Delko: Blonde girl's missing and the National Guard turns out to help. Hispanic girl, no one gives a damn.
Calleigh: I think there are a lot of people here.
Delko: Oh, come on, Calleigh. You saw the media's response to Lana Walker. You know? Where was the yellow ribbons for Consuela Valdez? The recovery center. It's the same song, you know? You want any real attention in this world, you got to have blonde hair and
blue eyes. No offense.
The tendency for media coverage to follow the murder, kidnapping or disappearance of only young, pretty, thin, conventional, heterosexual middle-class or higher white women, because they draw audiences where male, lesbian, fat, minority, poor and/or older victims do not. When all other factors are equal, you are far more likely to find coverage of a young white woman's disappearance than of an old black man's. Compare, for instance, coverage and name recognition for the cases of Natalee Holloway, Lori Hacking, Laci Peterson, Maddie McCann, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, and Audrey Seiler with the cases of Tamika Huston, LaToyia Figueroa, Lottie Wise and Kenji Ohmi.
It's a very nasty trope not because it implies that pretty white missing women are victims; they often are, because serial killers do in
Real Life target young women. It's nasty because it implies that other missing persons are lesser victims or even not victims at all - in other words, their fate matters less because random strangers care less about them. And of course there's also the assumption that missing persons who don't fit this trope have brought their fate upon themselves because they are flawed, and
flawed people must be bad in some way: think about
that one for a moment.
The origin of the term is unclear; although Professor Sheri Parks of the University of Maryland claims to have coined it relatively recently, it apparently has been in use among journalists (and
FARK.com) for years. It's also been referred to as "missing pretty girl syndrome" and "damsel in distress syndrome." Although it appears to be a primarily American phenomenon, there is some evidence that a similar coverage bias exists in the United Kingdom, and some people believe Canada has a disinterest in the fate of missing Native women.
Ironically, before about 1990 it was almost impossible to get the
police (let alone the media) interested in a missing person unless he was white, rich,
male, and over 30. It was assumed that any woman under 40 who disappeared had either run away or had gone to have a dirty weekend somewhere. There are even documented cases of police officers throwing out missing persons reports the moment families left the station house.
For much more information, including a detailed breakdown of the coverage cycle and links to dozens of cases, see
this article
at Wikipedia. See also
this opinion column from the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or
this column at CNN.com. And of course, news aggregator/humor site Fark.com has
its own comments on the phenomenon.
Strangely, national media attention over missing pretty white women hasn't translated to an increased chance of
finding missing pretty white women, but it has created the impression that most missing persons are pretty white women. This is of course not the case: the average missing person is over 40 and has a medical condition. (In the 1990s the average missing person was male, but these days it's about 50/50 due to a quirk of demographics having to do with World War II, of all things.) It's also resulted in increased ratings for sensationalist television news programs, but you knew that already.
Examples:
Comic Books
- Comic book example: briefly referenced in the Confessor arc of Kurt Busiek's Astro City, when a series of ritualistic killings only becomes worthy of a public panic after an archetypical blonde school sweetheart type becomes one of the victims.
Film
- Parodied in Scary Movie when Cindy Campbell sends a message to the police saying "White woman in trouble!" The next shot is of the house surrounded by police crews.
- Used in Gone Baby Gone. The kidnapping of an adorable little blonde girl gets huge media coverage. When a little Hispanic boy is kidnapped by a pedophile two months later and brutally raped to death, no-one really cares until it's all over.
Literature
- Missing White Woman Syndrome may have its roots in the 17th Century captivity narratives written by Mary Rowlandson, making this one OlderThanRadio.
Live Action TV
- This topic was addressed in the Without A Trace episode "White Balance" in which the agents investigated two cases: that of a white teenage girl and that of a black teenage boy. They must cope with the white girl's case getting constant attention and the black boy's getting none. This episode concludes with a No Ending; we're told one lives and one dies, but not which is which.
- In another Without a Trace episode, Jack confronts his new boss for focusing on a child kidnapping case at the expense of the disappearance of a lesbian case worker.
