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In January 2023, the UK became gripped by reports of a 45-year-old British woman, Nicola Bulley, who had disappeared by the River Wyre in rural Lancashire shortly after taking her children to school. In the weeks before the recovery of Bulley’s body from the river on February 19th intense social mediaSocial media speculation deliberated over what had happened to her, in another instance of ‘missing white woman syndrome’ dominating the news (Ifill, 2004). Further, the case took on another tantalising twist when police revealed Bulley was considered ‘vulnerable’—eventually disclosing she had been experiencing ‘issues with alcohol’ prompted by ‘the menopauseMenopause’, in a statement met by an angry public backlash as an unwarranted invasion of privacy. In this chapter, then, we explore how the case operated as a gendered media spectacleGendered media spectacle for the digital era, with conjecture about Bulley’s possible fate driven by persistent cultural anxieties and fantasies regarding white middle-classClass, middle-aged womanhood. Examining the complex entanglement between social media, true crime tourismTrue crime tourism, and police investigation in the case, we argue what the Bulley case ultimately reveals is not only a cultural crisis around internet sleuthingInternet sleuthing, but an increasingly insistent refusal to tolerate the casual pathologisation of menopausal women, and a growing insistence on calling police misogynyPolice misogyny to account.

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A Gendered Media Spectacle for the Digital Era: Nicola Bulley, ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ and Middle-Class, Middle-Aged, Menopausal Womanhood on Trial

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Deborah Jermyn,
  • Tanya Horeck

摘要

In January 2023, the UK became gripped by reports of a 45-year-old British woman, Nicola Bulley, who had disappeared by the River Wyre in rural Lancashire shortly after taking her children to school. In the weeks before the recovery of Bulley’s body from the river on February 19th intense social mediaSocial media speculation deliberated over what had happened to her, in another instance of ‘missing white woman syndrome’ dominating the news (Ifill, 2004). Further, the case took on another tantalising twist when police revealed Bulley was considered ‘vulnerable’—eventually disclosing she had been experiencing ‘issues with alcohol’ prompted by ‘the menopauseMenopause’, in a statement met by an angry public backlash as an unwarranted invasion of privacy. In this chapter, then, we explore how the case operated as a gendered media spectacleGendered media spectacle for the digital era, with conjecture about Bulley’s possible fate driven by persistent cultural anxieties and fantasies regarding white middle-classClass, middle-aged womanhood. Examining the complex entanglement between social media, true crime tourismTrue crime tourism, and police investigation in the case, we argue what the Bulley case ultimately reveals is not only a cultural crisis around internet sleuthingInternet sleuthing, but an increasingly insistent refusal to tolerate the casual pathologisation of menopausal women, and a growing insistence on calling police misogynyPolice misogyny to account.