Why Passing the Bechdel Test Still Feels Radical

Before I share a scene from Brownsville Bred—one of many moments where women speak to one another about their own lives—I want to offer some context for why scenes like this still matter, and why they continue to be rarer on screen than many of us realize.

It begins with something called the Bechdel Test.

The Bechdel Test is a simple three-question measure used to observe how women are represented in film:

1. Are there at least two women in the movie

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something other than a man

That’s it.

It doesn’t measure quality or intention.
It doesn’t declare a film feminist or not.
It simply asks whether women are allowed to exist on screen as full human beings—with interior lives, relationships, and agency beyond male-centered narratives.

The test was introduced in 1985 by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. In one panel, a character explains her personal rule for deciding whether she’ll watch a movie.

What was meant as an observational joke endured because it revealed something uncomfortable: how low the bar was—and how often films still failed to clear it.

Even today, roughly 40–50% of mainstream films fail the Bechdel Test.

Many of them are iconic:
The Godfather. Goodfellas. Pulp Fiction. The Social Network. Inception. The Dark Knight. The Lord of the Ringstrilogy. Avengers: Infinity War. Whiplash. La La Land.

Beloved films. Influential films. Films that shaped culture.

And yet—no sustained space for women to speak to one another about their own lives.

The film passes it from the very first scene—introducing Elaine as a child, portrayed by Summer Rose Castillo, the younger version of the character later played by Lares. Throughout the film, scenes between Elaine and her mother, Carmen (Karina Ortiz); her maternal grandmother (Susanna Guzmán); her cousin, Marisabel (Camelia Iturregui); her neighbor, Miss Clark (April Hernández Castillo); and her friend Crystal (Milan Peyton Marsh) all pass the test.

These conversations span generations and emotional registers—family, friendship, and community; guidance and conflict—and they exist not as isolated moments, but as the connective tissue of the story.

This wasn’t accidental.

Early in the writing process, I paid advisors to read the script and give feedback. One of them—a screenwriting professor at a university—suggested that the father, Manny, should be the protagonist.

I understood the note. Manny is musical, charismatic, emotionally complex. He’s the kind of character audiences have been trained to follow.

But I also knew that if I made him the hero, I would lose the reason I was telling the story at all.

I wanted to make the film I wish I had when I was a kid.

And if the man became the center of the journey, then once again a young Latina girl would learn that her role was to orbit someone else’s transformation.

I didn’t want Elaine to witness someone else’s story.
I wanted her to be the one whose inner life mattered.
The one the camera stayed with.
The one worth following.

Because when a child—especially a young Latina girl—sees someone like herself centered on screen, something shifts. She doesn’t just watch the story. She imagines herself inside it.

That conviction is also why theatrical release mattered so deeply to me. I wanted audiences to sit in a room together and experience a Latina girl not as a supporting character or a lesson—but as the hero of her own journey.

When women are centered as protagonists, something else happens naturally.

They talk to one another.
Their relationships have texture.
Their conversations reflect real life.

Brownsville Bred passes the Bechdel Test not because it’s trying to—but because it refuses to sideline women’s inner worlds.

That choice began on the page.

And I never let it go.

After you watch this scene, I invite you to do something simple.

Return to a few of your favorite films.
Listen for who is allowed to speak.
Notice who the camera chooses to stay with—and who it leaves behind.

See how many pass the Bechdel Test.

And if you want to experience a story told from the inside out—one that stays with a young Latina girl as she learns who she is and who she’s allowed to become—Brownsville Bred is now available to watch on demand on Prime Video and Apple TV.

When you encounter films that do pass the test, sit with why those moments linger. And imagine what it might mean for a younger version of yourself to see someone like her—centered, listened to, and worth following.