THE Bridgerton buzz that has been reverberating through social media for the last few months is hard to ignore.
But, for those of you who haven’t caught up with the third instalment of the Regency romance, there isn’t much to know: former wallflower and secret gossip columnist Penelope Featherington (played by Ireland’s own Nicola Coughlan) falls in love and marries handsome, though slightly annoying, posh guy with a pout, Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) - and that’s it.
Except the glamourous glossy magazines and social media trolls just couldn’t leave it alone, could they?
Following the release of the second half of the season in June, which involved a rather exposing sex scene between Coughlan and Newton, my social media was inundated with stories and posts commenting on the actress’s body and how it doesn’t fit within conventional beauty standards - thus, apparently, rendering the relationship between the two unrealistic.
In a recent article penned by Zoe Strimpel for The Spectator titled Bridgerton’s Big Fantasy, Strimpel declares that “Coughlan is an actress of great value, and might be adored, but she is simply not plausible as the friend who would catch the handsome rich aristocrat Colin Bridgerton’s eye in that way”.
The article subsequently went viral, with many expressing their disagreement and disappointment that someone with the access to such a huge platform would use it to pointlessly pick holes in a harmless fantasy drama.
In all honesty, I don’t think Strimpel really meant what she wrote in the article: I think it was a ‘hot take’ designed to provoke a reaction – and, evidently, she succeeded.
However, just when I thought the trolls were retiring and Strimpel’s piece was disappearing into the ether, Forbes magazine just happened to publish a well-meaning article with the utterly disturbing headline ‘Bridgerton: Are We Still Not Ready For A Mixed-Weight Romance On Screen?’, thereby fanning the flames once more.
Firstly, why are so many people afraid of the word ‘fat’? I remember that, throughout primary school, my friends and I firmly believed that this was in fact the enigmatic ‘f-word’. Although, admittedly, it actually does feel like a swear word now.
Instead, people are described as ‘plus-sized’, ‘big boned’ or ‘full-figured’. There’s nothing wrong with those descriptions, but by shying away from the word ‘fat’ it makes it feel like a taboo or something to be embarrassed about, when it’s not.
Being fat doesn’t mean you’re unattractive, undesirable, lazy, or irrelevant like the depictions on the ironically named ‘big screen’ would have you believe.
But what particularly riles me about this debate is that Coughlan isn’t what could be considered fat: she’s just different from the size zero love interests we’ve come to expect from shows like Bridgerton.
And this isn’t a new thing - think about women like America Ferrera in Ugly Betty, Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones or Martine McCutcheon in Love Actually. All these women have been described at one point or another as ‘fat’ or ‘chubby’, when they are nowhere near it.
When we do see plus-sized people in leading roles. more often than not it’s in a comedy. Think about it, have you ever seen Rebel Wilson or Melissa McCarthy in anything hard-hitting or serious?
So-called ‘mixed-weight’ relationships are not a new phenomenon dreamt up by Netflix, in actual fact they’ve been on our screens for years, the difference being it’s always the man who’s heavier.
Penelope and Colin’s love story creates friction from the socially acceptable limits of desire and desirability. Through their relationship, Bridgerton unveils unsettling truths about human relationships. In this case, the truth is that handsome men (yes, dare I say, even straight men with cash and cachet) fall in love with perfectly normal looking women all the time.
On this basis, I’d argue it’s the most realistic storyline to date.
