The rules now known as the Bechdel-Wallace test first appeared in 1985 in Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. In a strip titled “The Rule“, two women, who resemble the future characters Mo and Ginger, discuss seeing a film and the black woman explains that she only goes to a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

• The movie has to have at least two women in it,
• who talk to each other,
• about something besides a man.