Today's Reading
Our professor used the Bechdel Test to measure the representation of women in fiction and film as well as to analyze how women are depicted in any given work.
There are three main criteria for the Bechdel Test: two women must be featured, who talk to each other, about something other than a man.
Sounds simple, right?
However, a study of gender portrayals in the most successful US films over the past six decades showed that, on average, there were two male characters for every female. Moreover, a woman had the most dialogue in only about 20 percent of those films.
The same tends to hold true in literature.
I began to read a passage from our textbook. And, yes, I still carried textbooks. I was a unicorn on campus.
"Virginia Woolf mused on women's depiction in literature way back in the 1920s, writing, All these relationships between women...are too simple... I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends...it was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that..."
"And," Gin interrupted, "Virginia Woolf ironically had to use a pen name, E. V. Odle, to preserve her reputation as a serious writer when she began to write science fiction. That gender neutral pseudonym not only allowed her to try her hand at something decidedly different but also profit within a male-dominated genre. Though we remember her for Mrs. Dalloway, it is her sci-fi serial The Puppeteer God that, decades later, influenced the megahit franchise The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves."
"God, we're smart," I said.
They laughed.
"Hi, Angels!"
Another fraternity boy, hat on backward, winked.
"Wanna study sometime?" he asked us.
We looked at one another.
"Really?" Gin asked.
He nodded.
We all remained silent, not fully trusting the situation. He suddenly smiled, mistaking our reticence for complicity.
"Cool. Three women in my room at the fraternity house. Now, there's a book Marcus Flare should write!"
"Do you think women need a man like you?" I asked.
He flexed a muscle and smiled. "I do."
"Well, I don't!"
"You do more than anyone, Emma," he said.
I gave him the finger and off he went.
"I'm so glad an English major and journalism major talked me into taking this class," Juice said. "It just reaffirms why I want to be a finance major. I want to control the money of the men who control the world. If women don't have their own money, they don't hold any power."
The three of us instantly positioned ourselves into the famous Charlie's Angels pose.
As we did, Juice glanced at her Apple Watch.
"Oh, hell, we gotta go, Gin," she said. "All the way across campus in twenty minutes."
"Meet in the commons at five?" Juice asked.
I nodded, and my friends took off in a run. I watched them until they faded into the fall light.
I stared up at the Michigan maples. They were still the same trees, the same red I saw as a girl every autumn with my grandma.
I looked down at the book in my lap, the edge of the leaf peeking from the pages. I opened the novel again with a sigh and began to read again until I came upon a passage that made me think I had lost my mind. I read it—again and again—not believing my eyes.
Whether or not it ever grows to see the light depends on how deep you bury it.
I immediately picked up my phone and called my grandmother.
It was a few weeks into the semester, and I'd been remiss to share with my biggest supporter what was going on in my life.
...
