Represent This!: An Online Exploration of the Representation of Women in Film and Television

My thesis project Represent This! is an online resource for the representation of women and film, found at http://www.representhis.wordpress.com. The Wordpress site hosts an 8,500-word essay, a resource guide, an about page and a blog. The essay explores the representation of women in media in several ways: its relation to the study of media literacy at large, the low number of women employed in the film and television industries, the history of women in film, the representation of bodies on screen and how it affects body image and eating disorders, the representation of action heroines, and the representation of girls on screen and the treatment of those young actresses off screen. The conclusion of the essay and the Resource Guide work together to provide a call to action through suggestions for a reader to better their "media diet" (what they watch and how they think about the media they consume) as well as listing movies or television shows that exemplify strong representation of women on screen and in production. The blog will be updated after this project is turned in to respond to news about representation of women in media or to write about an article or book I've read relating to the topic. I designed graphics and found Creative Commons images and video to make the site more visually appealing to read. Attached in the PDF is the full text of what is on the website (most prominently the essay) as well as an annotated bibliography and screen shots from the website.