Women:

Jehoram and Areala, the Bechdel test is interesting, but I don’t feel it is exact enough. I wouldn’t say that a story that only has one such dialog would necessarily be female-centric and I would say that a dialog where two women are discussing a man would be female-centric, as long as the reader is shown the women’s characters and feelings. But it is a good start.

Wise yes you are right – good point. I didn’t feel that for my purpose in posting this the story, plot, conflict and resolution were that important. What was important is that “This story would highlight the companionship among the women. Their relationships between each other, as well has their individual emotions, pleasures, fears, disappointments and achievements.” Actually the plot and the ending are not very important to me in reading. What is most important are the images conveyed to me, noting that dialog can convey images. While I haven’t thought of them yet, the resolutions would be different for each women in their particulars, but in general I would have each woman learn something important about themselves which would help lead them to a happier life.

To all, I plan to add to this scenario tomorrow.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
Jehoram and Areala, the Bechdel test is interesting, but I don’t feel it is exact enough. I wouldn’t say that a story that only has one such dialog would necessarily be female-centric and I would say that a dialog where two women are discussing a man would be female-centric, as long as the reader is shown the women’s characters and feelings. But it is a good start.

Yeah, the Bechdel Test is far from the be-all, end-all classifier some people make it out to be. There are plenty of fantastic films that fail it for reasons having nothing to do with gender discrimination (John Carpenter's "The Thing" springs readily to mind), and just because a film passes the test doesn't mean it's automatically great cinema ("Alien Resurrection", anybody?), but it serves as an interesting litmus test anyway. :)
 
Jehoram and Areala, the Bechdel test is interesting, but I don’t feel it is exact enough.

Yeah, the Bechdel (or Bechdel-Wallace) test is not a fool-proof way of evaluating individual movies. It's more useful as a way of assessing the big picture: e.g. if a studio releases fifty movies and only five of them pass Bechdel, well maybe some of the other forty-five are exceptions but it's pretty clear that there's an imbalance overall.

(Note how hard it is to find films that don't pass the reverse Bechdel test: i.e. they don't have two named male characters talking about something other than a female character.)

Various people have proposed alternative tests. For example, there's the Mako Mori test: does the film have a female character who gets her own story arc that isn't about supporting a man's story?

I rather like the Sexy Lamp With A Post-It Note test: does that "strong female character" have any effect on the plot that doesn't boil down to "be object of attraction and/or provide information"? It gets at the concept of agency: do the choices made by this character matter, or is she just supporting cast?

I wouldn’t say that a story that only has one such dialog would necessarily be female-centric and I would say that a dialog where two women are discussing a man would be female-centric, as long as the reader is shown the women’s characters and feelings. But it is a good start.

Yeah, the Bechdel test is a pretty low bar! It's telling that so many films still fail it.

Yeah, the Bechdel Test is far from the be-all, end-all classifier some people make it out to be. There are plenty of fantastic films that fail it for reasons having nothing to do with gender discrimination (John Carpenter's "The Thing" springs readily to mind), and just because a film passes the test doesn't mean it's automatically great cinema ("Alien Resurrection", anybody?), but it serves as an interesting litmus test anyway. :)

Hmm. I like Carpenter's "Thing" a lot, but I wouldn't take it as a counter-example to Bechdel. IIRC the cast and even the crew were entirely male, except for one crew member who left early and a female voice for the chess computer.

Note that Carpenter's version is a remake of 1951's "The Thing From Another World". That did have two female characters; I haven't seen it so I don't know whether they passed the Bechdel, but going by the Wiki plot summary, at least one of them makes a meaningful contribution to the plot.

So Carpenter's remake is actually more male-centered than the original - even though, by the 1980s, it would have been plausible to have women at an Antarctic research base. (See e.g. Mary Alice McWhinnie.) Certainly less fantastic than a shape-shifting alien monster!

Like I said, I enjoy the Carpenter film, but I think it's perfectly fair to hold it up as an example of extremely male-focussed film-making.
 
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Hmm. I like Carpenter's "Thing" a lot, but I wouldn't take it as a counter-example to Bechdel. IIRC the cast and even the crew were entirely male, except for one crew member who left early and a female voice for the chess computer.

