Where are the women?

Is it so hard to have interesting, complicated female characters? Women who think for themselves? Is it so implausible that we might discuss something other than men in our free time? Ugh.

I've recently discovered something called The Bechdel Test. To pass, a movie has to fulfill these three requirements:
1) It must have at least two women in it,
2) Who talk to each other,
3) About something other than men.

Humble aspirations, you'd think. Half the world are women, surely most movies pass this test without even thinking?

Well, this video contains a list of movies that fail, I think you'll be surprised.



Yeah. They're not all pure testosterone movies. Ghostbusters? Wall-E? Toy Story, the Princess Bride, the Wedding Singer for goodness' sake! Are we that uninteresting?

Interestingly, one of the movies that passes this test is Legally Blonde. If you haven't seen it, it's about a beauty- and shopping-obsessed sorority girl who adores the colour pink. So far so blah, right? Especially given my feelings about pink. But this movie is possibly one of the most feminist mainstream movies I've ever seen. If you haven't seen it yet, UK types can watch it on iPlayer until Sunday. If you can overlook the fact that the main character has every advantage in the world (being insanely popular, pretty, and rich), it's actually pretty empowering (yes I just used that word) to see her surpass everyone's expectations and defy stereotypes. The sequel is more fluffy, but still passes the Bechdel test with flying colours.

Anyway, enough ranting from me. Todays interesting thing, although I give no guarantee that you will find it so, is the latest Nexus - an online magazine for creative writing. I've got one story and one poem in there, and I'm very pleased with it!