Desperately seeking Bridget! by Alexandra Favre and Nadine Coll
Wherever I look – blogs, magazines, online forums – everyone is talking about it! But what? The outbreak of World War 3? A new miracle treatment for cancer? No, Renée Zellweger’s new face. On 20th October, the hapless heroine of the “Bridget Jones” films was almost unrecognisable when she stepped out onto the red carpet in Los Angeles. The 45 year-old’s appearance caused uproar, to the point that the outpouring of criticism was branded “Zellweger-bashing”! But what exactly are we criticising her for? For having dared defy the laws of gravity like so many other actresses and singers have done when they felt “over the hill”? If she’d rather have eyelids that make her look less like Droopy, that’s her business, isn’t it? And, actually, whoever performed this overhaul has done a pretty good job…at least, if we conveniently forget how good she looked beforehand. That’s what we liked about Bridget Jones – her charm and her beauty “just as she was” – and yet here she is, having bought into the standardised model of beauty.
It has to be said that some stars provoke a strong public reaction, others less so. Take Cindy Crawford, for example. Since she had her eyes “done”, she has a wide-eyed, vacant look about her. So, why is everyone focusing on Renée? When addressing the public’s reaction in People magazine, the actress said that her dramatic change in look was down to the fact that she leads a healthy life, that she’s in love, etc., etc.
In short, like so many of her actress pals, she is taking us for idiots and that makes us mad!
We all know that nothing changes a face more than an eyelid operation, which “opens” the expression in a spectacular way.
But the most annoying thing is not that she is denying the obvious. No, the most unsettling thing is that she does not want to be herself. Not that we want her to shrivel up like a rotting apple, but we’d have preferred her to have gone for some more subtle touch-ups. And above all, we’d rather she had kept her distinctive eye shape (a feature she already had at 20)!
Which is exactly the opposite of what we expected from her! We, as women, had faith in her and we were wrong, so we feel almost cheated. So if Bridget, our Bridget, no longer has her puppy-dog eyes, who can we have faith in?