Note that Carpenter's version is a remake of 1951's "The Thing From Another World". That did have two female characters; I haven't seen it so I don't know whether they passed the Bechdel, but going by the Wiki plot summary, at least one of them makes a meaningful contribution to the plot.

So Carpenter's remake is actually more male-centered than the original - even though, by the 1980s, it would have been plausible to have women at an Antarctic research base. (See e.g. Mary Alice McWhinnie.) Certainly less fantastic than a shape-shifting alien monster!

Like I said, I enjoy the Carpenter film, but I think it's perfectly fair to hold it up as an example of extremely male-focussed film-making.


Fair points. I withdraw my nomination of John Carpenter's "The Thing", and I'll go with "Saving Private Ryan" instead, since you wouldn't expect a film focusing entirely on the experiences of front line soldiers in World War II to involve very many female characters. :)
 
Fair points. I withdraw my nomination of John Carpenter's "The Thing", and I'll go with "Saving Private Ryan" instead, since you wouldn't expect a film focusing entirely on the experiences of front line soldiers in World War II to involve very many female characters. :)

I find myself trying to apply this to real life and I'm not coming up with much.

It's pretty common in my experience that when two women talk they talk about their relationship to a man. Sometimes in front of the man in question. The relationship is important and the fact that they talk about it follows naturally. So that is male centric?

And then there's the flip side. Barber shops are male environments, and the vast majority of the conversations I've been in or heard at barber shops have been about wives and children. Does that make barber shops female centric?

Please explain.
 
I find myself trying to apply this to real life and I'm not coming up with much.

It's pretty common in my experience that when two women talk they talk about their relationship to a man. Sometimes in front of the man in question. The relationship is important and the fact that they talk about it follows naturally. So that is male centric?

And then there's the flip side. Barber shops are male environments, and the vast majority of the conversations I've been in or heard at barber shops have been about wives and children. Does that make barber shops female centric?

Please explain.

NotWise, there is feminism and there is feminism. The most common variety is the one that desires to find proof of male-centricism and subjugation of females everywhere and in everything. Supporters of this paradigm will twist the evidence in every way they can in order to prove their point. Well-founded criticism that points out the double-standards employed can and is always dismissed as yet another example of male oppression. Feminists of this persuasion are regrettably prevalent and do a great disservice to women everywhere. One example of their modus operandi is how they search for words that contain the morpheme "man" such as manage, mandatory or the name Amanda and claim that this is irrefutable proof of male subjugation of females. At best, they are imbeciles and yes, there are plenty of men who use the same kind of illogic to prove their dubious contentions.

Then you have the feminism that observes and describes what is actually and demonstrably true, such as the dearth of women in senior positions, that the wages paid women often, but not always, is less than that paid men for identical jobs and that women have to cover many miles further in order to be accorded the same accolades.
 
It's pretty common in my experience that when two women talk they talk about their relationship to a man. Sometimes in front of the man in question. The relationship is important and the fact that they talk about it follows naturally. So that is male centric?

The test isn't "the film fails if women talk about a man". It's "the film fails if that's the only thing they EVER talk about to one another".

Nobody's saying women don't have relationships (small r) with men. Just that, IRL, this is not the only thing women talk about.

And then there's the flip side. Barber shops are male environments, and the vast majority of the conversations I've been in or heard at barber shops have been about wives and children. Does that make barber shops female centric?

Please explain.

Two women talking about a child would pass the Bechdel test. If your barber-shop buddies ever talk about something other than women - football, politics, the weather, how they like their beards cut? - that would be enough to pass a gender-swapped Bechdel. It's not defined on "vast majority of conversations", it's about ALL conversations within the film being focussed on men.

Feminists of this persuasion are regrettably prevalent and do a great disservice to women everywhere. One example of their modus operandi is how they search for words that contain the morpheme "man" such as manage, mandatory or the name Amanda and claim that this is irrefutable proof of male subjugation of females. At best, they are imbeciles and yes, there are plenty of men who use the same kind of illogic to prove their dubious contentions.

