The cartoon here was drawn by Alison Bechdel and it first appeared in her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, in 1985.
Alright, so let’s talk about another feminist aspiration that someone who cares about women in fiction in any format–books, television, movies, etc.–should know about. It’s called The Bechdel Test, and here’s how Wikipedia explains it:
The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ BEK-dəl), also known as the Bechdel–Wallace test,[ is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.
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. Media industry studies indicate that films that pass the test financially outperform those that do not.
Bechdel Test, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test
Now, if you’re not familiar with the Bechdel Test, you might be thinking, “Wait, that’s too easy.” I mean, it should be, right? How hard is it to create a work of fiction with two women who talk to each other about something other than a guy? But when you start thinking about popular books and movies, it becomes sort of depressing to realize that actually, a lot of your favorites in popular culture might fail or only barely pass. Hamilton, for example, completely fails. Most of the Harry Potter books pass, but often only thanks to a few short clips of dialogue here and there between Hermione and a teacher or Ginny and her mom.
Of course, there’s more and more awareness around this issue, so there have been some really great things to come out recently that pass the test with flying colors. (Yeah, Black Panther!)
But now move into the romance genre, and things get a lot more difficult. I will confess that I’m pretty sure the novel I just published–Won’t Let You Go–only barely passes the Bechdel test because my main female character, Tobin, has a conversation with a girlfriend about whether their friendship would ever end. But it’s “barely” because that’s in the context of, “you just met a man, so are we still going to be friends?” He Made Pasta passes a lot better. In that story, my main female character, Lacey, has a few conversations with a rival-who-becomes-a-friend, Angela, about their work as business consultants.
I aspire to meet the Bechdel test with flying colors in as many of my own works of fiction as possible, but I do think it’s especially difficult to do in romance. After all, the romance genre centers around a relationship between two people, and although there’s been a great rise in LGBTQ romance, it’s still mostly a genre devoted to the love stories between a cisgender, heterosexual woman and man. Who are also often white. But that problem aside, the whole point of the romance is that relationship, and other storylines are usually secondary to the romance. So in some ways, the Bechdel test doesn’t even make sense for romance.
For example, take the first part of the test–whether there are two named women. A romance can stand on only two named characters at all. If that romance is between a woman and a man, then the entire story could focus just on their interaction, and there might never be another woman named at all. But the thing is, if the characters are so focused on each other or isolated from others, then it’s also pretty possible that there’s never another man named either. The Bechdel test is about equal representation, though, so in a case like that, the fact that only one woman is named wouldn’t really indicate gender inequity. It would just indicate a potentially boring story. But what might actually indicate gender inequity in a romance? How about whether there are more named secondary characters who are heterosexual, cisgender males than any other gender? That might give us a lot more to go on.
Likewise, the issue of whether a woman talks to another woman about something other than a man is kind of an awkward test for the romance genre. When the whole point is the romance itself, both love interests are going to spend a whole lot of time talking about each other. It just happens. Now, obviously, there are great romance stories that also combine other genres, and in those cases, we better have some dialogue that isn’t about love. Like, we’d probably be pretty disappointed with a romance/mystery if the main female character only talked about the main male character and never talked about the crime she was trying to solve. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s pretty uncommon for today’s romance novels.
Also, I think romance is generally richer if the main female character does care about something outside her man. I mean…does she have a job? A hobby? A group of friends? A family? A political issue that she cares about? But again, it wouldn’t always make sense to judge gender representation in a romance novel based on whether the main female character talks about one of these non-love-interest-related things with another woman. I mean, is the guy talking about something other than the girl he’s in love with? If he is and she’s not, then I’m worried. But if they’re both just obsessed with each other…well…they’re in that crazy drug-like stage of love. I’m not going to judge them unless it looks like it’s going to stay like that forever. So maybe the better test here is whether the female character shows that she has any interests outside of her man whatsoever and also whether she shows that she has close platonic female relationships that ever show up in the story.
I’ve been reluctant to review other romance books in terms of how well written they are or how strong the story is, but this subject matters to me, and I think romance needs an evolved version of the Bechdel test. So…I think I’m going to start doing some feminist reviews of romance books. Tentatively, here’s the Weslie Ashe test:
1 Are there at least as many named secondary characters who are women as men in this book?
2. Does the main female character ever have a conversation with one of those named women?
3. Once the main female character reaches “happily ever after,” will she have any female friends?
4. Do we ever see the main female character expression a passion for something (not someone) other than her love interest?
Yep. You saw it here first. Though I have the feeling this is going to be a work in progress and that I’ll end up adding questions and that it will be a more general test on how well the main female character represents women. So since it’s a “draft test,” I’d be interested to hear what you think. Comment below!