Love Actually, Bridget Jones and the fat-shaming legacy of romantic comedies.

When I was a teenager, I loved romantic comedies. 

They were one of my greatest guilty pleasures, a hobby that was guaranteed to give me an instant boost of endorphins. 

I adored almost everything about them. The serendipitous set up where two strangers have a 'meet cute', the laugh out loud challenges they would face along the way, and the big, dramatic climax. 

I'll never not love a last-minute dash to the airport for a declaration of love. 

But my love of romantic comedies was always tainted by the fact that women like me were rarely cast in them. And if they were, they were relegated to the "funny, fat friend" role. A character that, quite honestly, always had a lot more personality than the skinny, conventionally attractive woman we were supposed to be focusing our attention on. 

Image: Universal Pictures. 

The message was clear in these films - women like that, women like me - would never have a 'meet cute', and they definitely would never turn around at the airport to find the love of their life dashing towards them, about to declare their undying love with a perfectly timed, seemingly off-the-cuff speech. 

As a woman who has always been various degrees of plus size, this was a truth that I quietly swallowed. It was just one of the messages I received loud and clear about my body growing up. 

That kind of thing doesn't happen to women like you. 

This is not something I discussed with my friends or family at the time. Any kind of conversation about diversity or representation or body positivity wouldn't start happening for at least another 15 years.

Instead, I quietly vowed to myself that one day I would look like the leading lady, and then I'd get my moment. 

For the most part, I was able to laugh along with these movies. As the fat shaming and glorification of skinny bodies was just par for the course. 

I even laughed along to Shallow Hal, the 2001 comedy that put Gwenyth Paltrow in a fat suit and made Jack Black's character fall in love with her... despite that. 

Then later in 2001, came Bridget Jones's Diary. 

For the first time, a woman who was considered to be 'overweight' was a leading lady in a big, box office romantic comedy. 

The movie was based on Helen Fielding's bestselling book of the same name. In the book, the titular character Bridget Jones recorded her weight in her diary every day and bemoaned the fact she was not a skinny woman, because skinny women seemed to have everything she ever wanted. 

Skinny women never said the wrong thing. Or tripped over in public. They walked into a room with confidence. They dated the alpha male. 

To put it in perspective, Bridget weighed 136lbs at the start of the book and movie. That's roughly 61kgs. 

I distinctly remember reading the book as a teenager and doing the maths. I weighed more than this 30-year-old woman, who thought living in her body was a fate worse than death. 

Despite this, I loved the book. And I was able to squash down the niggling feeling I had about the weight issue because I didn't have a clear visual of what Bridget Jones looked like. What a woman considered to be 'too big' to deserve all the good stuff in life actually looked like. 

Then the movie came out starring Renee Zellweger. And along with it came the headlines about how much weight the actress had to put on for the role. 

When I watched the movie, I saw a woman who had a body I would die for. And a successful 30-year-old with a career in publishing and a flat in London. 

To me, her life seemed unattainable. Something I could only dream of. 

But to Bridget and the rest of the cast of characters it was a bit of a joke, really. Something to laugh at. 

Image: Universal Pictures. 

There's a scene towards the end of the movie, where Bridget tells her (quite frankly, terrible) friends that Mark Darcy likes her "just as she is". 

Her friend Jude responds: "Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer? Not with slightly bigger breasts or slightly smaller nose?" 

And when Bridget responds "No", her other friend Shazza says "Well, f*ck me", so surprised is everyone at the table that someone could love Bridget in the body she was currently in. Not some future version of her she has to punish herself to achieve. 

Every time I watched the film, I absorbed the message that the current version of myself was not enough. But again, I laughed it off. After all, one day I would look like Bridget Jones or perhaps one of her skinny, judgemental friends. 

Then in 2003, came Love Actually. Which is a movie about all types of love. Well, love between skinny, conventually attractive, heterosexual people. 

There's the outright in your face fat-shaming in the movie, with Aurelia's sister being referred to as "Miss Dunkin' Donuts 2003". 

But it was the more subtle storyline, that of Martine McCutcheon's Natalie, that did more damage to the psyche of millions of women around the world. 

Natalie is the tea-lady that new Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant) eventually falls for in the film. When David enquires about Natalie to her colleague Annie, Annie refers to her as "the chubby one". And when David questions whether Annie should call her chubby, she says Natalie has a "sizeable arse and huge thighs". 

Natalie herself later tells David that her boyfriend broke up with her because "no one's gonna fancy a girl with thighs the size of big tree trunks". 

Natalie's weight is constantly mentioned in the film in a jokey manner. The clear message is that Natalie is a lovely person, she's incredibly pretty, but it's just such a shame about her thighs.  

Image: Universal Pictures. 

In the early 2000s, when these films came out, there wasn't a public conversation about body positivity. There wasn't even a private conversation about it. 

Any woman who saw themselves in Bridget and Natalie quietly absorbed the message that they're not good enough "just as they are". Bridget and Natalie were the exception to the rule. Women in 'bigger bodies' who were loved by conventually attractive men despite that. 

Now two decades on, our conversations around weight and body positivity and representation have completely evolved. 

A woman's weight would never be a punchline in a romantic comedy in 2022. 

But we're yet to see Hollywood fully embrace romantic comedies with leads with different body shapes. In which the size of their body isn't even a part of the plot. 

Every year, I re-watch Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually around this time. I still love these movies. And every year, I think about the 18-year-old and 20-year-old version of me who first absorbed these messages. 

The young woman whose favourite movies told her she could have everything she ever wanted, if only she changed this one thing about herself. 

And I think about the current version of myself, who still, deep down inside believes she needs to dramatically change to be loved "just as she is". 

Keryn Donnelly is Mamamia's Pop Culture Editor. For more of her TV, film and book recommendations and to see photos of her dog, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.