That surprises me. I've hung around a lot of feminists but I've never heard any suggest that the name "Amanda" is proof of patriarchy. Can you point me at a feminist who does this?
 
I’m happy that people are talking about stories and films about women. In my first post to this topic I wrote that in a story about a woman “She would be the one that we know most about, she would be portrayed as being multiple dimensional and the story would be about her thoughts and feelings – her happiness, her fears, her ambitions, her loves and her anger. The female “star” of these stories may take stereotypical female and even passive roles, but she can also be the one who get things done and she could have an active and assertive character.

Nicole, I was thinking, the most important part, to me, about the scenario I described was that it would be about women, so your idea of “. . . making all of them except the ballerina sexually inexperienced and closet bi-curious,” could fit that concept very well. Below is the second part of the scenario that I spoke about.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
I like stories set in the past, partly because of the clothes worn by the women. In the story “The Flappers” outlined earlier, I would describe in detail the women getting dressed in their dresses, hats, shoes and so forth, as well as their underwear, their tap pants type underpants, their brassieres, their stocking and even their girdles, This underwear would be normal, not “sexy,” generally white, but with some lace.

The women would live in a pension. There would be one bathroom for everyone, one sink, one toilet, one bidet and possibly one bathtub. This would lead to some breaks in decorum. As a matter of practicality the women would get into the habit of using the toilet to pee while another woman was bathing if there is a bathtub and maybe two others are putting on makeup using the mirror over the sink. It is possible that a bathtub was not common in such an establishment in Paris in the 1920s so to make the story authentic the tub would be left out and the women may take a “sponge baths,” while in their underwear, at the sink. While most of the women would act as modestly as practical one would walk around nude even in the hallways as men are not allowed there. Also not all of the women would shave their legs or under their arms and none of them shave their pubic areas.

Private matters would be written about in the story. These would be such events as the women having their periods and “borrowing” pads from each other. Also there would be occasions of the women “jilling” and trying to find a private place to do it. This would be difficult due to the women sharing bedrooms and would sometimes be attempted at night, under the bed covers while the participant tries to keep quiet. However, each woman would do it realistically, but somewhat differently.

An episode might entail one of the women, maybe one who has grown up in a rural setting, keeping a pet mouse that she feeds, something that her friends do not particularly like. Still another would have some of the women dress up as boys and to test how well they transformed their appearance they challenge each other to go into a men’s bathhouse where the men swim nude. It actually was against the law for women to wear men’s clothing in public, in Paris at that time.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
I am not only interested in stories and movies about women, but I am also interested in the lives of historical women. In the scenario for “The Flappers” see above, I wrote “The woman from America would have left home as, because of her race, she was treated as someone foreign even though she, her parents and grandparents were born in the United States.” I was inspired in this by two real life women who while American had more success in Europe.

The first was the actress Anna May Wong who was born Wong liu Tsong in 1905, in Los Angeles California. By 1919, (age 15) she was appearing in films in uncredited roles. Her first credited role appears to have been in 1921 in a movie entitled “First Born.” In 1922 (at about age 17) she appeared in her first starring role as Lotus Flower in “The Toll of the Sea.” This was an early color, silent film. It used a two color method. In many if not all of her subsequent movies that were made in Hollywood she played supporting characters and despite being third generation American in most if not all of her movies she played a non-American character. An IMDb biography suggests that the taboo against miscegenation limited her starring roles. See here http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938923/bio.

In her early twenties, Anna May Wong went to live in Europe where she appeared in movies and on the stage. In 1929 while in London she stared in the play “The Circle of Chalk.” She responded to criticism of her American accent – her “Yankee squeak” as one critic called it by taking lessons so to develop a more upper class British inflection. Here is a 1929 photograph http://images.npg.org.uk/800_800/5/3/mw79353.jpg of Anna May (photographer Dorothy Wilding). In 1930 she stared, as Hai Tang, in three versions of the same film, one in English, one in German and one in French. She could speak all three languages and as well as Chinese. While Anna May Wong appeared in each version speaking a different language, the other members of the cast differed. Each version of the movie was known by a different title: “Road to Dishonour” (English title), “Hai-Tang,” (German title) and “L’Amour Maitre des Chases” (French title). Anna May Wong also appeared on the London stage in a 1930 play called “On the Spot.” Other movies she appeared in while in Europe were the 1928 silent movie “Song,” and two 1929 movies “Piccadilly” and “Pavement Butterfly.” Here is a still from the movie “Song:” https://media.azpm.org/master/image/2013/5/2/spot/anna_may_wong_2.jpg.

