I Beg Your Bechdel

At this point you probably know the Bechdel Test. 

Two female people
talk at length amongst themselves,
but not about men.

Do you like my haiku?  I made it bigger for you.  Because I'm nice like that.

It's rare to find movies that pass the Bechdel test, and especially rare for those passing movies to both a.) pass with flying colors, and b.) depict healthy relationships amongst women.

Actually, point b is rare to begin with. 

A few months ago I finally watched Pitch Perfect.  I wouldn't have thought to watch it except that my coworkers at the Banana Stand raaaaaved about it.  Sure enough, I enjoyed it.  And not just because it stars my (other, younger) celebrity doppleganger.  I thought the story was weak in spots (the stuff about the not-boyfriend, the stuff about the dad, the lack of any going to class at all), but I liked that it promoted friendship among women and presented a diverse-ish group of female characters. 

You don't see that much.




I also watched Bridesmaids around the same time, which was just "okay" but certainly had similar themes.  Woman has hard time being friends with another woman--> learns to let go and just be cool about everything--> becomes better person.  Or something. 

See also:  Clueless, Mean Girls

It's so hard to find movies that focus on the stories of women without getting into the catty/jealousy/I hate other women stuff.  Mean Girls gets a pass (because it's awesome, but also) because that's really what the movie is about.  It has a romantic subplot to show how LiLo makes herself look stupid to catch a boy, and how she learns to be friends with everyone, the end.  Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect would have been the same movie without the romantic subplot. 

It was just on there, I think, because people think that's what we want to see.  I dunno.

But why is it so hard?  Why do movies featuring the stories of women have to fall into such rigid categories?  It's like they have to rom-com it even if it isn't technically a rom-com. 

If comedy + girls then output = +romance. 

Or it's a feel good Joy Luck Club (also a great movie, btw) type of movie.  Or it is EXTREMELY gendered, such as lots of terrible cartoons made for girls.

I stared at my movie collection trying to find another movie that was just a movie that featured lots of female characters being normal and NOT falling into a girl stereotype OR girl movie stereotype.

Most of my movies are sausage, sausage, everywhere.  

Then I realized ...
X-Men.  Lots of female characters who are also really important to the story and have healthy working relationships with each other.  Most of the cattiness/jealousy is Scott vs. Logan.  And the women aren't really any type of stereotypes.  They're just ... people.  Mutant people.  The latest Wolverine movie wasn't really totally Bechdel-worthy, but three out of, I dunno, six? main characters were women.  Two were childhood friends, although they didn't get much into that. 

And really, that's kind of all we're asking for.  I've seen people moan about the "Bechdel Police" RUINING CINEMA FOR EVERYONE.  We're not saying there needs to be 6000% more Mean Girls in theaters.  We're saying that it would be nice if, every once in a while, there were multiple female characters in a movie.  Who aren't just "the mother" and "the love interest."  I'm looking at the stack of movies on my shelf and trying to see how many female characters I can even remember, vs. the male character count.

They're sad, sad numbers, guys.

I've been having weird headaches as of late, so I apologize if this post lacks cohesion, clarity, or other words that start with "c."  I just want to see more vagina-Americans represented on screen.  Because it's a powerful message that we get from the media when women are depicted as certain things or in certain ways, while men get to do everything and be heroes (without even getting naked).