CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Alison Bechdel Would Like You to Call It the “Bechdel-Wallace Test,” ThankYouVeryMuch

TheMarySue: While it’s no secret that the Bechdel Test has its roots in several places, its being featured in Alison Bechdel’s 1985 comics classic, Dykes to Watch Out For, cemented it as being associated with Bechdel. Well now, she’d like to change that.

For those of you who’ve been sleeping under a rock, the Bechdel Test is when a feminist piece of media must 1) have at least two women in it, who 2) talk to each other, about 3) something other than a man. This criteria appeared in Dykes to Watch Out For, because of a conversation that Bechdel had with a friend, Liz Wallace, who mentioned those rules to her when Bechdel was looking for ideas for her comic. (PS, the rules also have roots in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own where she writes, “All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple.” And that those relationships are generally “in their relation to men.”)

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