Bridget jones: an oldie but a goodie...:)

In my experience, the journey toward self-acceptance has been much like that of religion - everyone tells you how wonderful it is, and how much you're missing out, but no one really tells you how you can attain it. So you end up spending years of your life searching and reaching for that nebulous "thing" that will make you happy, and just when you think you've got it, you wake up one morning feeling as empty and alone as you did when the journey began
Self-acceptance, inner beauty, whatever it is you want to call it, has become a social pressure as important as being skinny in our society. So now, we can feel self-conscious and ashamed about the fact that we are self-conscious and haven't worked hard enough to become a better person. People tell you things like "No one can love you unless you learn to love yourself." Talk about putting pressure on a girl! Now in addition to the pressures of loosing weight, having a successful career, stop biting my nails, learning to be clean and organized and giving back to my community, I have to worry about learning to love myself and develop inner beauty or else no one will want to be around me? Is it me or this all just a little bit too much to ask?
Maybe thats why many of us imperfect women love Bridget Jones. Shes fat, she smokes, she is a horrible public speaker, she is self-conscious and self-doubting, and she never seems to be fully at peace with who she is. Basically, she is real. She wears granny panties to suck in her fat rolls. She is constantly paranoid that her boyfriend is cheating on her with someone better looking. She is afraid to get naked in front of a man because he might notice her wobbly bits. How many women out there can identify with at least some aspect of who she is.
Bridget is not the typical fairy tale style heroine. She doesnt start off an ugly ducking at the beginning of the movie and then *ta-da* become magically transformed by a makeover or new outlook on life into a new and improved person who lives happily ever after. I mean, in life, how many people actually have some type of miraculous transformation like that? Dont get me wrong, Bridget, just like most women, tries to be a better person, and sometimes she manages to gain control over parts of her life. Sometimes she feels sexy and self-confident. Sometimes she loses weight or manages to kick the smoking habit for a few weeks. But ultimately, life happens and the self-acceptance fades away and she returns to her normal, imperfect state, just like the rest of us
And you know what? Mark Darsey loves her, just the way she is. No matter how often she fucks up or embarrasses herself, he stays. He doesn't need her to have some type of transformation and develop a constant state of self-acceptance and inner beauty. She doesnt have to do anything or be anyone else to gain his love and acceptance. That is why we love the story of Bridget Jones. She makes us feel like we can be happy, just the way we are. Someone out there will love us despite our slightly overweight frames, our self-doubt, our nail biting, and our lack of inner beauty. Being loved is not contingent upon working toward some intangible transformation that always seems just a little bit out of reach.Instead. it's something that all human beings deserve, no matter how imperfect. And maybe somehow this understanding that we deserve to be loved and accepted dispite our flaws, will allow us to relax, enjoy the journey, and eventually stumble upon a little bit of that inner-beauty, on our own time, after-all....
Bridget Jones is the best fairy tale ever!