Popcorn feminism

That's What She Said, 2011

I was on a long haul flight recently, and so, with very little to do other than play guess-the-foodstuff, I ended up watching rather a lot of films. It strikes me that there are few activities quite like watching back-to-back movies for noticing the extent to which women are sidelined in popular culture. First, I saw The Social Network, a story about the origins of Facebook, where the female characters range from a psychotic girlfriend (bitches be crazy!) to underage interns. The clear role for women in the movie is to be eye candy, while men get on with the real work. Next was Tamara Drewe – another much lauded film, yet to my perhaps over-simplifying eyes, seemed to centre on how the heroine gets a nose job and – wow! – suddenly can sleep with any of the losers who now want her (and does). If the message was anything other than women have to be hot in the way society demands, I missed it. Then, finally, I watched Get him to the Greek. I wasn’t expecting much, and didn’t get much. Women: they can be really sexy and let you sleep with them but sometimes they’re whiny and want to watch Gossip Girl.

Uninspiring stuff. It’s not that all films have to have strong, confident women who aren’t on impossible pedestals taking the lead roles – it’s just that it would be nice sometimes. With this in mind, the Bechdel Test is a great way to think about films. It has three basic criteria for a movie to pass: it has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something other than a man. It’s actually incredible how few films pass this test, and of course, films can pass it without being the epitome of progressive feminism, but go to bechdeltest.com for a list of films that meet these criteria at the very least – and enjoy trying to find your ideal film (whilst, of course, eating a very necessary amount of popcorn).