“There’s a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her”.
(Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl) Missing Women, by June Spence, apprises a story about three very unique women that suddenly go missing from a small town. Following up the disappearance there is a disarray of gossip, rumors, and speculations about what happened to them. This story shows the tendency of a community to stereotype and label people in the news, basing their judgment on very few facts and quite a lot of speculation and fictitious ideas.

This short story covers the investigation of three missing women. Kay, her mother, and her friend, Vicki. It closely follows the interrogations, and interviews the police did with the three women’s relatives, loved ones, and even just acquaintances. Spence uses Imagery to subsume the view of the town around the victims that were abducted. During these investigations multiple different things are said about the characters. Kay is described as basically a goddy two shoes, who devotes herself to her schoolwork and being pure. while her mother is accused of being around the wrong kind of people, and getting herself into questionable situations.. Vicki is described as a trashy, promiscuous, out of control party girl. The rumors about kay’s mother began to grow every day. From her “laundering money for drug dealers” to Vicki possibly being pregnant after finding an “unopened urine-test kit in her bureau”. The rumors sprouting from the people around the town highlight the reaction that many had about the three. The townspeople gave different types of stories about the three women who were abducted. All seemingly like gossip just floating around. For some reason everyone thought that what they had to say about the girls, fiction or fact, was important. When in reality a young women maybe being pregnant doesn’t really help the case. It almost seemed like an excuse to just spread unrelated opinions around. On the other hand June makes it seem as though the community really does care about finding these women. Spence writes “All of us admirable, the way we rally together. We say “we.” We say “our community,” “our women,” This is how the community talks about coming together in a time of tragedy. All of these people who thought they knew the women really only knew small details. They didn’t actually know the women for who they were, but looked at them for the gossip that was spread around town.

The story can be vastly compared to our society today. A very regular term that is thrown around today is “fake news”. Famously coined by Donald Trump accusing news outlets of spreading false information. Although this saying is in a bit of a different context it still correlates with this story. As a country we have grown to trust random sources and whole-heartedly believing them. Sadly passing judgments for actions that nobody has any clue if they are true. While we are doing this we could be missing the actual facts that everyone should be listening to. This tactic is manipulative making people believe something that isn’t true. Women in media are often misrepresented. The word “assume” comes to mind because that is what seems like everyone does.

Another very popular movie I quoted above that relates to this story is Gone Girl. Ivy actually brought this comparison up and we discussed the many similarities. I knew I had to make comparisons in this essay. Gone girl is a movie about a woman named Amy who goes missing and it is a huge media circus. You don’t know what actually happened to the women until the end but it is a huge twist. The whole movie is about how the investigation is basically everyone’s favorite new story. Right away clues start pointing to her husband Nick. The more evidence that is found the worse the media paints the picture of her husband. It actually turns out that Amy had found out that her husband had been cheating on her so she made this elaborate plan to frame her own husband for her murder. The way this correlates to this story is through the media. How people view others tragedy as a murder mystery. It’s almost like it is a game to everyone when in actuality this is someone’s life. The media is known to contort information and every single person hears it differently. It’s a lot like the game telephone I have played as a child. You sit in a circle with your friends and whisper something into the person next to you’s ear. This person continues by whispering what they heard into the next person’s ear and so on until it is back to the very first person. What always happens is the first person who started this game usually ends up hearing a statement that is completely different than their original. Every single person hears It differently and what they said changes a little bit every time.

Body 3- How this is very evident in everyday life -relate to something in society today.

Body 4 – how murders are perceived in media such as murder mysteries- Gone girl

Outro- when there’s no actual evidence the fight for the girls started to fade away. Specifically talking about how they will always be in people’s memories but how they want to remember them.

” basking in the evidence of so many heroes lured out by tragedy:”

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/13306276-gone-girl