Some male friends and I were talking about their favorite romantic comedies (Notting Hill, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken) the other night, when someone brought up the Bechdel Test for Women In Movies.
The next time you watch a movie or a TV show, ask yourself the following questions:
- Are there at least two women in this movie?
- Do they talk to each other?
- Do they talk to each other about anything besides a man or men?
In another version of the test, an additional question—Do the women have names?—is added.
I didn’t spend a lot of time putting the test to work, but the hour I did spend piqued my blood pressure. A little labor over questions like these, and you’re forced to conclude that Hollywood is a long way off from creating complex, self-actualizing female characters with a wide variety of concerns—much less placing them in leading roles and building movies around them. Certain indie films and movies like The Kids Are Alright prove the exception more than the rule. And even shows that technically pass the test seem to fail; take Sex and the City, which is dominated by an overriding concern for men despite its smattering of career talk.
Duh me in the face if you must, but new iterations of little horrors like these still catch me off guard.
Anyway, here’s a good NPR story from 2008 about the test.
And here’s a video of a precocious young woman talking about it:
