Bridget Jones would be fine now because the age of the singleton is over, her creator says

The age of the singleton is over, according to Helen Fielding, who says Bridget Jones's Diary would be a different book if it was written today.

The original 1996 book and the film adaptation divided the world into single people and 'smug marrieds', who looked at her with pity because she didn't have a man.

But Fielding said times have changed. "The pressure from society was so great - remember that scene in the first movie where she goes to a dinner party with six married couples who asked, 'Why aren't you married?'" she told an audience at the Hay Festival.

"And I think what probably has shifted now is that pressure to be in a couple. I think people are too embarrassed now to say, 'Why aren't you married?' because they know it's a stupid question.

"Women are big multi-taskers now. There's lot of reasons for not wanting to take that traditional route. people live in urban families in cities, people make their families out of their gay friends, their single friends, their married friends.

"Life is very complicated. Gender roles are evolving apace and people choose to live the way they live."

But Fielding said her main concern for today's young women is the self-doubt brought on by social media.

"Judging themselves on how many 'likes' they get on Instagram is pretty stupid really," she said, adding that the Bridget Jones stories were "about the gap between how we think our lives should be and how they actually are".

The author, who has written three sequels to her original book, also laughed off those who said her books were anti-feminist because the heroine wanted to find a husband.

"My god-daughter told me that at her university they're studying Bridget as 'post-feminist', so that's one to put in one's pipe and smoke," she said.