REALITY fails the Bechdel test. (According to Wikipedia, “The Bechdel test asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.”)

I quite like Lizzie’s troop leader . . . She asked me to lead the troop in storytelling exercises one afternoon . . .

The girls were terrific. Silly and shy, coy and rambunctious, attention-seeking, wise beyond their years, strikingly immature, they strutted about the room like little heroines in a post-modern novella written by Louisa May Alcott, edited by Ntozake Shange, with contributions from Beyoncé—the Destiny’s Child years. Their monologues, however, were a disappointment. Not because they were poorly written or lacking in style or stingy with words, but because only one girl wrote a monologue that wasn’t about getting a boyfriend, keeping a boyfriend, or losing a boyfriend.

This is a wonderful example because the girls themselves chose to play characters who want to talk about men — to an audience of women.

Related: Davis Aurini: Reality fails the Bechdel test:

Movies fail the Bechdel Test for the same reason that reality does. To put it bluntly:

• Men talk more about ideas
• Women talk more about people
• Men are focused on familial “foreign policy”
• Women are focused on familial “domestic policy”

And that’s really all there is to it: men and women are different. We have different emotional makeups, we have different drives in life, we have different attraction triggers, and we have different skills and talents.

See also: John C. Wright: Testing the Bechdel Test. “Let us quickly see what passes the test of Lefty Ideological Race Purity, or Sex Purity, as they case may be. Of the Great Books of Western Literature.”