You’ve heard of the Bechdel Test. It’s widely used as a standard for whether movies have adequately represented female characters in their fictional worlds. All you have to do to pass is 1) have two named female characters who 2) talk to each other 3) about something other than a man.
But is it enough? Is it even helpful?
Some say no.
Over at Slate, there’s a conversation brewing about this question. Katy Waldman points out that Alison Bechdel herself is a little nonplussed that the Test caught on as a universal standard for female representation in works of fiction. The Test originally came from a 1985 comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For. Originally, the standard was intended as something of a sardonic joke, an observation about the lack of fully-realized female characters in film: Just think of how few movies pass this pathetically low bar for female representation!
That this pathetically low bar has been enshrined as a widespread standard for female representation is occasion for some reevaluation. As Waldman points out, the test isn’t even always accurate:
[T]he test (which, again, Bechdel never intended to be the only word on the matter) seems potentially misleading. Women can come off as human onscreen without passing (if, say, “Charlotte” talks to “Ellen” about a man named Kierkegaard), or they can inhabit films that pass the test and still treat them like sexy mannequins (Charlotte: “I love your pink heels!” Ellen: “They match my underwear!”).
Waldman reached out to writers and critics for their suggestions for updating the rule. Here’s a good one that came from Roxane Gay:
1. A woman’s story is being told. She is not relegated to the role of sidekick, romantic interest, or bit player.
2. Her world is populated with intelligent women who also have stories worth telling, even if their stories aren’t the focus of the movie.
3. If she must engage in a romantic storyline, she doesn’t have to compromise her sanity or common sense for love.
4. At least half the time, this woman needs to be a woman of color and/or a transgender woman and/or a queer woman because all these women exist! Though she is different, her story should not focus solely on this difference because she is a sum of her parts. She is not the token. She has friends who look like her so they need to show up once in a while.
5. She cannot live in an inexplicably perfect apartment in an expensive city with no visible means of affording said inexplicably perfect apartment.
6. She doesn’t have to live up to an unrealistic feminist standard. She can and should be human. She just needs to be intelligent and witty and interesting in the way women, the world over are, if we ever got a chance to really know them on the silver screen.
What do you think? Is it time to update the Bechdel Test? And if so, are the rules Roxane Gay proposes a good alternative?