- Brought up in Veronica Mars when Weevil mentions that shortly after the murder of Lilly Kane, a little girl from his neighborhood named Marisol Reyes disappeared, but she didn't warrant the same amount of media coverage or therapy sessions for the students. (Weevil was fogging the issue, not wanting to bring up his own affair with Lilly; at the same time, Lilly was the daughter of a minor celebrity.)
- Horatio Caine moans about it in an episode of CSI Miami and tells a reporter to cover the missing (non-white) girl they're looking for that week.
- Discussed (specifically the Natalee Holloway case) in Season Five of The Wire, when McNulty and Freamon suggest that the lack of support from their bosses in solving over twenty murders is due to the victims being poor and black, leading to the episode's epitaph: "This ain't Aruba, bitch."
- In an episode of Law And Order Criminal Intent, the disappearance of a white girl on a school trip becomes the subject of a media frenzy, and is eventually tied to the disappearance of a local black girl. The mother of the black girl excoriates a Nancy Grace knock-off for only coming to her when her daughter's disappearance was tied up with the white girl's.
- Similarly, the black cop Tutuola in Law And Order SVU dispelled a crowd of nearly-violent protestors arguing just this by saying that he knew exactly how it was... and that he was going to make sure the black girl victim would get the justice she deserved.
Magazines
- The "missing pretty girl syndrome" variation was brutally parodied in The Onion with the article "Ugly Girl Killed". A little girl is brutally murdered, but there's no outpouring of sympathy and horror simply because she was homely — a deliberate reference to the frenzy surrounding the then-recent killing of JonBenet Ramsey, who was a perfect-little-princess type.
Real Life
- Unfortunately, Truth in Television, demonstrated by examples this Colorado-dwelling troper has noticed: Even eleven years after her death, you'd be hard-pressed to find an American who doesn't know who the wealthy, pretty white beauty queen Jon-Benet Ramsey is. However, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone outside the state (or indeed, anyone in the state who is not a daily local-news viewer) who have heard of Aarone Thompdon, a six-year old black girl who disappeared in 2005, or Neveah Gallegos, a two-year-old Hispanic girl who was raped and murdered by her mother's boyfriend in 2007. Indeed, this troper only suspects that the latter case received the small amount of coverage that it did because it was tied into an investigation of several (very tragically literal) fatal mistakes made by the Denver Child Services department.
- Not even the US Army is free of this trope. Compare the treatment of captured white Pfc. Jessica Lynch with black Spc. Shoshana Johnson. Both were captured in the same ambush, but Lynch received national media attention, a made-for-TV movie, a larger disability payment, and was celebrated as a hero fighting to the last bullet. Even Lynch herself thinks she received too much exposure, and accused the Army of fabricating her Hold The Line moment for good PR.
- Also Truth in UK Television. Pretty much everybody in the United Kingdom knows about Madeline McCann, and her parents are now millionaires from all the donations they've received to help find their missing daughter, despite numerous theories that suggest they were behind it.
- Which were, as far as I could tell, mostly wild speculation on the part of people who faced a couple of days with no real Maddie news. The donations went to charity, not the parents, though it's possible they've made money from the publicity (libel suits for one thing...)
- It doesn't just happen with respect to missing persons. This Troper worked as a rape counsellor for some years and can attest that although rape victims are less likely to be believed than any other victim group even with abundant objective medical evidence and witnesses, it sure helped if the victim was pretty, thin, heterosexual, female, and not aboriginal.
- When's the last time you heard the phrase "Deadbeat Mom" on television? Now think about this: the percentage of non-custodial fathers who pay their child support on time and in full is almost double that of non-custodial mothers who pay their child support on time and in full. Double Standard, anyone?
Webcomics
- Spoofed in this Muertitos comic; when the media find out the lost girl isn't thin, blonde, and leggy (but is instead chubby, blue, and has no legs), they instantly lose interest.
Western Animation
- Parodied in Family Guy where a crowd of reporters swarms the site of a school bus crash that claimed the life of a young girl and then make no effort to conceal their disappointment when it is announced that the victim's surname is Gutierrez.
- Also parodied in the
All Just A Dream simulation episode, when Stewie kills Cleveland and declares that he has to move quickly. "A missing black man? The media will be all over that."
