Alison Bechdel (born September 10, 1960, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American cartoonist and graphic novelist best known for the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (1983–2008)—which introduced the so-called Bechdel test, a metric that evaluates movies on the basis of gender inequality—and the graphic memoir Fun Home (2006).

Early life

Bechdel’s parents—Bruce and Helen (Fontana) Bechdel—were teachers, and her father was a part-time funeral director (the funeral home was nicknamed the “fun home” by Bechdel and her siblings). When Bechdel was 19 years old, just months after she had revealed to her parents that she is a lesbian, her father was struck and killed by a truck, an event that Bechdel later theorized was actually an act of suicide. After she earned a B.A. (1981) from Oberlin College, she moved to New York City.

Dykes to Watch Out For and the Bechdel test

In 1983 Bechdel began writing and drawing Dykes to Watch Out For, a comic strip that soon became a mainstay in gay and alternative news weeklies across the United States. Dykes to Watch Out For ran for 25 years, with Bechdel self-syndicating the strip and eventually publishing it on the Internet. There the strip gained new life, and one particular cartoon would embed Bechdel’s name in the popular culture lexicon. In the 1985 strip “The Rule,” a character states that she will watch a movie only if it has at least two women who talk to each other about a topic other than men. In the 21st century those guidelines became known as the Bechdel test, a shorthand method to illustrate the dramatic gender disparity in Hollywood. (Bechdel herself preferred to call it the Bechdel-Wallace test to acknowledge Liz Wallace, the friend who inspired “The Rule”).

Bechdel published a number of Dykes to Watch Out For printed collections, and although the strip’s main character bears a passing resemblance to her, the comic is not overtly autobiographical. The series ended in 2008.

Fun Home

In 2006 Bechdel published the graphic memoir Fun Home, a coming-of-age story that details her relationship with her father, a closeted gay man with an obsessive eye for decorative detail, and her own emerging lesbian consciousness. The critically acclaimed work was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and it won the Eisner—the most-prestigious award in the comics industry—for best reality-based work.

In October 2013 Fun Home was brought to the stage by Lisa Kron (book) and Jeanine Tesori (score, with Kron). It captured a string of awards during its Off-Broadway run, and in 2014 it was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The musical made its Broadway debut in April 2015, and it went on to garner a dozen Tony Award nominations, winning for best musical, best actor, best direction, best book, and best score.

Other graphic novels and memoirs

In 2012 Bechdel released Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, a graphic novel that explores the mother-child bond through Bechdel’s relationship with her own mother, as well as the writings of Virginia Woolf and psychoanalysts Alice Miller and Donald Winnicott. Two years later Bechdel was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” In 2021 she published her first book in nearly 10 years, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. In the graphic memoir, Bechdel explores her interest in fitness crazes while addressing such issues as body image, interdependence, and mortality.

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She published Spent in 2025, a gently satirical graphic novel about aging progressives living in Vermont. The novel features a protagonist named Alison (who became famous for writing a comic strip titled Lesbian PETA Members to Watch Out For) and characters from Bechdel’s earlier works. The New York Times said of Spent’s “lovable but almost transcendently annoying” characters, “their frustration feels like a reassurance to readers who share it, and perhaps a gentle reminder that it’s easy to confuse being socially conscious with being self-serious.”

Personal life

In 2015 Bechdel married artist Holly Rae Taylor, who did the coloring for The Secret to Superhuman Strength and Spent.