The Bechdel Test, Bechdel-Wallace Test, or the Mo Movie Measure , is a sort of litmus test for female presence in movies and TV. The test is named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, who made it known to the world with this strip.
In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:
- It includes at least two women (some make the addendum that the women must be named characters)…
- who have at least one conversation…
- about something other than a man or men.
If that sounds to you like a pretty easy standard to meet, try applying the test to the media you consume for a while. There’s a good chance you’ll be surprised: mainstream media that passes is far less common than you might think.
Now, by limiting yourself to shows/movies that pass the test, you’d be cutting out a lot of otherwise-worthy entertainment; indeed, a fair number of top-notch works have legitimate reasons for including no women (e.g. ones set in a men’s prison or on a WWII military submarine or back when only men were on juries), or with no conversations at all, or having only one character. You may even be cutting out a lot of works that have feminist themes. But that’s the point: the majority of fiction created today, for whatever reason, seems to think women aren’t worth portraying except in relation to men. Things have changed since the test was first formulated (the strip in which it was originally suggested was written in 1985), but Hollywood still needs to be prodded to put in someone other than The Chick.
The test is often misunderstood. The requirements are just what they say they are — it doesn’t make any difference if, for instance, the male characters the women talk about are their fathers, sons, brothers, platonic friends or mortal enemies rather than romantic partners. Conversely, if a work seems to pass, it doesn’t matter if male characters are present when the female characters talk, nor does it matter if the women only talk about stereotypically girly topics like shoe shopping — or even relationships, as long as it’s not relationships with men.
I also wonder if this test were applied to people of color how many films would pass.
