Introducing the Madievsky Rule
December 21, 2020
If you’ve used the internet to read book or film reviews in the last decade, you’ve probably heard of the Bechdel test. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel introduced the test in her comic strip
Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 as a means of assessing the ways women are portrayed in fiction. The test consists of a simple yes-or-no question: Does it depict two women in conversation about something other than a man? The Bechdel test doesn’t assess the quality of representation, nor does it determine whether the work is told through a feminist lens. It’s less a summative evaluation than a quick-and-dirty assessment of whether the work meets even a basic representational standard.