Missing white woman syndrome
Encyclopedia
Missing white woman syndrome (MWWS) or missing pretty girl syndrome is a term used by some media and social critics to describe the seemingly disproportionate degree of coverage in television, radio, newspaper and magazine reporting of a misfortune, most often a missing person
Missing person
A missing person is a person who has disappeared for usually unknown reasons.Missing persons' photographs may be posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, along with a phone number to be contacted if a sighting has been made....

 case, involving a young
Youth
Youth is the time of life between childhood and adulthood . Definitions of the specific age range that constitutes youth vary. An individual's actual maturity may not correspond to their chronological age, as immature individuals could exist at all ages.-Usage:Around the world, the terms "youth",...

, attractive
Physical attractiveness
Physical attractiveness refers to a person's physical traits which are perceived to be aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from the two; for example, humans may regard the young as attractive for various...

, white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

, upper-middle class (frequently blonde) woman or girl. This degree of coverage is usually contrasted with cases concerning a missing male, or missing females of other ethnicities, socioeconomic classes or physical attractiveness.

United States

Kim Pasqualini, president of the National Center for Missing Adults, opines that the media tends to focus on "damsels in distress
Damsel in distress
The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...

" – typically, affluent young white women and teenagers.

While the disappearances of Laci Peterson
Laci Peterson
Laci Denise Peterson was an American woman who was the subject of a highly discussed murder case after she went missing while seven and a half months pregnant with her first child. Peterson was reportedly last seen alive on December 24, 2002...

 and Natalee Holloway
Natalee Holloway
Natalee Ann Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, a Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. An American student from Mountain Brook, Alabama, Holloway graduated from Mountain Brook High School on May 24, 2005, shortly before the trip...

 became sensational news stories, a pregnant black/Hispanic woman named LaToyia Figueroa
LaToyia Figueroa
LaToyia Figueroa was an American woman of African-American and Hispanic descent who was murdered in 2005. Figueroa, who was five months pregnant at the time, was reported missing on July 18, 2005 after she failed to show up to work...

 disappeared from Philadelphia three years later and attracted less national attention, despite efforts by her family to enlist the media to help find her. (Figueroa was later found murdered.) One observer also saw contrasts between the attention received by Peterson and Evelyn Hernandez
Evelyn Hernandez
Evelyn Hernandez was a woman who disappeared along with her five-year-old son in San Francisco, California in May 2002. She was nine months pregnant with her second child at the time she went missing.-Disappearance and murder:...

 who was nine months pregnant when she disappeared in 2002.

United Kingdom

Two cases of missing pretty girl syndrome are given as contrasting examples: the murder of Hannah Williams and the murder of Danielle Jones. Although both victims were white female teenagers, Jones received more coverage than Williams. It is suggested that this is because Jones was a middle-class schoolgirl, whilst Williams was from a working-class background with a stud in her nose
Nose piercing
Nose piercing is the piercing of the skin or cartilage which forms any part of the nose, normally for the purpose of wearing jewelry; among the different varieties of nose piercings, the nostril piercing is the most common...

 and estranged parents.

In 2011, the case of the murder of Jia Ashton received minimal coverage in the national press (most notably being restricted to the Derby section
BBC East Midlands
BBC East Midlands is the BBC English Region covering Derbyshire, Leicestershire, south Nottinghamshire, South Kesteven and Rutland.-Television:...

 of the BBC News website, and appearing on the BBC National News only once), whereas the Murder of Sian O'Callaghan
Murder of Sian O'Callaghan
Sian O'Callaghan was a 22-year-old British woman who disappeared from Swindon, Wiltshire, having last been seen at a nightclub in the town in the early hours of 19 March 2011. A 47-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of kidnap and subsequently gave the location of O'Callaghan's body to police....

 sparked national coverage for some weeks, including extensive coverage by the BBC.

Yvonne Jewkes cites the murder of Amanda Dowler, the murder of Sarah Payne, and the Soham murders
Soham murders
The Soham murders was an English murder case in 2002 of two 10-year-old girls in the village of Soham, Cambridgeshire.The victims were Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Aimee Chapman...

 as examples of "eminently newsworthy stories" about girls from "respectable" middle-class families and backgrounds whose parents used the news media effectively. She claims that in contrast, the street murder of Damilola Taylor initially received little news coverage, with reports initially concentrating upon street crime levels and community policing, and largely ignoring the victim.

