Henri Copeland
Dear Media,
We humans need to see ourselves reflected in other people. It’s how we build a sense of belonging. It’s how we understand that we are acceptable in this world. Nowhere are those reflections as crucial as they are in the media. In books, newspapers and magazines, in videos and photos, in the voices we hear through videos and podcasts.
I have seen clips of small children staring in wonder to finally see themselves reflected in a storybook, to see their colour of skin there on the page. As the hero. You know the clips I’m talking about, and I know that you know how much it matters. You know what an important job the media plays in making sure that we all see our reflections. You know you have the power to make us feel seen, included, accepted. You also have the power to make us feel unseen, excluded and exiled. I worry about this, and how you use that power. I worry that you’re not being entirely fair, like a parent who favours one child over another.
We humans tell stories. We always have. It’s one of the greatest joys of human life, being able to tell a story. We tell stories of things that have happened, things that we dream of happening, things that we imagine and conjure up. Stories make the media what it is. Without stories, why would we even need the media?
I worry that you have run out of stories. You seem to tell the same stories over and over again. Stories about women juggling all the different balls of motherhood. I know that story. You’ve been telling it for years. There’s another one as well. The story of the deranged woman who, unable to have children, goes a bit nuts. She usually kidnaps a baby or a small child. I was a teenager the first time I saw that story, in The Hand that Rocked the Cradle. Not much in that portrayal seems to have changed; I am in my forties now, and I saw the same story this year, in some drama series that got off to a promising start until the supposed twist, that the child had been abducted by a woman who couldn’t have children.
There are other stories to tell. There are other women that are looking for their reflections, women that are not juggling childcare and school runs and nappy changes, women that are not telling their grown up children how to raise their grandchildren. I am one of those women, one who looks anxiously to try and find herself reflected somewhere in the stories that you tell. I have been looking for years. Still no joy. Where am I in your stories? Where is the woman without children? Where is she, the one who accepts the sadness she feels around the absence of her children? Where is she, the one who carves out a different kind of life for herself? Where is she, the one who didn’t meet a partner in time to try for children, but who decided that it was better for her child not to be conceived than to come to the world without ever knowing their father? Where is the woman and her wife who would have loved their child? Where is the woman who would have tried for children had her body not been struck by illness when she was younger, had an operation taken away her fertility? Where is the woman who bravely said ‘no more’ to IVF after eight miscarriages? Where are the rest of us, the ones who walk towards menopause, towards old age, towards the end of our lives without holding those children that we love so deeply? Where are we all? And where are the men in all this? Where are the men who longed to be fathers? Where are the same-sex couples who were turned down by the adoption agency?
We childless humans need you. Like the little girl who squeals happily to see someone who looks like her on the theatre stage playing the lead role of Annie, like the women who watch Motherland and smirk to each other knowingly, we need to see ourselves, we need our stories to be told. We need you to show us that we belong, to show the humans that follow us into childlessness that they will not be cast out of society, that they matter too.
I can almost hear you protesting, “We already tell your story, you’re already there!” But you’re wrong. Until your stories tell the honest truth about who we are and show us the reflections without the narrative equivalent of make-up and filters, then you are not telling our story and you’re not representing us. You cannot rely on the Bridget Jones stereotype of woman unable to find love or the adamant I-Don’t-Need-A-Man-And-I-Never-Want-To-Have-Kids stereotype to represent all single, childless woman. You cannot rely on the powerful and aggressive career woman and you definitely can’t rely on the couple that kidnap their fertility consultant’s daughter. They are not us.
All the very best wishes for more imaginative story-telling in the future,
from a single, childless woman in her forties
