In order for a movie to pass the Bechdel test, it must feature two women in conversation talking about something other than a man. And while the HBO series "Sex and the City" did plenty of that -- (although Manolo Blahnik is a man. Did that count?) -- Alison Bechdel and critics alike agree that the program's running diatribes about Mr. Big, Aiden, Steve, Richard, Trey, et al hampered the show from passing her eponymous test.
Nonetheless, Bechdel, whose method of assessing feminism was recognized in her long-running cartoon series "Dykes to Watch Out For," told HuffPost Live on Friday that she considers herself the show's "number one fan," even though "it doesn't pass the test, really."
"Maybe sometimes [those] female characters talked to each other about something beside a man, but not really," she recalled. "But I love that show. I would never watch any television or movies if I only watched shows that passed the test."
The "Are You My Mother" cartoonist praised today's TV landscape as doing a more diligent job of delivering on the Bechdel test criteria.
"We have a lot more to watch than we did 30 years ago, so I feel actually hopeful," she said. "'Girls' with Lena Dunham, that's an incredible show. 'Broad City' -- there's so much stuff with young women where women get to be fully human schmucks the way guys get to be on every other movie or TV show."
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