From the Archive: The Bechdel Rule, aka Ripley’s Rule

As we near four years (!) since the inception of Bitch Flicks, this week will feature some reprints of early posts. I spent some time in our archive and can honestly say that nothing we’ve posted in the past is now irrelevant. In other words, the same issues with gender representation in movies, tv and other media in 2008 are issues today.

Here’s a piece, originally published on September 30, 2008, on the Bechdel Rule, or, as we like to call it, Ripley’s Rule.

It seems there should be a test to evaluate the role of women in any given movie.

A comic, from 1985, lays out a simple set of criteria for its characters to choose a movie to see:

1. There must be two female characters (some say two named female characters)

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something other than men.

Check out the original comic below and click on it to visit Alison Bechdel’s blog and learn about the original source of the comic and idea. NPR’s All Things Considered ran a story on the Bechdel Rule and posted an entry on their pop-culture blog, Monkey See, about new Bechdel-like rules.