But if a movie for women, with female stars, about female friendships and the evils of male infidelity can’t pass the test, maybe the problem isn’t with the film, but with Bechdel’s rubric. Those applying the Bechdel Test say that this is a failure. Still, the films female friendships are all based on the women’s relationship with a single, caddish guy. Let it be known, though, that “The Other Woman” does technically pass the Bechdel Test: Kate (Leslie Mann) has a very brief conversation with Amber (Kate Upton) about how good Amber smells. Having a film featuring three female protagonists who do nothing but talk about men is, the Bechdel Test suggests, unfeminist. As Linda Holmes says in a particularly scathing review at NPR, “ “The Other Woman” is 109 minutes long, and at no time do any of these women-including Carly (Cameron Diaz) and her secretary (Nicki Minaj), who only know each other from work - pause for a discussion, even for a moment, of anything other than a series of dudes…” Vulture put a clever new spin on this argument by collecting all the lines Kate Upton says in the movie, which included: “I can’t believe he’d lie to me, I really thought we were soul mates” and “We could kick him in the balls!” Lately critics have piled on the chick flick “The Other Woman” for one specific reason: it doesn’t pass the Bechdel test- Alison Bechdel’s famous heuristic which asks whether a film has (a) two women who (b) talk to each other about (c) something other than a man. I tried to notify the editors, but they didn’t do anything…so what the hey, I figured I’d reprint it here, since they don’t seem to want it.

This first ran on Salon…and then Salon deleted it.

False Colors by Alex Beecroft