In Vienna she appeared in an opera, “Die Chinesische Tanzerin” (“The Chinese Dancer”). A critic wrote “when she sings Chinese songs, strangely sad songs written by herself, in her sweet voice, the theater falls silent. And then a thundering applause breaks free, and Anna May Wong stands onstage – she is a little embarrassed, but happy as a child. The Viennese carry Anna May Wong in their hearts” (“Anna May Wong: From Laundry man’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend,” by Granham Russell Gao Hodges, pp 95 - 96).

The following link goes to a tribute video (a little over 5 minutes) with many great photographs of Anna May: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6CfcWm8LMw and here is a link to a short documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rdjiMN_NSs&t=13s (just over 2 ½ minutes).

Moonlight and Roses,
 
I'm beyond excited that there's a thread on Lit that mentions the Bechdel Test AND Geena Davis' organisation.

The way in which we just accept that stories are male-focused was really driven home to me when I watched a film called Girlhood. There's a couple of scenes where the young women get a hotel room to party in ... and party. But I kept expected guys to turn up. It's also an excellent example of heterosexual sex being written in a way that gives the young woman involved some agency. Not-great things happen (I don't think that's a spoiler), but it was a brilliant example of how you can make a woman-centric film that even tackles stuff to do with guys.

Disclaimer: Girlhood is NOT a mainstream film. But if you like non-mainstream films, I recommend it.
 
Kim, I’m beyond excited to read your post. When I was young I did mostly go to see male-focused movies, because there were and are more of them and because being a male, a boy, I just assumed I would enjoy them more. But then I realized I was missing out on a lot. Thank you for mentioning “Girlhood” I’m going to look for it and it being a non-mainstream film is not a problem for me at all. To return the favor I going to mention one of my favorite films of all time that is “Stage Door” (1937). It was nominated for best picture in 1938. Every once and a while it is shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Since it fits this topic I plan to write about here in the future, but I won’t say more about it now.

Moonlight and Roses (Tom),
 
Kim, it seems that there are two films named “Girlhood” one a documentary by Liz Garbus (2003) and the other by Celine Sciamma (2014). My guess is that you meant the 2014, “Girlhood” (original title “Bande de filles”) by Celine Sciamma. Right after reading your comment I watched the trailer for the Celine Sciamma movie and saw an interview of Karidja Toure who plays Marieme. I am very excited about seeing this movie and so I thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
Earlier I wrote “I am not only interested in stories and movies about women, but I am also interested in the lives of historical women. In the scenario for “The Flappers” see above, I wrote “The woman from America would have left home as, because of her race, she was treated as someone foreign even though she, her parents and grandparents were born in the United States.” I was inspired in this by two real life women who while American had more success in Europe.” The first woman was Anna May Wong who I wrote about above.

The second woman who inspired me for the American woman in the scenario “The Flappers” is Josephine Baker who was born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, as Freda Josephine McDonald. McDonald was her mother’s last name. Her mother was a laundress and her father, who was a drummer, soon left the small family. During her youth Josephine worked cleaning houses, babysitting and waitressing and by age 14 she started performing professionally as a comedian. In a short time she joined the chorus of “Shuffle Along,” worked at the Plantation Club in New York and was in the Broadway show “The Chocolate Dandies.” In 1925 Josephine arrived in Paris with the show “La Revue Negre.” This was the real start of her success as an entertainer. After Paris she went with “La Revue Negre” to Berlin and when she returned to the French capital went on to perform at the Folies Bergere. While in Paris she ran her own nightclub “Chez Josephine.” She performed in a number of movies during the 1920s to the 1950s and starred in the 1934 “Zouzou” and the 1935 “Princesse Tam-Tam.” She became a French citizen in 1937.

