The Bechdel test is one of the most well-known measures of female representation in a work of fiction. It was ideated by Liz Wallace, and first appeared in American cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, in 1985.
The test is seemingly simple and only demands three things. In order to pass, the work in question must include:
at least two women
who talk to each other
about something other than a man
Some variations of the test also require that the women be named characters. Sounds easy enough? Lookup a few of your favourite movies on bechdeltest.com. You’d be surprised at the sheer number of movies that fail.
The Bechdel test, while thought-provoking in its own domain, is often misunderstood. Understanding what it does and why it exists is crucial. Alison Bechdel published the test to bring to light how often depictions of women in cinema revolve around men. She credited the idea to her friend Liz Wallace who was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own, in which Woolf states the following: “It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that.”
Bechdel and Wallace intended to highlight the lack of female representation and superficiality of female characters in the film by way of the conversations they have with each other. It is not, by far, a good enough indicator of how progressive a film is with regard to feminism. If a movie such as The Bikini Carwash Company can pass the test, surely it is not the ultimate standard by which to rate the characterization of women in popular culture.
The most important thing to keep in mind about the test is that it does not apply to every film. There is no one-size-fits-all test, and every movie must be critiqued on a case-by-case basis. Perfectly good films with strong female characters can fail the test due to their particular environment and setting. A popular example is Gravity. It is not a litmus test to classify a movie as sexist or not, since there may be legitimate reasons for failure. Rather, the test was devised to shed light on the number of failed popular films that actually have no reason to fail.
The Bechdel test primarily aims to show how male-centric the film industry tends to be and how this often dampens the dimensionality of female characters on screen. It’s like Miranda from Sex and the City said, "How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends? It's like seventh grade with bank accounts!”
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