Lost Girls
What's this fixation with female abduction?
Our daughter, Dylan, was a week shy of her 3rd birthday when we landed in Sydney, a city we’d call home for five years. Settling in involved checking out the local sights, and the aquarium in Darling Harbour was top of our list. That day in July was gloriously fine, which in my memory was the perfect norm year round, regardless the season. 1
While my husband Dave queued up for tickets, Dylan and I browsed the exhibits in the aquarium’s entryway. The place was mobbed with children on break.2 I was distracted by the kids running around like madmen, their parents oblivious, as we wound our way through the exhibits. I leaned over a model of river life, watching for fish, reading the placards. Straightening up, I looked to my side. Dylan was gone.
My body went into what I now know as shock, having since been in a car accident. As happened after that accident, Dave went into rescue mode at the aquarium as I shut down. I moved as if underwater, completely useless. Dave quickly scanned the room then returned outside. Clearing his way through the crowd, he spotted Dylan balancing on a pier, one step away from dropping into the harbour. An older Asian man was within reach of her, watching her intently. Dave scooped her up, nodding his thanks to the man keeping watch.
I can never forgive myself for losing my child to inattention, no matter how brief the loss. I realize not everyone feels this way, although knowing that doesn’t assuage my guilt. My mother regularly lost track of her children when we were small. I remember these events as losing my mother—my responsibility, not hers.
I have several vivid memories of losing her, often in grocery stores—grabbing a stranger’s hand that I thought was my mother’s; wandering amongst grown-up legs, terrified, trying to find my mother’s slim calves. When reunited, my mother would seem surprised at my upset. Eventually, she started carrying a bag with two round plastic handles that clacked as she moved. We children learned to listen for the clacking sound so that we could find her if we became separated. She prided herself on this clever solution to the tiresome effort of keeping her children in tow.
My parents once left my younger sister at a gas station, overlooking her absence as we sped away. It’s true there were five of us to be herded into the family vehicle on vacations, but still, you’d miss a finger if it went missing from your hand. Eventually someone in the car noticed the missing pre-schooler and we returned to the gas station to reclaim her. I thought this kind of lapse was unique to my family until Dave told me a similar story from his childhood. It happens. Kids stray; parents divide their attention. Almost always, families reunite without needing help. No bad actors are usually involved.
My mother-in-law put her oldest child on a leash to keep her close when they were out. Although I was appalled when I first heard this story (leashes are for pets, not children, I thought at the time), I came to appreciate its practicality. Visiting Quebec once, Dave and I witnessed a queue of les gosses (young school children) attached to a walking rope—essentially a leash with clips or handles for each child—as they walked along the street. Although new to us, it was obviously a brilliant solution.
The panic of losing a child even momentarily reveals a terror never far from the surface of parenting. Not much is needed to unleash the fear of losing a child.
The female abduction plot
We started streaming a series last weekend when I realized that the show was only the most recent of many we’ve watched lately that feature a missing girl or woman. The trend is international: Dept Q (British), The Glass Dome (Swedish), The Snow Girl (Spanish). The abduction theme is sometimes linked to another popular plot device: the cold case re-examination.3
The cold case device multiplies the loss, since the victim is lost twice: first at the hands of the perpetrator and then by the police. The plots often involve complicated mother-daughter relationships, and many feature female lead detectives. The Snow Girl is typical: the lead police detective and the investigative reporter (who solves the crime) are both women. Mothers feature prominently in the plot. Without spoiling the mystery, I can only say that women are both victimized and complicit, wittingly or not.
Child abduction plots can reliably hook an audience since they tap into naturally-occurring fears. The fact that the abducted child is female heightens the perceived imbalance between the perpetrator and victim only if we assume that female children are more vulnerable than male children. This assumption is nonsense. Before puberty turns the hormonal taps, children of any gender are just children, a son or daughter as likely to fight or scream or resist, regardless. They’re equally likely to be lifted by adult arms and taken away. There’s no obvious dramatic rationale for preferring girls over boys in these stories, other than culturally-shaped notions that girls and women are weaker and therefore more vulnerable.
Story preferences for female victims are even more likely when the disappeared person is adult. Mysteries involving the abduction of women abound, with singularly female-centric motives: trafficking, obsession, sexual crimes. In popular dramas, men are typically abducted for revenge or extortion. Their cases usually resolve quickly, the captured man turning up either dead or alive and injured, coerced to do the villain’s bidding. Plots involving extreme periods of abduction typically involve female victims.
Male abductions are transactional: there is a value in the man that’s negotiable. By contrast, female abductions expose the lack of worth in the girl or woman. Her body is a means to an end. Who she is as a person has no value, a truth underscored when the plot extends the abduction into months or years, eventually becoming a cold case and lost to time.
The current fashion is to cast women in the roles of lead investigators—think True Detective: Night Country (Jodie Foster and Kali Reis), which also featured a lost woman and begins with the discovery of a woman’s severed tongue at the site of a mass murder. Female detectives typically are laden with their own baggage, sometimes their own victimization, and often involving trauma from childhood or the death of a family member. It isn’t enough for the detective to be a smart woman capable of solving murders. She must bear the weight of recurring nightmares and unprocessed trauma.
The vanishing woman trope reflects the lifecycle of disappearances that women endure: the adolescent girl’s loss of self-esteem; the forfeiture of familial identity upon marriage, traditionally capped with losing her last name; the loss of self brought on by motherhood; the invisibility introduced by menopause and age. Girls and women disappear all the time. It’s to be expected. It’s a trope ready for use by the entertainment industry.
Female abduction dramas teach girls and women to remain vigilant for unseen threats. Don’t go out at night unaccompanied. Don’t wear provocative clothing. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Scan the room for threats. Be prepared to leave if a man persists with unwanted attention. Grip your keys as a weapon. Check the back seat before getting into your car. Immediately lock all doors upon entry. These dramas are cautionary tales—not for would-be perpetrators, but for women. You are weak; you are prey; you must protect yourself by restricting your activities and life experiences. Make yourself smaller, not stronger.
Lost girl stories easily trigger barely subliminal fears of parents and women. They’re effective because they’re separated from memory by a sliver. Unlike the fantasy worlds of action movies and spy thrillers, the lost girl story is close enough you could touch it. It whispers: this could be you, this could be your daughter.
I have an appetite instead for a new Orphan Black,4 stories of multi-faceted female characters whom we’ve never before met. Stories of women who teach girls how to live without fear in a world filled with threats. That’s what we need for this moment.
Ellie’s Corner
Ellie is a connoisseur (connoisseuse?) of waterways. She laps up the water, tasting it and judging its terroir: salty or fresh? standing or flowing? Dave always gives her ample time for her tastings. He’s so good to her.
Thanks for reading,
My Australian coworkers puzzled over my tendency to quarter the year into seasons. Having lived there, I now have to agree with them. Days were either sunny or wet, sometimes cool and brisk, but mostly warm if not hot. Even so, Sydney almost always cooled down at night as breezes came in off the ocean. Seasons are a European affectation in Australia, I discovered.
The Australian school calendar has four terms, with a 6-week break in December/January, and two-week breaks between terms the rest of the year. This would have been the break between terms 2 and 3.
The BritBox series,New Tricks, has made a 12-seasons-long run exploiting the cold case theme.
A Canadian series, it didn’t get the attention it deserved in the US. Tatiana Maslany’s stunning performance playing five characters was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Fans have their favorite ‘sestra.’ I’m team Helena.