With the June 1940 surrender of Paris to the Nazis, Josephine joined the French Resistance as a courier and spy. Later she received honors from the French government for her patriotic work during the war. Starting in 1954 Josephine adopted 12 children.

Here is a link to a 3 minute plus video entitled Josephine Baker – Bye bye blackbird (1927) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXQPrtJYCJs&feature=related. A second link is to a video (just under 3 minutes) entitled La Vie en Rose – Josephine Baker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk5yn8q6GNM one of my favorite songs and here is one to a video (about 3 minutes) of Josephine Baker singing “Haiti” from the movie “Zouzou” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KlUGxlgEPU. I am intrigued by Josephine Baker’s life story and I enjoy her singing. The lyrics to the song “La Vie en Rose” and maybe the music itself are by Edith Piaf who also made the song famous.

In the scenario for “The Flappers” I wrote about a woman who physics and mathematics student at The Sorbonne. While that was not common it is not unrealistic. Marie Curie (Mme. Curie), born in Warsaw in 1867 as Maria Sklodowska, had been honored with a Noble Prize for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911, studied physics and mathematics at The Sorbonne during the 1890s and later taught there.

Moonlight et La Vie en Rose.
 
When I read through I cannot help but ask why the fixation on exceptional women? Personally, I think you'd learn more if you read works such as Blood Sisters by Marilyn Yalom (French Revolution) or the poetry of Anne Bradstreet (early 17th Century) and ask yourself what they reveal about the lives of ordinary women.


As for La vie en rose, it is solely Piaf and she herself one of the most interesting personalities and piquant fates amongst artists (for a brief résumé, the Wiki article is good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Édith_Piaf ). If you listen to the lyrics of La vie en rose as well as the mood created by the music and singer, then contrast it against the background of her life I think you'll have a whole new experience. Baker, Summer, Jones or any other artist who has covered it can only infuse their own personalities/experiences into a song that is quintessential Piaf.

This is the first verse and refrain with my translations:

Des yeux qui font baiser les miens, (the eyes that make kisses to mine)
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche, (a smile that loses itself on his lips)
Voila le portrait sans retouche (There! The portrait original, non-retouched)
De l'homme auquel j'appartiens (Of the man to whom I belong)

Quand il me prend dans ses bras (When he takes me into his arms)
Il me parle tout bas, (he speaks to me on the deepest level: )
Je vois la vie en rose. (I see "Life tinted rose")

Unfortunately, the translated lyrics (English) completely transforms the song into something quite different and lessened:

Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose

When you kiss me, Heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
 
Here are the 15 “best picture” movies that I feel are mixed female/male leads (17% of all “best pictures”). The 12 female lead best pictures can be found three comments above:

Cimarron 1931 - couple
Grand Hotel 1932 - group more male
Cavalcade 1933 - couple
It Happened One Night 1934 - couple
You Can’t Take It with You 1938 - couple
Rebecca 1940 - couple
Gigi 1958 - couple
West Side Story 1961 - couple
My Fair Lady 1964 - female/male
Annie Hall 1977 - couple
Ordinary People 1980 - group more male
Driving Miss Daisy 1989 - female/male
American Beauty 1999 - female/male
Crash 2004 - group more male
Spotlight 2015 - group more male

A list of best picture winners up until 2015 can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls009480135/
The 2016 winner was “Spotlight.” It seems to me that the full decade which best represents women in “best picture” is the 1930s, not because it has many female leads, but because it has four mixed leads and only five male leads.

Moonlight and Roses,

Just a few of my idiosyncratic responses:

On my own list of must-see movies about women I would include Hidden Figures (2016), Thelma and Louise (1991), Elizabeth (1998), and The Eagle Huntress (2016). These show very different and very real facets of women, spanning quite a range of real/realistic strong women.

In addition to the women writers AMoveableBeast listed, I'd add, specifically, Flannery O'Connor, Muriel Spark, and Isabel Allende. Among 19th century women writers, George Eliot has written some wonderful novels, as has another woman writing under a male pseudonym, George Sand, though she might be an acquired taste. As he said, there are many, many others.

