Bad Girls Gematria: A Moral Calculus
by Jennifer T.

But how does this have anything on earth to do with Bad Girls?  Well, we thought it might be fun and interesting, or at the very least amusing, to attempt to put some numerical values not to letters or words, but to certain general impressions that viewers have gotten from watching the show.  Bad Girls depicted marginalized characters, normally despised by society, in what feels like a very positive light.  We felt a bizarre need to generate firm, hard numbers to "prove" whether Bad Girls depicts lesbian characters in a more positive light than straight characters.  It has often been said this is the case, and the legions of lesbian fans who follow the show are surely evidence that it does.  But can we prove it mathematically?  And what about the officers versus the prisoners?  Are the prisoners depicted in a more sympathetic light?  Similarly, does Bad Girls privilege lesbian relationships above all others?  Or is it just the show's intensely successful depiction of one lesbian relationship in particular which gives us that impression?  All these questions, and more, will be answered in the charts below.

Methodology

In order to come up with numerical values which represent the show's representations of men and women, gays and straights, we had to start by assigning each significant character, and each significant relationship into a category.  For the individual characters, we identified them as male or female, then straight or gay, prisoners or officers, and then good or evil or other. ^[2]  For the relationships, we identified them as straight or gay, and then created three categories: 1) In Love, 2) Casual, and 3) Insane.^[3]

In most cases, the categorizations were pretty clear.  But of course as in any endeavor of this slightly wacky sort—distilling complex, nuanced meaning down to concrete numerical values—ambiguity arises.  For instance, is Arun, the transgendered, seemingly bisexual but perhaps straight character from season 7 straight or gay?  Is Neil Grayling good or evil?  Were Helen and Sean in love?  We had to take our best guesses, based on general consensus.

We then weighted each character based on how long they were on the show.  We felt long-running characters created more impact, and therefore should weigh more heavily in the calculations.  Every character (guest star and regular alike) started with a weighting of 1.  Then, for each season the character was on the show, they were allocated an additional .25.  So a single-season character like Monica Lindsay counted as 1.25, a guest star like Thomas Waugh counted as 1, and a multi-season character like Di Barker counted as 2.50.  For the relationships we created a slightly different weighting system, since relationships are generally shorter in duration than characters, and yet there was still a need to differentiate between one-night stands and sustained romances.  So every "couple" started with a weighting of 1, and then received an extra .5 points for every season their relationship lasted.  So Helen & Nikki were 2.5, Helen & Sean were 1.5, and Helen & Thomas were 1.

After every character and relationship was categorized, we did some calculations, looking at different categories of characters and relationships, and comparing the breakdowns of good and evil characters, in love and insane relationships, and the results are undeniable....

Individual Character Conclusions

As expected, the female characters on Bad Girls are more likely to be good than the male characters.  In addition, a much higher percentage of male characters are evil than female characters.

To slice it a slightly different way, we compared the overall distribution of male and female characters with the gender distribution just among the good characters.  This comparison also demonstrates that the good characters are more likely to be female: 77% of all characters are female, but of the good characters, 80% of them are female.

There is an even more noticeable difference when comparing straight characters with gay characters.  A much higher percentage of the gay characters are good: 82% versus 59%.  This is particularly significant, given the long tradition of negative depictions of lesbians onscreen, particularly in films and television programs about women's prisons.

In addition, when compared to the general character population's distribution of gay and straight characters, the good characters are more likely to be gay than the general character population is likely to be gay.

And, as expected, a higher percentage of prisoner characters are good than officer characters, and a lower percentage of prisoner characters are evil than officer characters.  This difference reflects the progressive and humanizing perspective of the show, which tried, wherever possible, to portray convicted criminals in a positive and sympathetic light.

   

And, as with the gender and sexuality comparisons, the percentage of the good characters who are cons outweighs the percentage of cons in the character population as a whole, again reflecting the generally positive depiction of this marginalized population.

Relationship Conclusions

If it seems like the moral valuations of the individual characters demonstrate a distinct privileging of gay characters (and gay women characters in particular), the depiction of relationships drives that point home even more clearly.  Nearly three-quarters of the gay couples depicted on the show were portrayed as in loving, positive relationships.  Less than 40% of the straight relationships can boast the same.  In addition, a three-times higher share of straight relationships were portrayed as completely dysfunctional.  Only two brief gay relationships could be categorized that way (Nikki's brief fling with Caroline Lewis, and Natalie's seduction of Kris).  These numbers reflect the care with which the show repeatedly undermined stereotypes and negative depictions of gay relationships.

And while only 32% of the relationships on Bad Girls were gay relationships, nearly half of the positive, loving relationships depicted on the show were gay relationships.

Continuing with our examination of the depiction of prison officers compared with prisoners, the contrast is far more striking when it comes to relationships.^[4]  First, both the prisoner relationship category and the between-the-bars con-screw relationships have roughly equivalent, quite high percentages of loving relationships.^[5]  The prison officers, led by the likes of Di Barker and Karen Betts, seem to fall into dysfunction again and again, with nearly half of the officer relationships categorized as dysfunctional.

The breakdown is almost more striking when comparing the breakdown of all relationships with the breakdown of loving relationships.  While half of the relationships depicted on Bad Girls were screw relationships, less than a third of the loving relationships were screw relationships.  In fact, the screws (and the cons) were both more likely to experience a loving relationship if they got involved with a prisoner: 40% of the loving relationships were between-the-bars relationships, the highest share.

A big thank you to the following folks who really got a kick out of this crazy convergence of math and television, collaborated on a fair weighting system, debated the goodness and badness of various characters, and generally pushed me to the limits of obsessive analysis: popstalin, DontUWish, Cassandra, Xenaclark, microsofty, Lisa289, solitasolano, msalt, ekny, Washuai, Jeanna

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