12 Times BBC’s The Fall Deserved A Standing Ovation

The media loves to divide women. Let’s not let them.

In Season 1, the investigative team prepares for a press conference surrounding the murders and Stella very carefully helps draft a written statement to be read. When she discovers word choices that are “value judgments”, she changes them. And when words such as “innocent” are used, the implication of specific words used to discuss women and victims of crimes is brought up.

Stella makes an important observation that “the media loves to divide women into virgins and vamps…angels or whores.” It’s all too frequent that we see women divided into categories, ignoring the fact that hey, we’re complex humans with various interests and maybe also those labels shouldn’t be used at all to describe women. Stella has one response to how to change the way the media divides women: “Let’s not encourage them.”

In one sentence, Stella sums up what so many of us try to explain on a daily basis. Words matter and how we discuss both genders in the media can have an impact on the way they’re treated and viewed in real life. Stella teaches us all to be a little more intentional with the words we use and that certainly gives us something to think about.

Next: Make me SIO.