And for the sake of self-promotion, I've written a few stories you may enjoy; check out the link in my signature.
 
Earlier I wrote “I am not only interested in stories and movies about women, but I am also interested in the lives of historical women.

You might enjoy "Frida" (biopic of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter) and "Belle" (Dido Belle, a gentlewoman of mixed race in 18th-century England).

Sadly nobody seems to have made a biopic about Julie d'Aubigny, but perhaps one day when Hollywood has exhausted the possibilities of remakes and sequels?
 
Nicole, first thank you for such an interesting post. I am not fixated on exceptional women, but I don’t see any problem with writing about them. I am interested in the lives of all women. In this topic and “The Male Form” I wrote about scenarios dealing with ordinary women. Also, Anna May Wong, Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf and Marie Curie started life as ordinary women and that is part of my interest in them. I learn about the lives of non-white, non-exceptional women, in America, by learning about Anna May Wong and Josephine Baker. I am interested in all women, exceptional ones and non-exceptional ones and all in-between. As to learning more I am learning all of the time and I learn by reading about all women. There is not much about women in history so I try to get what I can. After a quick search for Marilyn Yalom and Anne Bradstreet (I did not know of them before) I feel I would be interested in their writings and the women they wrote about. I don’t want this topic to only be of my writings and the women I know about. So, I would be happy if you were to add posts about Marilyn Yalom and Anne Bradstreet and the women they wrote about and about any other women you are interested in. I feel this topic (thread) can be made better with your input. I am happy you brought this up.

I am not clear as to your meaning in your first sentence of the second paragraph. Your point about the contrast between the song and the background of Edith Piaf’s life is a good one and I would include that the song was written at the end of the Second World War. I have long felt the song to be optimistic (even though I do not speak French) and I have known about Edith’s life. In addition I have seen a video where she sings the song in French. Thank you for your translation. I saw that you live in Western Europe. Are you French? I apologize if I asked you a question you don’t want to answer. Lastly I didn’t write more about Edith Piaf, because the post was about Josephine Baker. I would like it if you did a post about her life and connect it with the song.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
Legerdemer, I’ve seen "Hidden Figures" (very good) and "Thelma and Louise." Both "Elizabeth" and particularly "The Eagle Huntress" seem interesting. Also thank you for your list of authors. My favorite author is Jane Austen and I’m currently in the process of reading her six novels a second time.

Bramblethorn, I did see “Belle” and enjoyed it. Julie d’Aubigny seems interesting. Thank you for mentioning her. You inspired me to look into her life.

Thank you both for your input.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
The title of this topic is very general so general in fact that it includes half of all adults in the world that is approximately 2,601,000,000 people. I did that on purpose, as while my first goal was to write on the topic of stories about women I also planned to add to that another dimension. Initially I wrote that I see the topic “Women” to be a companion to “The Male Form” as they both are examinations of female and male gender roles. What I want to add to this topic now are posts about “The Female Form” and as such can also be seen as a companion to “The Male Form.” When I use the phases the Female Form or the Male Form I am not just thinking about the body, but also the face and while it can include the nude it can also include the clothed form. So the Female Form would include portraits and people who are dressed. But, very importantly I plan to show images representing all women.

To begin, here is what I feel is a very nice video, entitled “Beautiful Older Women of the World,” just under 4 minutes long and put together by Angela Gentile. I enjoy watching it and I do so every now and again. I find it calming. My recommendation, if you can, is to view the video without distractions, perhaps with the lights lowered and in a comfortable seat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD6L82Ge76I&t=7s.

I feel this video illustrates the good a smile can do for one’s appearance.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
Yeah, the Bechdel Test is far from the be-all, end-all classifier some people make it out to be.

The Bechdel Test isn't measuring great cinema. It's just an indicator of diversity (or the lack thereof) in movies. That's why it's such a low bar: it's describing a baseline that if it were applied to male characters would be a no-brainer not because of whether those films are bad or good -- that's a whole different conversation -- but because men have a level of representation in film that makes certain basic things commonplace.
 
