Why media made by and for girls matters.

To kick off May and our $40K in May Crowdfunding Campaign we asked Student Board Member Maya Alter to blog for us.  Maya has attended Camp Reel Stories for three years and is part of the creative team that produced Brett: The Journey, one of our most watched and requested films ever.

Why creating our own Media Matters.

I don’t usually have a lot of time to sit down and watch TV, my time for media is usually dedicated to short videos, or Instagram, if anything. Esther asked me that for this post I talk about media that portrays girls well. I thought about it for an entire day, looking at the ads I saw between youtube videos, the Instagram posts I’d see, and the comments I’d read. I went back to the other student board members, pleading that there was nothing there, the closest I found were our own videos made at Reel Stories, everything else sucked and we should move to a farm with no internet. Although some of this was a joke, I did feel a bit of helplessness, seeing that few things I saw online I really connected with. It’s not the most positive light, but look at everything through rose colored lenses doesn’t solve your problems, just makes them easier to digest.
I don’t really see that whole moment of panic as a way to feel helpless, it just helped me realize exactly how important the community of Reel Stories is. I came into the camp and learned the inequalities of the film business from people who lived it. I learned to direct that frustration not on the people in it, but the films I created. Success is the best form of revenge, and dammit if I’m gonna get revenge it sure as hell will be the best.