Missing in Action: Attractive Young White Women

Every day in the United States, hundreds of adults and children disappear. Many of these are runaways, who often return, and others are fleeing abusive situations and want to start over in secrecy. But scores of these people are never, ever seen again.

When people vanish, you usually never hear about it. Law enforcement certainly does its best, but they lack the resources to find every person who disappears. And if this missing person and their family are lucky, the media may cover it – for one or two nights.

But if the missing person is an attractive young white female, you can bet the media will cover it. In fact, you can bet the farm that the media will obsess over it with exclusive after exclusive, regardless of progress, until the case is solved.

Think back to all the famous missing persons cases over the last year or two: Natalee Holloway; Jennifer Wilibanks; Laci Peterson; Lori Hacking; Elizabeth Smart; Chandra Levy. What do these people have in common? All happen to be female, attractive, young and white.

Most of these women ended up dead and I do not want to belittle that fact. I’m sure the unprecedented attention reassured their families that their missing wives or daughters would not be forgotten, and the blanket coverage may have provided leads that helped crack the case. But what about the middle aged African American woman who goes out to work one day and disappears? How about the pretty Hispanic girl who is eight months pregnant and vanishes? And the elderly Indian man who disappears on vacation? Where are their stories? How come they are not profiled in the media? These people disappear every day too; why are they not considered newsworthy?

I can speculate why the media only focuses on missing attractive white women, and while I am treading onto dangerous territory here, I also want to be honest. Race and appearance is definitely a factor with the media – not law enforcement, but the media. Most of the news directors in this country are older white men. While this may be subliminal and not intentional or racist, they may relate to these missing white women as being the equivalent of their girlfriends, wives and daughters. They are also driven by some marketing or demographic gobbledygook that says missing attractive white women means higher ratings. This may very well be a sad reality about our culture and TV viewership, and is of little comfort to the families of minorities that disappear.

There are other lurking cultural issues at work. Virtually everyone on TV – the news, celebrities and even reality shows – is fit and attractive. Most people in the real world are not fit and are not as attractive as the people generally seen on TV. I’m willing to bet that overweight and ugly people also go missing, but will never be seen on the Today Show or an evening news show. And the overweight, ugly people that vanish outnumber the attractive white women that vanish any day.

Another question: Why are attractive, young white men ever featured as a famous missing person, or any man for that matter? Is this because a missing man could conceivably take care of himself, but national alarms must only sound for missing women because women are unable to save themselves and need rescuing? I don’t know if these answers are definitively yes or no, but nobody seems to be asking them.

And here’s the kicker: More men than women in this country go missing each year. Of the almost 50,000 active adult missing person cases tracked by the FBI, 53 percent were men and almost 30 percent are African-American. But you would never, ever know this from watching the news.

I’m not the only one ranting about this. In fact, this comes up every time the national media picks up the case of another attractive missing white woman. Then the media gets criticized so often they do stories on how they’re being criticized, and trot out the news president to say age, race and sex are not a factor in their news coverage. Say what?

Fortunately there are a handful of media who focus on missing people of all types. A story about three missing Hispanic boys in Camden, NJ, received national attention (the boys tragically suffocated in the trunk of a nearby car). The Lost Children’s Network is available online and on some satellite and cable station, and is color blind. And while FOX’s Greta van Sustern seems to have moved to Aruba to cover Natalee Holloway, she has thrown a few bones to covering some other missing people as well, and FOX’s “America’s Most Wanted” spotlights missing people of all ages, sexes and races. That’s not exactly fair and balanced, but it’s a start.

Links:

Amber Alerts: http://codeamber.org/
FBI Kidnapping and Missing Persons Investigations: http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/kidnap/kidmiss.htm
Lost Children’s Network: http://lostchildren.org/
National Center for Missing Adults: http://www.theyaremissed.org/ncma/