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Cyrano, I don’t understand your comment particularly as you quoted Areala. I don’t know if anybody claimed that the Bechdel Test measures great cinema and certainly Areala didn’t. I strongly agree with Areala in her statement and she was actually agreeing with me when she wrote it.

Tom,

PS to all this is a reminder to view “Beautiful Older Women of the World,” comment #70 above.
 
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In a way this comment is a continuation of the one where I posted a link to “Beautiful Older Women of the World” see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD6L82Ge76I&t=7s and comment #70. Thus, it is a continuation of “The Female Form,” which I consider to be a new dimension to this thread. I am still continuing with the topic “Stories about Women,” so if you have something to add to that topic feel free to do so.

I see nothing “wrong” with looking at and enjoying the nude human form, whether that form is female or male and there are many, many times when I do enjoy that. To me it’s the imbalance between images of females and males and the stories about females and males that is the problem. The following link goes to a video displaying a photographic project, entitled “The Bathers” (just over 4 minutes) that was produced by Jennette Williams. To me the pictures are beautiful and to me the women in the pictures exhibit a nobility as they look comfortable in and accepting of their bodies. The women in the photographs are nude. I would recommend first viewing the video with the sound off as there is narration and it distracts from my enjoyment of the pictures, but I then recommend that it is seen a second time with the sound on. My recommendation, if you can, is to view the video without distractions, perhaps with the lights lowered and in a comfortable seat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC9fgyoiLDM.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
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I have written before that I like ballet. Somewhat similar to ballet are “silent movies” as both depend a great deal on visual expressions. Here is a list of silent movies with stories about women:

The Toll of the Sea (1922), a drama starring Anna May Wong at age 17 as Lotus Flower, this is an early color film which used a two color method. As best as I can remember no Asian characters in this movie were played by white actors or actresses.

Her Night of Romance (1924), starring Constance Talmadge as Dorothy Adams. I have read that it is a Romantic Comedy, but I saw it as being more a Romantic Drama. The plot deals with some quite serious and controversial topics.

The Red Mill (1927), starring Marion Davies as Tina, is a comedy. The adaptation to the movie screen was written by Frances Marion and it was directed by Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle under an assumed name after he was blacklisted.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) has a dramatic story as its title suggests. It starres Maria Falconetti as Jeanne d’Arc and was made in France. The acting by Maria Falconetti is very good and this films shows why I feel that some silent movies are not just movies lacking something, but represent a distinct art form in their own right.

Street Angel (1928) is a well made drama starring Janet Gynor as Angela. I would particularly recommend this film. I enjoyed it. Janet Gynor was the first winner of the Best Actress Academy Award. This was for the 1927/1928 Academy Awards.

The Mysterious Lady (1928) this film is a drama starring Greta Garbo as Tania Fedorova.

The Wind (1928) is a drama that stars Lillian Gish as Letty. It is a different type of Western told from the point of view of a woman. The scenario of the movie is by Frances Marion from a novel by Dorothy Scarborough.

Piccadilly (1929) as with “The Toll of the Sea” this film stars a now 24 year old Anna May Wong as Shosho. This film was made in the United Kingdom and is a drama.

Moonlight and Roses,
 
On the topic of the Female Form the following links go to nice videos and pictures of pregnant women – women with “baby bumps:”

The first picture is of a beautiful, nude, pregnant woman: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8v7s1OWKX1rr0erfo1_500.jpg

Here is what I see as a beautiful video of a pregnant woman modeling underwear (approximately one minute long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955...outube.com/watch?v=955kvlCWirI&has_verified=1.

This link is entitled “Extreme Belly Dancing” (just under 2 minutes long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esbdmG2fNJI.

And here is a link reportedly covering a tread in Japan where nude pregnant women have their photographs taken (just over two minutes long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnioSYTuExc&t=8s

Now we have a photograph of 14 pregnant women: http://www.momphoto.com/posing_guide/poses/Variety.jpg, very nice.

Next is a very short video (six seconds) of a pregnancy timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA41Qsjy7wY&feature=related

Finally here is something different a picture of painted baby bumps: http://resize.over-blog.com/600x600...r-blog.com/3/98/18/71/chinoises_enceintes.jpg

Moonlight and Roses,
 
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