By: Emma Callahan 

I was six when I first saw JonBenét Ramsey's face plastered on a magazine in my local grocery store. I was ten when I first heard the name Madeleine McCann. I was a freshman when I first read about Gabby Petito. Their faces, forever ingrained in my mind. Their stories, always lingering in my nightmares. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that my nightmares revealed the same kind of victims. 

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Every year, 600,000 people are declared missing in America; however, only a small portion of these individuals receive attention from the media. This small portion tends to be made up of blonde, blue-eyed white women, a phenomenon that is often referred to as “missing white woman syndrome” (MWWS). In a society that only allows some to be seen, an unequal divide becomes prevalent. UWire, the largest college news and press release distribution, found that "the press is four times more likely to report when a white woman goes missing compared to someone who is black” (Uwire, 2022). This variation is not only present in the pattern of coverage but in the narration as well. According to Rachael Powers, professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, when missing persons of color do get featured in the media, "the extent of that coverage is often less. The word count in a story may be less. There may not be humanizing details” (Stewart and Powers, 2017). Understanding MWWS, is realizing that I myself have become victim to the narrow view of the mainstream media’s reporting of missing persons. All missing women’s stories deserve to be told.  It is a tragedy that they are not.

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