BRIDGET JONES'S DOWRY

All over the country, says Debbie Barham, girls

with big boobs and black dresses are dreaming of following in Helen Fielding's footsteps

SINGLE? Thirty-something? So desperate for a ring on your finger that you'd even ,marry a member of the royal family? Calm down — there are plenty of agencies positively gagging to sign you up. Not dating agencies, obviously; literary agencies. Thanks to the sacred cult of Bridget Jones (Peace And Cellulite Be Upon Her), millions of women are now convinced that they are exactly like her.

There's no denying that Bridget was a big advance for Modern Woman. The modern woman in question was Ms H. Fielding, and her big advance was somewhere in the region of half a million quid. Not bad for someone whose heroine made a career out of her abject failure to achieve 'personal goals'. Then again, it is a good thing that Bridget was not a true reflection of her creator's lifestyle. I can't see many Miss Averages relating to Helen Fielding's Diary.

But the country is full of Miss Averages tippy-toeing into literary agents' offices, clutching examples of previous work (e.g. a 'What I Did In My Holiday' composition that her infant teacher was really proud of, or something she painted in the rehab clinic as part of the therapeutic process). `So!', leers the moneygrubbing agent, 'You're twenty-something?' Check. 'You work as a temp in a Soho PR company?' Check. 'You've got big boobs, a little black dress, all your own teeth and preferably an adolescent tragedy to reveal in post-publication interviews?' Check. 'Can you write? No, bugger that. Here's a cheque.' Check.

Within a month, her drivel has taken its place in Tesco alongside its identical paperback siblings; all of them replete with neon-pink covers and big bouncy lettering, featuring a cheap cartoon of a stick-thin, tousle-haired, grinning girlie in a boob tube doing something 'wacky', probably astride a scooter, with legs splayed, a ladder in her tights and a selection of boutique bags protruding at unlikely angles from the crook of each elbow.

This is our heroine, and she is Something In The Media; with a name ending in 'a'. a Walnut Whip fixation and a conveniently alliterative surname. She exists on a staple diet of Shapers Snacks With Amusing Brand Names, complemented by Too Much Tequi

la (or Chardonnay), and shares a flat in either Notting Hill or Hoxton with her equally shrill, manless mates. And, despite being educated in a prestigious public school, she cannot speak English — Jemima and chums jabber incessantly in some unfeasible hybrid of `Mizz' magazine-goss-columncopy and substandard-American-sitcomspeak, as spoken nowhere else on this PLANET. Not even in Notting Hill or Hoxton.

They date the same succession of Unsuitable But Dashing Rogues until the nauseating Jemma J or Mella M or Laura L finally settles down with the Friendly, Laconic, Labrador-Like Flatmate whom we've known since page one she was destined to marry because she stated categorically in the opening paragraph that 'of course I didn't fancy Tom/Luke/Mark/Dave/Fido AT ALL!! !'. Oh — and there's probably a death, cancer and/or miscarriage thrown in as well, just in case you, dear reader' might accidentally mistake this incisive piece of Swiftian social satire for one of those crappy pappy novels that everyone else is churning out.

The real tragedy is that these atrocities still sell like hot cakes. They aren't just a passing phenomenon, they're a genre all to themselves. Generation-Ex literature; post Brit-Fic, comes Bridget-Fic. Mark my words, your local Borders will soon have a section entirely devoted to simpering singleton scribblings: somewhere between Self-Help, Sex Manuals, Diet Books and Autobiographies — Self-Obsessed, Helpless Fathead Fiction; basket-cases by the remaindered basket-load, all of them pathetically slim volumes, but all convinced that they're literary heavyweights.

Bridget herself is even on the GCSE syllabus, for crying out loud — presumably as a dumbed-down alternative to Jane Austen. To borrow a Bridgetism: Ye Gods! As if the average schoolgirl didn't have enough hormonal horror to deal with during puberty without having to shoulder Bridget's pre menopausal miseries as well. When I was that age, I was reading Nancy Drew. Sure, all that sleuthing around stalking strange men late at night wasn't exactly the best rolemodel for a nice young lady. But at least Nancy sometimes had a clue: and she was inevitably trying to pin the guilt on the Bad Guy, not on her own pitiful inadequacy.

Now normal, well-adjusted, mildly alco

holic and occasionally angst-stricken British lasses are actually turning into Bridget Clones — in real life. I have friends who've convinced themselves that they can relate to her, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

They want to walk like her (holding their tummy in to avoid all the 'flobbering flab'

spilling out of their control-top tights), talk

like her (in manner of v. v. tedious thirtysomething literary-giantess type with inability to employ personal pronouns), drink Chardonnay (when five years ago, they'd just have ordered a 'dry white') like her . . just,

basically, be like her. That's why their boyfriends leave them: can you blame any guy for dumping a woman who wants nothing more between the covers than 250 pages of self-destructive witless wittering?

Perhaps it's just something about the name 'Jones' that chimes out a death-knell

for female empowerment. Miss Jones in Ris ing Damp was a frustrated spinster. Paula Jones was a woman with the face of Inflat

able Ingrid from the Ann Summers shop.

Catherine Zeta Jones's biological clock was ticking so frantically she had to get hitched to a bloke almost twice her age. I know film stars like to do charity engagements for Help the Aged, but surely one needn't go as far as actually raising children with them. Sophie Rhys-Jones married the Artist Formerly Known As Prince Edward, Never mind. The backlash will come. Ms Fielding and her bevy of imitators are already in danger of being forced off the shelf by BJ's male counterparts. Yes, girls, now your Bloke — if by some rare accident you've managed to snare one — arrives as

an introspective Neurotic Lad cashing in on the success of Fever Pitch and About a Boy. They are wimps to a man: they probably go on 'Ironing John' weekends and compare the sizes of the prosthetic strapon stomach they wear to 'share the pregnancy experience' at pre-natal classes.

Fathead Fiction isn't just undermining women, it's undermining men as well. No wonder we chicks can't find any decent fel las: after thumbing through Nick Hornby's latest, they're all scurrying off early from the boozer to make their thrice-weekly therapy session on time. I'm not suggesting I want all men to model themselves on Roy Chubby Brown. But I long for the days when Mister Softee was only found behind the wheel of an ice-cream van.

This is an edited version of an article that appears in Inappropriate Behaviour, a collection of counter-culture essays edited by Jessica Berens and Kerni Sharp, to be published by Serpent's Tail.