I have very mixed feelings and opinions about the way girl/womanhood is represented in the media–both past and current forms. I want to love the fact that such a precious moment of so many people's lives is being cinematographically displayed and that the struggles that come with are revealing themselves to a public that would not have known any better, I cannot help but acknowledge the fact that the majority of girl media has a constant lack of seriousness, realism, and respect that it rightfully deserves.

Whether it is done in the form of failing to pass the Bechdel test, dressing young actors inappropriately,  setting absurd expectations for our country’s female youth in casting 20-year-old women as 13-year-old girls, glorifying toxic self-harm habits and practices, romanticizing substance use, objectifying and sexualizing girls and women in media, and everything far and few in between. 

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How the female form is portrayed in film and television is something that irks me so much, that I wrote half of my college essay on it (that of which I did get into my dream schools with I might add). Simply, why do we have to sexualize everything to sell it? 

This is a rhetorical question. I know why. We all do. And that’s the saddest part because we truly can’t change the audience that makes everyone money, no matter how hard we want to. However, although we may not be able to fix generational and social standards overnight, we are doing a pretty good job at starting to dismantle it.

Below are collections of what I call “femmémedia,” with femmé (the French term for women) describing this female-centric digital landscape that so much of our representation lives in. From professional photography to television series to indie and Hollywood films and even the latest trends on Tiktok–this is a compiled series of various artists that happen to be some of my favorite forms of representation when it comes to girlhood, womanhood, and the transition in between.