Bridget Jones as cultural icon media portrayals of single women /

by 1980- Willis, Katherine Leigh

This study addresses a recent demographic shift, a sharp increase in the number of single women in American society, and the response to this shift in media. Seeking to add to previous research on the unique interaction of mass media and the modern single woman, this study qualitatively analyzes how the single woman is defined in the best-selling novel Bridget Jones’s Diary, in Cosmopolitan magazine, and in national daily newspapers. Examining the single woman as she is created and “legitimized” in these texts will add to a genre of scholarship on media-generated female icons/heroines and their reflection of cultural values.