ZEE JLF 2018 | Young girls now face such so much pressure to be perfect, says Helen Fielding

It's 21 years since the first Bridget Jones book came out. A lot has changed, but even today young girls continue to identify with her. Why do you think that is so?

There's obviously something in Bridget, which continues to speak. I think her appeal skipped a generation. Young girls now, the social media generation, seem very interested in her. It must be because there is so much pressure to be perfect, more so than when I first wrote Bridget in 1996. This constant pinging of Instagram, the next perfect shot, the sense of other people having a better time than you, doing things better than you — these have only got stronger. The gap between how you're expected to be and how you present yourself, and how you really are — the original idea of Bridget — has only got wider. That's maybe why younger girls are coming back to the original.

How do you see the character of Bridget Jones evolving? She was in her 50s in the third book, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.

Just as there is an oppressive stereotype about single girls in their 30s, there is another really oppressing stereotype about women over 50. That they're all really unattractive and no one is interested in them. The horrible expression — "women of a certain age" — which implies they're so deluded that you can't even say their age to them. In Mad About the Boy I was [trying to address that].

How far did you succeed?

There was a lot of fuss when it came out, a lot of petty nonsense about Bridget's age, that she was old and wearing reading glasses. I thought it was very telling — people had such a strong image of what a woman who's 50 looks like – it's ridiculous. The book sold a huge number of copies fairly quickly though.

You've lived with the character for 21 years — don't you get tired of her sometimes?

I retain a sense of enormous gratitude that I wouldn't be here at this festival if I hadn't written Bridget. It's amazing to come here and sign all these books after all this time. I think it would be very ungracious to complain about Bridget. Besides, I am under no obligation to continue to write her. I will do it if I have something to say, a story I wanted to tell.

What about writing non-Bridget books?

I do want to write other things. But it has proved rather difficult actually. I think I write best in the first person, because if I write in the third person it all comes out badly.

When's the next book out?

I don't know because I haven't written it yet. I've three ideas I'm working on. I'm waiting to see which one takes off. There'll probably be another movie about 'Mad About the Boy', and then there'll be a musical about Bridget. And yes, there'll be a novel. I don't know whether it'll be a Bridget one.

The men in your books — Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver — come across as somewhat two-dimensional.

I suppose I'm more interested in writing about women. There're lots of books written about men. Often, the female characters in movies are underwritten. They fall into all these stereotypes — the resentful wife, the sacrificing mother, the horrible ex. There's carelessness in drawing female roles. So it makes sense if you are a woman to focus just on women.