The Bechdel Test and Its Limitations

1. The Bechdel test is a measure of the representation of women in fiction.

The rules now known as the Bechdel test first appeared in 1985 in Alison Bechdel's comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. In a strip titled "The Rule", two women, who resemble the future characters Mo and Ginger, discuss seeing a film and one woman explains that she only goes to a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,

2. who talk to each other,

3. about something other than a man.

2. The other woman acknowledges that the idea is pretty strict, but good. Not finding any films that meet their requirements, they go home together. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.

3. About half of all films meet these criteria, according to user-edited databases and the media industry press. Passing or failing the test is not necessarily indicative of how well women are represented in any specific work. Rather, the test is used as an indicator for the active presence of women in the entire field of film and other fiction, and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction.

4. Media industry studies indicate that films that pass the test perform better financially than those that do not.

5. Writer Charles Stross noted that about half of the films that do pass the test only do so because the women talk about marriage or babies. Works that fail the test include some that are mainly about or aimed at women, or which do feature prominent female characters. The television series Sex and the City highlights its own failure to pass the test by having one of the four female main characters ask: "How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends? It's like seventh grade with bank accounts!”

Is the Bechdel Test enough to gauge if a narrative is feminist? What are other parameters we should consider?

LIMITATIONS

1. The Bechdel test only indicates whether women are present in a work of fiction to a certain degree. A work may pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent female characters may fail the test.

2. A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias, such as because its setting works against the inclusion of women (e.g., Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, set in a medieval monastery) or because it has few characters in general (e.g., Gravity, in which only two named characters appear).

3. What counts as a character or as a conversation is not defined. For example, the Sir Mix-a-Lot song "Baby Got Back" has been described as passing the Bechdel test, because it begins with a valley girl saying to another "oh my god, Becky, look at her butt".

4. Although the test is useful, it can’t be the only thing used to measure the feminism of a film or a play (a use Bechdel never intended). The ridiculously retrograde Twilight, for example, passes (doormat heroine, Bella, talks briefly to her mother about moving to a new town) while Gravity, which has a fierce, clever and interesting heroine, fails.

5. On this note, let's see how some popular films fare.

1. Passed: Beauty And The Beast, Wonder Woman

2. Failed: Thor 2, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

3. Failed But Feminist Films: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Gravity, Breakfast At Tiffany’s

6. Sometimes women’s conversations about men are feminist. Two women discussing being bullied at work by a man would make for a feminist drama – certainly preferable to a play in which two women briefly compared shoes but spent the rest of the time serving the narrative arcs of the men. Conversations about fancying or loving or sleeping with men can be feminist too. I don’t believe it is un-feminist to ask how we can have relationships with men (because some of us do want to); to ask what makes a man a feminist and what we can expect from men; to ponder how we can achieve equality in our romantic lives.

7. If we use the Bechdel Test as a way to analyse the dire state of film when it comes to female representation, then when it comes to the representation of lesbians and queer women, things are even worse. Rarely afforded the chance to tell their own stories outside of indie filmmaking, lesbian women are almost invisible in comparison to your average straight (often also white, able-bodied and middle class) woman.

8. Perhaps one of the great ironies of the Bechdel Test is the way it in and of itself is a symbol of female erasure—now, when people discuss the Bechdel Test, the vast majority know little of Alison Bechdel and Dykes to Watch Out For’s role in lesbian history.

9. This watering down of history is a reminder that gender is not the only thing that makes a film ‘diverse’. Identity is a multi-faceted thing, and sexuality, class, race, as well as a myriad of other markers all important when it comes to the diversity conversation.

#dearmrmedia #makingmediagenderjust #feminism #intersectional #representation #poc #lgbt #media #women #timesup #feminisminindia #equality #gender #feministmedia #sexistmedia #sexism #womensrights #women #womensempowerment #genderjustice #diversity #resist #indianfeminist #intersectionalfeminism #feminist #portrayal #bodyshaming #femalepositivity #strength #eachforequal #eachforequality