My main purposes in this project were to explore how representation influenced the way I understood my identity and to express my own progression in understanding and accepting myself as a lesbian. I wanted to show what it was like to recognize attraction to girls before I understood what a lesbian meant. My project follows the slow process of noticing, questioning, denying, searching, and eventually becoming more comfortable with an identity that had been present before I had the language for it. Instead of presenting sexuality as one dramatic moment of discovery, I wanted to show it as something that developed slowly through different experiences and forms of representation. The central idea of my piece is expressed in the opening and closing lines: “I learned girls before I learned the word.”
I accomplished this by turning my writing into a video rather than presenting it only as a written essay. I used “I’ll Believe in Anything” by Wolf Parade as the soundtrack, which is 4 minutes and 36 seconds long, and collected 28 clips to fill that entire length. I then put the clips together and placed my writing over the video. The clips come from the movies and shows that I mention in my writing. I did not arrange the clips according to a specific narrative or a specific order. Instead, I wanted them to work as a collection of videos, similar to how I describe collecting different examples of queer representation while trying to understand myself.
My source material came primarily from queer media that I encountered while trying to understand my own sexuality. I referenced The Half of It, Girls Like Girls, Bottoms, Clairebell, Atypical, Friendly Rivalry, Station 19, Grey’s Anatomy, Sterling Point, and Saving Face. I chose these sources because each one gave me a different representation of women, relationships, attraction, identity, friendship, fear, and belonging. Some are serious, some are comedic, and some deal more directly with coming to terms with sexuality. I did not choose them because they perfectly represented me. In fact, one of the main ideas in my project is that none of them did. Instead, I collected pieces from many different stories because each one gave me something that helped me understand myself.
The way I arranged the clips reflects this idea of collecting rather than following one specific story. I did not arrange them according to which movie came first or which character was most important. I brought together clips from the different sources that had meaning within the larger project. This connects to the part of my writing where I say, “I kept collecting evidence.” The video becomes another version of that collection. The clips do not have to tell one continuous story because my own process of understanding my sexuality was not one continuous story either. It was made up of different moments, feelings, questions, characters, and experiences that slowly helped me understand myself.
The song is also an important part of this project. I chose “I’ll Believe in Anything” by Wolf Parade because the idea of belief connects directly to my progression throughout the piece. At the beginning, I struggled to believe that my feelings meant what I thought they meant. I look for other explanations and search for evidence outside of myself. Toward the end, I become more willing to believe that my feelings are real and that I am allowed to name my own identity. The song connects with the larger idea of learning to believe in myself. I made the video the same length as the song so that the writing, visuals, and music could exist together as one complete piece.
What makes my text and project original is the way I combine existing source material with my own experience and interpretation. The movies, shows, characters, and song are not things I created, but the connections I make between them are personal. I am taking representations that already exist and examining what they meant to me at different points in my own progression. My writing, choice of sources, editing, and combination of different materials transform them into a personal reflection about sexuality, identity, representation, and self-discovery.
This also relates to the question of whether my use of these sources is plagiarism. I do not consider discussing and incorporating these existing works to be plagiarism because I am not claiming that I created them. I identify the works that influenced the project and use them as a source material for my own reflection. However, if I use someone else’s exact words, such as lyrics from a song or dialogue from a show, those words belong to their original creators and should be credited rather than presented as my own. My project is about responding to and transforming existing representations, not claiming ownership of them.
In all, my goal was to document my own progression from recognizing something in other girls and fictional characters to understanding that those feelings were connected to my own identity. Representation did not tell me who I was, but it gave me possibilities and helped me find language for feelings I already had. By turning my writing into a video, I brought together the images, stories, music, and words that were part of that process. I began by looking for myself in other people’s stories, but I ended with the realization that I did not need someone else’s story to define me. I could acknowledge what those stories gave me whilestill becoming the person who writes my own.
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MEDIA & MUSIC
THE HALF OF IT
Written and directed by Alice Wu
Netflix, 2020
GIRLS LIKE GIRLS
Written and directed by Jennifer Finley
Starring Harper Watters and Madeline Brewer
2016
BOTTOMS
Directed by Emma Seligman
Written by Emma Seligman & Rachel Sennott
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2023
CLAIREBELL
Created by Davika Hoorne (Mai) and Chanthavit Dhanasevi (Ter)
2025-present
ATYPICAL
Created by Robia Rashid
Netflix, 2017–2021
FRIENDLY RIVALRY
Based on the webtoon by Song Chae-yoon
South Korean television series, 2025
STATION 19
Created by Stacy McKee
ABC, 2018–2024
GREY’S ANATOMY
Created by Shonda Rhimes
ABC, 2005–present
STERLING POINT
Created by Megan Park
Prime Video, 2026-present
SAVING FACE
Written and directed by Alice Wu
2004
MUSIC
“I’ll Believe in Anything”
Performed by Wolf Parade
Written by Dan Boeckner, Spencer Krug, Arlen Thompson & Dante DeCaro
From the album Apologies to the Queen Mary
2005