Bridgerton, Romances, and the She’s All Fat Problem

The Problem with Penelope’s Makeover in Bridgerton Season 3

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Disclaimer: I come to question Shonda, not to bury her. I also have not read the books and have no plans to. If you have not yet seen Part 1 of Season 3, this piece is about 98% spoilers. 

Let me start by saying: Nicola Coughlan deserves only clear pores, high salaries, and good things in this life. Derry Girls is one of my all-time favorite shows, and I think she is a gem. I am also in way too deep on the Shondaverse and have taken on narratives that I know to be problematic just to stay in the game, and frankly, because Shonda is an emotional terrorist who has victimized me for years. It’s like she built me an imaginary house made from candles and trapped me inside. 

Last Friday, I hunkered down in my candle house and watched the four episodes of the new season, and I genuinely don’t understand how they can fumble the Nicola bag this badly. First, some production notes. The man she is paired with has undergone some . . . rejuvenation that I don’t think was needed. Whether he started CrossFit, found a higher power, or a medical spa, his beefcake appearance made him look like a man auditioning for the cover of a romance novel I’d buy at CVS in the 90s instead of a production that is trying to be the millennial Jane Austen. This is not a judgment, just a different journey. I also don’t think he has great chemistry with Nicola, which is kind of no one’s fault, but I’m noting it. 

What I want to discuss is Shonda’s simultaneous innovations in Bridgerton and the way she upends them (frustratingly so) in Penelope’s arc on the most recent season of the show.   As I’ve said before, I have invested hours upon hours in Grey’s Anatomy, various spinoffs that never landed, and shows like Inventing Anna all because Shonda makes me care and makes me feel things. There were times I even felt like an accomplice in war crimes during the Scandal years. Part of the appeal of Shonda’s world is that she offers us diverse and inclusive casting that is not afraid to tell real stories. She has consistently included queer characters in her shows (something I’ve always respected) and empowered women in part by calling out the contradictions in society that validate men for not great behavior while demonizing women for far less. Imagine my surprise, then, when Penelope is agonizing over not revealing her identity as Lady Whistledown to Colin when this man literally has no dark nights of the soul about ANY of his behavior toward Penelope (or in general). First, we’re reminded of a moment last season when Colin, bro-ing out with friends, says he’d never marry Penelope. She overheard it and was understandably devastated. I loved that she confronted him with the truth of his behavior and its impact on her in this season. However, she forgives him almost immediately and I have to wonder what this man learned in the bargain. 

Colin’s been away for the summer on a grand tour where it seems like the only thing he learned was how to hire sex workers. I in no way want to shame sex, sex workers, or people who patronize them, but simply to say the double standard of what warrants shame in this world is a bit one-sided. Why should Penelope be agonizing over telling him that she’s built an empire based on trading gossip and barbs from behind a protective secret name, and in so doing, has supported herself (and provided a financial parachute for her family should they need one)? I’m missing the thread of what she should feel bad about, telling the truth about trust fund babies? I feel like she’s the student who made the site tracking Taylor Swift’s private jet and its climate impact only to be shamed by said billionaire who would rather not be included in that narrative.

Penelope also notably takes herself down in print this season (to keep up the ruse), but in doing so I couldn’t help but feel that she’s been made to feel worse by people she loved in real-time and to her face, all with no repercussions. Whether it’s her mother bemoaning her books, her sisters fat shaming her to no end, or her BFF Eloise going scorched earth because Penelope ruined her chances with a Newsie who is likely on a milk carton somewhere, Penelope deserves a lot better from people in her life. (Really no clue what’s going on with Eloise’s character this season.) 

A big theme this season appears to be “change,” and I guess what I’m ruminating on is the lack of real change I’m seeing. For Colin, his “tour” gave him a new perspective and new body. I want to know more about this life-changing three-month tour. He seems to have learned he could be anyone on vacation (feels like a fantasy dads tell themselves on a cruise), and chose to be a person who slept around and saw a lot of sites. That’s fine, but we’re supposed to believe these experiences caused a major shift in his character. Where are the flashbacks of the false starts of personalities he hard-launched that didn’t get anywhere? Where are the moments when he felt truly embarrassed abroad only to realize he was better off being himself? (A lesson he imparts to Penelope.) Instead, we get a snippet of his diary read in haste by Penelope, the quality of which she finds swoon-worthy. It kind of gave “girl who reads of a sex scene for the first time” and is as titillated with titillation as the writing itself. Still, Penelope is a writer and a great reader, and I was hoping the diary would be a connecting point. It could be a place for Colin to share his experiences and the things he learned about himself that could create real intimacy between them. It could be a source of shared work, a passion the two develop separately and together. Instead, we get mansplaining about how to flirt. 

This brings me to a major problem I have with Penelope’s treatment this season, which I’ll summarize as a “She’s All Fat” approach. The moment Penelope decides to marry to get out from under her trying mother and sisters, she uses her allowance to get dresses made in more mature colors and wears her hair half down to a ball. Removing her cloak at the last possible minute, and descending the stairs of the ball to debut her new look, the guests are taken aback by her changed appearance. No one seems more shocked than Colin, who stares at her with the same shock as the man in a 90s Pace salsa commercial who learns that the salsa he’s enjoying is from New York City. (NEW YORK CITY?!?! Why does this live in my head rent-free?)  

