Due to my mother and her youthful sister, two Sandra Bullock superfans who would repeatedly meet as much as watch Miss Congeniality or Two Weeks Discover whereas doing laundry and consuming Coke Zeros, I’ve been a lover of romantic comedies since I used to be roughly two years previous.
For a time, my mother and aunt’s tastes led me to consider that the most effective of the style featured hyper-competent, profitable, considerably steely girls, like FBI agent Gracie Hart or environmental lawyer Lucy Kelson, being slowly damaged down by the promise of true and lasting love. However once I was a teen, and so they confirmed me Bridget Jones’s Diary for the primary time, I met a really totally different archtype. Consuming closely, smoking incessantly, quaffing fattening cheeses, and always daydreaming about love and/or marriage, Bridget lastly made me really feel seen—even when a little bit uncomfortably.
Now, is Bridget Jones the best instance of feminism personified? Not essentially—however who says she must be? For all her flaws and foibles, I realized extra about love from Bridget’s onscreen antics than I ever had earlier than—her story proving that even a medium-strength mess of a girl could be heat, witty, passionate, and eminently deserving of being whisked away by Colin Firth.
Forward of the discharge of Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy (which I’m clearly going to see the day it opens) subsequent week, right here, an inventory of the ten classes about love that I gleaned from Bridget Jones’s Diary:
1. Prioritize your chosen household of “singletons” above all else…
…together with your romantic relationship (or your try to seek out one). Your mates are those who might be there to carry your hair again if you’ve overdone it on wine items, and due to this fact deserve your final loyalty.
2. When unsure, put on underwear that really matches you on dates.
An individual who genuinely thinks you’re scorching won’t be delay by “scary, stomach-holding-in panties.”
3. It’s simply not that essential to be a great cook dinner.
The power to organize a meal on your suitor is sweet and all, but when they’re scared off by your “blue soup” (made because of leaving plastic on greens by accident, which may occur to anybody and has completely occurred to me), they’re not price your time.
4. The correct individual received’t make you select between love and work.
You don’t have any enterprise falling in love with somebody who doesn’t prioritize your profession not less than as a lot as you do, even when mentioned profession includes being filmed sliding down a firefighter’s pole. No, they could not all the time be a strong lawyer with the flexibility to get you the essential interview you want, however they need to need to see you succeed.
5. Making a idiot of your self is definitely an act of radical vulnerability that must be appreciated.
In the event that they don’t love you drunk at Christmas karaoke with a tinsel crown in your head and a cigarette hanging out of your mouth, they don’t love you adequate!
6. Relatedly: Your supreme accomplice ought to encourage your hobbies…
…even when mentioned hobbies are restricted to consuming ice cream out of the carton and scrawling drunken notes in your diary when you take heed to Celine Dion.
7. If your loved ones chaos scares them off early, good riddance.
Whereas your personal mom might not essentially abscond with a males’s-jewelry-wearing infomercial host, one thing familial and tough will inevitably crop up over the course of your relationship, and it’s higher to know sooner quite than later in case your lover goes to run on the first signal of drama.
8. That mentioned: Give individuals the good thing about the doubt…
…as a result of typically Hugh Grant is mendacity about mentioned individuals dishonest along with his ex, and actually it was Hugh Grant who cheated with their ex.
9. The correct individual for you’ll decide to the bit, 100% of the time.
Anybody who ghosts you at a fancy dress celebration the place you’re dressed like a Playboy bunny merely sucks.
10. Above all, discover somebody who likes you very a lot, simply as you might be.
Not, as Bridget’s buddies incredulously say, “Thinner? Or with barely bigger breasts?”Simply as you might be!
