Marikondoing with #tidytuesday

America's story told through tiny blue dots - post offices spreading like stars at dusk, first along the coast, then racing across the plains and mountains. Watch as they multiply like wildfire during the 1900s, painting a portrait of a nation stitching itself together one letter at a time, before slowly fading in the modern age. It's a mesmerizing dance of dots that captures 200+ years of American expansion, communication, and community in just a few seconds. Kind of makes you look at your local post office differently, doesn't it?

*Data from 13th April 2021

The Bechdel Test, introduced by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985, evaluates films based on three simple criteria: (1) it has at least two named female characters, (2) who talk to each other, (3) , about literally ANYTHING besides a man. Next time you're munching popcorn, count how many conversations pass this test!

Each year displays four digits (like "1997"), and whichever position is bold tells you the median Bechdel score. Position 0 means score 0, position 3 means score 3. We pass the test when the score is 3! Meanwhile, the color intensity shows what percentage of films achieved a perfect score, ranging from deep purple (few) to bright yellow (many).

Tracing the bold positions through time reveals Hollywood's painfully slow evolution. The early 1900s show consistently low scores—women barely existed on screen except in relation to men. A subtle shift begins in the mid-century, with scores climbing from 0 to 1. The real progress kicks in around the 1980s-90s, when we start seeing median scores of 2, and occasionally 3. By the 2010s, more films achieve higher ratings, but the yellowish hues indicate we're still hovering around 60% pass rates. That's right—in 2021, four decades after we started acing the test, 40% of movies still can't show two named women having a conversation about literally anything besides a dude! It begs the question: if fictional women barely get to discuss their own lives on screen, what message does that send about women's independence in the real world?