be my secret Mr. Right, even though all the TikTok manifesters say there’s no such thing, and we are the route to our own happiness.

‘Work’ Day passes in endless checking of emails to see I’ve heard anything about publishing jobs, looking at house porn of houses I can never afford on RightMove, trying to manifest publishing job, have an argument with best friends, Zach, Ava and Sadie on WhatsApp over whether OnlyFans is feminist or exploitative, trying to social-stalk Noah Darcy (freak doesn’t have either Insta or TikTok) and answering actual work emails I neither understand nor care about.

At five, give up, and join last Zoom meeting, but don’t have camera on or have to say anything, so don’t actually have to be there, and go and join Zach, Ava and Sadie at Costa, which was an All Bar One like a million years ago for pre meeting Noah Darcy summit.