Missing white woman syndrome (MWWS)

[K-453]

"... the seemingly disproportionate degree of coverage in television, radio, newspaper and magazine reporting of a misfortune, most often a missing person case, involving a young, attractive, white, upper-middle class (frequently blonde) woman or girl."

- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing...woman_syndrome

Some wise words on tvtropes.org: "The media frenzy over killed, raped and kidnapped white women seems to imply that people just like hearing about it."

[Rubyretro]

That is very interesting.

It also whips up a sort of hysteria amongst white middle class families about the security of their attractive blond attractive daughters.

For example, when Milly Dowler was snatched, my mother became petrified of my (30 year old) sister doing a short walk home from the gymn, in the dark.
Another friend (who didn't live at home), went on a date straight from work and switched off her mobile 'phone in the restaurant....she arrived home to find that her parents (following the disappearence of Joanna Yeates) had called the Police, being unable to contact her.

There becomes a sort of fear instilled, which ultimately curtails women's freedom.

[kensei]

It is indeed a maddening thing. In my area- a typical midwestern region of mostly small towns and rural land in middle America- we had a young white blonde college student kidnapped, raped, and killed by a sex offender recently out of prison. She was missing for several months, hidden by winter snow, then finally found. Her killer is on death row now, and it was treated here as the crime story of the century, a depressing tragedy no one will ever forget. And I wish to take nothing away from that, as I myself took some part in the search for that girl and as it eventually turned out I passed 70 yards from where her body would be found.

But more recently, a double murder occurred in the town where I live. A young man and woman were killed in their home and the house set on fire. Horrible, right? The police and the prosecutors did their jobs as they always do, but the media? Unlike the earlier case, the public reaction was like, "Huh? What? Oh... that's too bad. What's on tv?" Why? Because the victims were American Indians, and few people took the time to care. Very, very sad.