My Little Pony (1986), in its direct emulation of the successful entertainment-cum-advertising juggernaut synergy employed by such predecessors as Transformers and Masters of the Universe, was also perhaps behind the curve in targeting young girls via the medium of Saturday morning cartoon. Rainbow Brite and She-Ra: Princess of Power had both staked their claims on the airwaves (and toy aisles) by the time the My Little Pony ("MLP") television series came along, a fact which is stunning to realize when comparing the animation quality of (at times) primitive MLP in comparison. Animation budget notwithstanding, MLP did manage to corner one market that its contemporaries did not: a nebulous space of True Girldom, a world where boys and men were practically nowhere to be found, with the exception of incidentals, villains, and the recurring character Moochick, who held only tertiary male characteristic and was functionally sexless1. Danny Williams appeared in My Little Pony: The Movie months prior to the series release, and nobody liked that. He did not go on to appear in the animated show.
Ponyland is a Virgiarchy, if you will. The agency of Pony, and therefore Girl, is unquestioned.
Alison Bechdel conceived of The Bechdel-Wallace Test, which has come to be popularly known as simply The Bechdel Test, in her seminal comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. The 1985 strip, presented not as an academic treatise because it is a comic strip, briefly explores a cultural experiment: what if women only watched movies in which two named characters who are women must hold a conversation on any topic other than a man? By centering the perspective of the female moviegoer, the comic makes a wry satirical statement about presence of female characters in popular film, and their common collective role as accessories to male protagonists or love interests. The concept of The Bechdel Test was later expanded in media criticism, academia, and culture writ large to interrogate the gender inequality in any work of fiction, not just movies.
The Bechdel Test is not without its flaws, and it is important to keep in mind its original context as a short, satirical comic strip. One criticism made by scholars is the misapplication of the Test to determine the "quality" of representation in media. The test fails to consider the role played by men within the narrative in relation to the women, as well as the period and cultural mores surrounding the piece. If using only the Bechdel Test as a clumsy measuring stick, Lysistrata would be considered a failure of feminine representation. In her 2017 Medium essay "Stop Using the Bechdel Test to Measure Feminism" Bri Castellini discusses the failure of the Bechdel Test to account for racial intersectionality in its criteria, and also writes "the Bechdel Test does not measure “how successfully a film treats women like human beings.” In fact, using the Bechdel Test like this might actually make things worse[...]"
My Little Pony does not treat its women like human beings because they are, in fact, ponies. Despite its presentation of utopic True Girldom, it would fail to pass the Bechdel Test were that the sole criterion.
Though the ponies of Ponyland are limited in their abilities and must often seek the assistance of human Megan Williams, they exercise agency and critical thinking in order to do so, leaving Ponyland only when pressed by duress to enter the human world, like Orpheus to the Underworld (Greek mythology would absolutely not pass the Bechdel Test).
In his 2025 YouTube video "Mating Season," Scootertrix "Jack Scootertrix Studios" Studios deconstructs the True Girldom fantasy of My Little Pony, using The Bechdel Test as a satirical prism to reflect a one minute Greek tragedy.
In "Mating Season," Lofty is in the human world, presumably to requisition the aid of Megan in order to combat a threat to Ponyland. Lofty continues, in the opening seconds, to pronounce Megan's name incorrectly to comic effect, a detail which perhaps intentionally contradicts the events of "Pony Brains Forget Names" (2024), in which the ponies vowed to not mispronounce Megan's name and expressed regret for having done so in the past. Is Lofty's mispronunciation here a deliberate detail meant to exhibit the ponies' willful detachment from their human allies and the world beyond? Or does it suggest a quantum disruption in the timeline? Most likely, it is because most Scootertrix Studios viewers only want to laugh at the funny "Meegan" jokes, which kind of sucks if you think about it.
Upon meeting Megan's horse, "Mister Bechdel McMiggins," Lofty's goal of obtaining diplomatic aid is immediately waylaid, as she seems to spiritually transform, mesmerized by the raw sexual allure of Mister Bechdel McMiggins. This horse (Mister Bechdel McMiggins) ostensibly has no way to communicate with the ponies, to reciprocate flirtations or express consent, which assists the tight narrative in implying that he is nothing more than a sexual object in their eyes. The previous objective of helping Ponyland, of agency and actualization, is replaced by the objective of Mister Bechdel McMiggins.
It is not necessary to contextualize Lofty's reaction through the lens of the 2024 Scootertrix Studios video "Ponies vs The Incels," though it does present a striking contrast to underline the tragedy of her arc in "Mating Season." The human men anachoristically present in "Ponies vs The Incels" were remarked to be a boring nuisance by Lofty, who personally sought the Moochick for details on how to expel them. It was ultimately the presence of Megan - a real human girl - who drove away the human men, who preferred the company and raw sexual allure of the ponies. What is to say that Mister Bechdel McMiggins does not feel the same in this moment but is unable to run, being literally and figuratively bridled by his domestication and voicelessness, forced to endure the attention of the ponies?
There is no resolution to "Mating Season." It is a frank lament that finds the two named ponies (Lofty and Cherries Jubilee) devolving into unintelligible discord (lower case d, calm down), each depersonalized and single-minded in her new objective. Feral, shadows of their former selves. Megan looks on solemnly in the haunting final shot, tacitly aware as a pubescent girl of the curse now befallen the ponies.
By naming the horse "Mister Bechdel McMiggins," and lampshading the theme of the video by having Megan mention "they're running some tests on him," Scootertrix Studios turns this diminutive masterpiece into a powerful statement on flawed analysis of female protagonism in media, signifiers over context, and the narrative value of objective driving character.
Despite the True Girldom of Ponyland, there exists a universal, sexless narrative of adventure, fantasy, and horse peril. Any brief appearances by men in the story are in service of this narrative, because the broad objective of all ponies is to live in happiness and harmony.
It is only when confronted by sex, and the concept of lust that a new objective appears, and becomes the focal point. Lust, as a concept, seems geo-locked to the human world, or else it is magically barred from Ponyland; the text is unclear on this point. Either way, the effect is remarkable, as the viewer is left to reflect on how sex and lust may be distracting so many humans from the objective of happiness and harmony. There is certainly an asexual, or even anti-sexual, reading to be had of "Mating Season," but it remains the story of two ponies (read: women) driven mad by the sudden recontextualization of their world and objective. Despite failing the Bechdel test, if that is not a narrative worthy of being called a feminist one, what else is?
1 This essay makes the editorial choice to ignore the Somnabula arc and the brief appearance of the Big Brother ponies, as their impact on the feminist narratives of My Little Pony (1986) are best expressed via interpretive dance.