The story will focus on the 40-ish Bridget's desire to have a baby "before time runs out." Oh, goody. Just what the world needs! A slender Hollywood actress given "permission" to fatten up and pretend to freak out about her biological clock.

It's been eight years since Bridget Jones's Diary hit the screen — and thirteen years since the novel was published — and the neurotic, messy character feels very dated. Even more tired is the my-life-is-not-complete-without-a-child cliché. From Marisa Tomei stomping her heel while ranting about her biological clock in 1992's My Cousin Vinny to Tina Fey's Baby Mama (not to mention Liz Lemon's baby fever).

Plus: Not only do we have to read about Zellweger eating "biscuits and gravy, crispy duck, Snickers, milk shakes, pizza and butter-soaked potatoes" — People calls this her "very special diet" to "get in shape" to play Bridget Jones — but when the filming is finished, we'll inevitably have to hear about Zellweger's amazing weight loss, which will surely involve a personal trainer and grilled chicken and lots of veggies. While regular Americans get fat-shamed, Renée is a yo-yo dieting icon!

When the Bridget Jones novel came out, its appeal was that its heroine was offbeat and charmingly imperfect as she obsessed about love and career — a fresh take. But now that the series has become about weight and babies, how does it differ from all the other crap targeted to women?

Third 'Bridget Jones' In Works [Variety]
Renée Zellweger To Pack It On Again For Bridget Jones [People]

Willetts's rhetoric is annoying, but his subtext is truly disturbing. His problem isn't with the romantic difficulties of Bridget and her ilk — it's with their independence. Willetts points out that college-educated women may want to marry college-educated men. And it's true that a smaller percentage of British women are married by 30 than were 30 years ago (horrors!). But he seems less concerned with those oh-so-unlucky British girls who can solve quadratic equation but can't find a man, than with those who land a man but then break up with him. He cites research suggesting that male unemployment is the biggest factor in the rise of single-parent families. Then he says:

Of course the family is an emotional and personal thing, but it is also an economic institution and what we are describing is the collapse of the economic circumstances that hold families together. [...] The man who can't go out and command a decent wage is not going to be able to hold a family together.

"Economic circumstances that hold families together" sounds like a nice way of saying "women's financial dependence." It may be harder for a man to "hold a family together" now because women are more free to leave unhappy marriages, or to have children without marrying the fathers. Willetts makes it sound like he's worried about those poor Bridget types who can't seem to find domestic happiness, but he's really concerned about men's loosening grip on women's lives. It's all just a British version of that familiar threat that women can change, but men are locked into the same roles forever, and we'd better let them do what they want or we'll all be very unhappy.

Bridget Jones generation 'to blame for breakdown of the family' [Daily Mail]

8% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 live alone, according to the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS), and that's twice as many singletons as twenty years ago. "The ONS report cited recent research which showed that two-thirds of freemales feel that they can enjoy a happy and fulfilled life without a partner," the Telegraph notes. Paula Hall, a shrink with Relate, a nationwide relationship counseling nonprofit in England, tells the Telegraph that many women have become cynical about longterm relationships. "If you're busy and fulfilled with lots of close friends, then relationships may seem a bit irrelevant, emotionally high-risk and a lot of hard work," Hall says. Maybe they just don't want to deal with those scads of men expecting "perfect" relationships.

Men Prefer Being Solo Over A Bad Marriage: Study [Reuters]
Women Shun Marriage In Favour Of Single Life [Telegraph]

So Why Have You Never Been Married?: 10 Insights Into Why He Hasn't Wed [Amazon]

While it's true that women can be obsessed and concerned with their weight as compared to other women (my shameful secret is that I am a dutiful reader of theskinnywebsite.com — where an insane woman tracks the weight gain and loss of every starlet down to the ounce), isn't the implication that all women want to be thin as a bid for alpha female control a vast overstatement? Isn't our collective weight obsession a fraught and complex issue, with so many societal factors that oversimplifying it into mere catfighting is downright insulting? All the same, Bilmes isn't completely off the mark. Who among us has not mentally denigrated another, more successful woman by thinking, "Well at least I'm thinner"? (I'm not at all proud of it, but it's happened. But it's not just about weight — I've mentally denigrated other people in all manners of pettiness! i.e., at least I'm cuter/younger/etc.) Are you dismissive of those pleasure-seeking, beta-females? Or do you think Bilmes deserves an arse-kicking via one of those women with the "unappealing" musculature?

Vogue UK

What do you get if you cross Bridget Jones with the baby Jesus?

Christian chicklit

"These authors also make use of Bridget-like internal conversations — "lose six, no four, no two, OK, five pounds, have friends over for dinner" — but with a new twist, as in "read my Bible more, pray more, obsess less."

"In the Christian version, it would also be, 'What is God's purpose for me?' The purpose-driven life, that's what they are looking for. 'How do I live authentically in the kind of world we live in?' " says Golan."

Gee. That sounds like a whole lot of fun.

"Last month, K. found out what a drag it is to date a workaholic because Suburbs Guy kept blowing her off. To take her mind off things, K's best friend Sarah, invited her out to meet the ridiculously H-O-T star of an indie movie... and K. was more than happy for the distraction. Will Suburbs Guy ever get it together? Can K. successfully schmooze with the rich and almost famous?"

Can I take a shotgun and blow my own head off here? I thought we'd done Bridget Jones to death. At least you got a bit of anal action with Bridget. Something tells me that K's rump will remain eternally unpunctured. I bet she uses vaginal deoderant and is entirely hairless below the eyebrows, too.