The Bechdel Test, Bechdel-Wallace Test, or the Mo Movie Measure
* named after Mo, the main character of DTWOF, even though it was introduced in a one-off strip before Mo was introduced
, 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.*
The exact interpretation of this can vary; some feel that it's okay to mention a man or men so long as they're not the primary subject of the conversation, while others will demand a conversation where men aren't mentioned at all.
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 or
two characters. 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.
This is because
the Bechdel Test is not meant to give a scorecard of a work's overall level of feminism. It is entirely possible for a film to pass without having overt feminist themes — in fact, the original example of a movie that passes is
Alien, which, while it has feminist subtexts, is mostly just a sci-fi/action/horror flick. A movie can easily pass the Bechdel Test and still be incredibly misogynistic. Conversely, it's also possible for a story to fail the test and still be strongly feminist in other ways, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. What's a problem is that it becomes a pattern — when
so many movies fail the test, while very few show male characters whose lives seem to revolve around women, that says uncomfortable things about the way Hollywood handles gender.
It's obviously easier for a TV series, especially one with an
Ensemble Cast, to follow this rule than a film, because there's far more time for the conversation to occur in. To compensate for this, Bechdel-inspired analyses of television often look episode-by-episode, or compare the series' compliance with Bechdel's Rule with its compliance with a "reverse Bechdel rule" with the roles of men and women swapped (even without such compensation, it's often surprising to notice how long it takes many TV shows to pass). Another tactic would be the probability that a typical two-hour collection of episodes would pass.
Compare
The Smurfette Principle — works that follow
The Smurfette Principle include a female character strictly for demographic appeal but make no real attempt to treat her as an interesting character in her own right, outside of her relationships with the male characters. See also
Never a Self-Made Woman, which shows that even a well rounded female character with her own goals is most often only relevant to the story by her relationship to a man. Finally, see
Token Romance and
Romantic Plot Tumor for the effects of Hollywood's belief that both male and female audiences are generally uninterested in female characters except in the context of romance with a male character.
Works that reference the Bechdel Test (named or not):
Literature
- The Doctor Who fandom book Chicks Dig Time Lords includes an essay about companion Nyssa of Traken. The author points out that many of Nyssa's episodes pass the Bechdel test, and includes a brief explanation of what the test is.
Webcomics
Web Original
Other