Even when the victim's father flew into the UK from Nigeria to make press statements and television appearances, the level of public outcry did not, Jewkes asserts, reach "the near hysterical outpourings of anger and sadness that accompanied the deaths of Sarah, Milly, Holly, and Jessica".

Cited instances

The following missing person cases have been cited as examples of missing white woman syndrome:

United States

  • Polly Klaas (October 1, 1993) – found murdered; murderer convicted.
  • Chandra Levy
    Chandra Levy
    Chandra Ann Levy was an American intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C., who disappeared in May 2001. She was presumed murdered after her skeletal remains were found in Rock Creek Park in May 2002...

     (May 1, 2001) – missing for several months; skeletal remains found; murderer convicted.
  • Dru Sjodin
    Dru Sjodin
    Dru Katrina Sjodin , a student of the University of North Dakota and a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority, was a murder victim...

     (November 22, 2003) – found murdered; murderer convicted; prompted Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry
    United States National Sex Offenders Public Registry
    The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry is a cooperative effort between U.S. state agencies that host public sex offender registries and the U.S. federal government...

    .
  • Brooke Wilberger
    Brooke Wilberger
    Brooke Carol Wilberger was a student from the state of Oregon who was abducted and later murdered. Her disappearance was covered by the national media, and hers was one of the most publicized murder investigations in Oregon history.-Biography:Wilberger was born in Fresno, California on February...

     (May 24, 2004) – abducted, murderer revealed location of body and convicted.
  • Taylor Behl
    Taylor Behl
    Taylor Marie Behl was a 17 year-old college freshman from Vienna, Virginia. She moved to Richmond, Virginia, in August 2005 to attend Virginia Commonwealth University. About two weeks later on Labor Day, September 5, 2005, Behl disappeared. Acting on a tip one month later, VCU police located her...

     (September 5, 2005) – 17-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University
    Virginia Commonwealth University
    Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...

     freshman disappeared and was later found dead; murderer convicted.
  • Michelle Gardner-Quinn
    Murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn
    Michelle Gardner-Quinn was an undergraduate at the University of Vermont who was kidnapped on October 7, 2006...

     (October 7, 2006) – 21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Vermont
    University of Vermont
    The University of Vermont comprises seven undergraduate schools, an honors college, a graduate college, and a college of medicine. The Honors College does not offer its own degrees; students in the Honors College concurrently enroll in one of the university's seven undergraduate colleges or...

     who disappeared and was later found dead.

In the Iraq War

Critics have also pointed to media bias in the coverage of soldier Jessica Lynch
Jessica Lynch
Jessica Dawn Lynch is a former Private First Class in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps. Lynch served in Iraq during the 2003 invasion by U.S. and allied forces. On March 23, 2003 she was injured and captured by Iraqi forces but was recovered on April 1 by U.S...

 versus that of her fellow soldiers, Shoshana Johnson
Shoshana Johnson
Shoshana Nyree Johnson is a Panamanian former United States soldier, and was the first black female prisoner of war in the military history of the United States. Johnson was a Specialist of the U.S. Army 507th Maintenance Company, 5/52 ADA BN, 11th ADA Brigade. During a gun fight that led to her...

 and Lori Piestewa
Lori Piestewa
SPC Lori Ann Piestewa was a U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps soldier killed during the same Iraqi Army attack in which fellow soldiers Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch sustained injuries. A member of the Hopi tribe, Piestewa was the first Native American woman in history to die in combat while...

. All three were ambushed in the same attack during the Iraq War on March 23, 2003, with Piestewa being killed and Lynch and Johnson being injured and taken prisoner. Lynch, a young, blonde, white woman, received far more media coverage than Johnson (a black woman and a single mother) and Piestewa (a Hopi
Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...

 from an impoverished background, and also a single mother), with media critics suggesting that the media gave more attention to the woman with whom audiences would more readily identify.

Lynch herself leveled harsh criticism at this disproportionate coverage that focused only on her, stating in a congressional testimony before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

External links

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