 This moment took me right back to the 1997 classic, She’s All That. In that film, Freddie, a cool boy, played by Freddie Prinze Jr. (a man who does not age), takes a bet to turn a nerd girl, Rachel Leigh Cook, into a hottie.

 He is magically able to do so by *dramatic pause* removing her glasses. 

I remember when this movie came out and simultaneously feeling completely drawn into it while also being repulsed by this message. When I told my grandmother about it, she quoted Dorothy Parker, “Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” I have to hope that she just loved rhymes and not the message, but also, impressing men would prove to be a moot point in my life. 

I don’t want to underplay Penelope making choices over her appearance that empower her and make her feel good. I also don’t want to negate the very real stakes of this fantasy historical world wrapped up in choices seemingly as trivial as hair and dress. To get a suitor after being on the “marriage market” for years without an offer is a stressful situation for any woman in a world where you have little power over your destiny. That makes Penelope’s choice of her hair and dress a real power move to take control of her life and choose marriage over life with her mother. 

I also don’t totally object to her accepting help and advice on how to navigate the subtle (or not-so-subtle) art of flirtation from someone else who can help her feel less awkward. Anyone would want that! What I find odd is that her character seems entirely defined by her lack of desirability. She is very down on herself and her appearance, as is seemingly everyone else in her world. It’s only when a man comes along who finds her interesting because she’s “not like the other girls” that Colin seems to realize she might be desirable. What is the measure of this realization? He has to watch the sex workers he hired hook up instead of taking part. Damn, what growth! 

I want a story for Penelope where her wants and desires are at the center; where her life can be viewed through a prism of desires, plural, for a life as a writer, reader, and as someone who wants to experience hot sex and real love. 

When Aubrey Gordon, co-host of the excellent podcast Maintenance Phase, was recently interviewed for an upcoming documentary on her life entitled “Your Fat Friend” she bemoaned the lack of media projects by and about fat people that don’t fall into the limited tropes of “Sad fat’s person life goes in the toilet or sad fat person loses a bunch of weight and discovers love!” (Aubrey Gordon) I thought about this while watching part 1 of this latest season because, as much as Shonda innovates old forms with greater inclusion and fresh approaches to storytelling, she seems to lean into the same tropes she’s trying to upend. Yes, Penelope gets the man of her dreams, but only after he humiliates her repeatedly, and she is dehumanized for being fat and liking books (?). She doesn’t lose weight before she finds love, but she does lose any conversation about her body. After her dress and hair “make-over,” conversation about her body drops out of the show and it’s as if the changes she made erase the “problem” of her body the moment a man finds her desirable.

 I love a recent quote I’ve read from Nicola describing a presumably future scene in which she appears naked. "I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included," Coughlan explained. “There's one scene where I'm very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest 'f*ck you' to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering.” (Teen Vogue) That word, empowering, gets at the appeal of romances in the first place. 

In 1984, Janice Radway wrote a book called Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. In it, she described her study of the appeal of romance novels, prompted in part by men’s dismissal of the genre and its value. As part of the book, she infiltrated a women’s romance book club to interview members about what romance meant to them. What she learned was fascinating. Some claimed they loved historical romances because they invited them to learn about history. (Incidentally, that’s what I said when I first saw Carol, “I’m just here for the history!”) Others suggested the books offered a space for fantasy and for imagining a life outside their own. Radway’s book is wrapped up in a lot of psycho-history of that era that presumed women were reading to escape or find the kind of nurturing they didn’t get from their husbands. Whether or not that is true, I can at least attest that for me, reading romances has allowed me the fantasy of a space where women loving other women is not strange or disordered or the cause of a book banning. I want to feel normal in my skin and like I deserve the same things as everyone else (including cliche love stories). Knowing what romance novels have meant for me, I love reading Nicola’s embrace of a nude scene to honor her own body and slap back at the criticisms she has received. I just wish the show itself was that brave. 

Ultimately, though I have watched and will continue to watch the show, I want Shonda to dream bigger than a Hamilton-style treatment of romance. Specifically, the inclusion of people of color is amazing and puts any productions not doing this to shame. To facilitate that in a “historical” setting requires a certain level of fantasy as the Brits are not known for their longtime racial acceptance. Though the show is willing to navigate this historical rewrite to be inclusive, it is not willing to apply similar elasticity to gender roles. Men are allowed to sleep around and carouse and that is simply the privilege of their sex. Comparatively, women are just as restricted in their bodies (corsets, etc) as they are in their choices. Instead of moving women to buck the norm (as Eloise and Penelope seemed to do in Seasons 1 and 2) they now seem resigned to their fate, sweetened by the possibility of romance. 

When Part 2 drops, I will be anxious to see how they wind this up. Will Colin reject her once he knows she is Lady Whistledown? Will he grow to be more than a smoldering man who offers little of himself in asking much of her? I would love to see Colin and Penelope bond over writing and interests that could lay them both bare. Eloise references reading Emma early in the season, and part of what makes Austen’s books so great is that they both take as a given the limitations put on women’s lives while still giving them agency in their choices. She also demonstrates mutual growth and learning in her romances, which seems to insert at least the pretense of balance in their dynamics (Elizabeth is proud, Darcy is prejudiced, and they challenge each other to change, etc.) 

I want more Austen from my Bridgerton, and less How to Get Away with Nonsense. That, or stunt cast Freddie Prinze Jr. wearing glasses.

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Thanks for reading!

This is a free post for subscribers of Landline. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it. Thank you for being a friend!