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Ratatouille is another brilliant animated film from Brad Bird, who directed films like The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. In the film, Remy, a young rat, dreams of becoming a chef at Auguste Gusteau’s restaurant and seeks help from the garbage boy Alfredo Linguini. The film is weirdly delicious and won over our hearts.

However, many don’t realize that Ratatouille lacks a significant female presence and fails the Bechdel test. It is out of character for a Pixar film, which always tries to maintain the gender balance in its films. When you look back at it, you only remember Gusteau’s rôtisseur Colette Tatou as the main female character.

Ratatouille, the masterpiece from Brad Bird, represents the kitchen as a boys’ club

Not only does Ratatouille take its place among one of the most brilliant animated films, but it also fares well as a cooking-based film. The film...

The Bechdel Test is a straightforward way to check how well a film portrays women. To pass, a movie must meet three basic requirements. One, there must be at least two named female characters, two, they must have a conversation with each other, and lastly, that conversation shouldn’t be about a man.

The purpose isn’t to judge the quality of the film, but rather to highlight how often female voices and stories are sidelined. One would think by now that most films would easily pass, but it’s surprising how many big movies still fail.

Edge of Tomorrow is a prime example. Despite featuring Emily Blunt as a tough, badass soldier alongside Tom Cruise, the film doesn’t quite pass the test. Here is how!

How Edge of Tomorrow fails the Bechdel test!

Edge of Tomorrow hit the mark in many ways, great action, a cool time-loop premise,...

First appearing in 1985, cartoonist and writer Alison Bechdel and her friend Liz Wallace devised the Bechdel Test as a straightforward evaluation method used to explore the representation of gender in entertainment. Three rules must be satisfied for a work to pass the test.(1) at least two women are named and featured, (2) these women talk to each other, and (3) they discuss something other than a man.

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In 1985, cartoonist Alison Bechdel drew a sequence in her strip Dykes to Watch Out For that depicted a pair of women walking by a movie theater. “I have this rule,” one says. “I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements: One, it has to have at least two women in it who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.” The punchline is that under those standards, the last film she was able to see was Alien – released six years prior.

The Bechdel test, as the three rules came to be known, has since entered the cultural vernacular as an earnest gauge of gender representation in media. It has spawned variants aiming to account for inclusion behind the scenes as well as intersectionally, sometimes getting extremely granular about stereotypes and tropes in depictions involving women (“one...