Call for Writers: Female Friendships

Our theme week for September 2014 will be Female Friendships.

Female friendships are the bedrock of feminism. The ideal of a community of women who support, understand, and love each other is a source of succor for sisters in need and a dream towards which the feminist movement strives.

The notorious Bechdel Test judges films based on three simple criteria: 1.) More than one woman must appear in the film 2.) They must talk to each other 3.) Their conversation must be about something other than men. The Bechdel Test has become a yardstick for measuring the most basic feminist standards for filmmaking because very few movies actually manage to pass the test’s very simple criteria. This means that female friendships, nevermind female-centric or matriarchal communities, are all but erased from cinema.

Classic films like the entire Star Wars franchise present women as anomalous, isolated Others who are likely love interests. If women happen to appear together in films, they usually don’t even rate love interest status; instead they’re decorative, sexualized objects without meaningful lines or personalities. On the rare occasion that we see women interacting on screen together, they are all too often in competition for male attention, which sets up female relationships as necessarily adversarial. This erasure of women from entertainment media along with their sexual exploitation and the stereotype of “catfighting” girl vs. girl are extremely damaging representations. If these examples are all young women see reflected around them, how will they know there are other ways of being?

There are endless power and agency in female friendships. There is purpose in those bonds, a purpose outside the pursuit of men, even if Hollywood doesn’t see it. Tell us about your favorite female friendships on screen or skewer a depiction that fails to show us meaningful female relationships.

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, September 19 by midnight.

The Runaways

The Women

Sucker Punch

Girl, Interrupted

Heathers

Xena Warrior Princess

Thelma & Louise

Now and Then

Pretty Little Liars

Foxfire

Voilet & Daisy

The First Wives Club

Beaches

The Little Princess

Steel Magnolias

Waiting to Exhale

Boys on the Side

Frozen