Exploring why so many true crime podcasts and YouTube videos are hosted by women and advertised for women
Chiara Greco, Nutgraf Press Creator
True crime, as a genre, has long been associated with women and the female gaze. Reasons for this have been analyzed by social psychologists but the whole question of why remains. Why is so much true crime content hosted by women and advertised for women? Why is the obsession with true crime centred solely on the female gaze?
I remember days where I’d stay home sick from school, in the eighth grade, and turn on Dateline to watch women get murdered by their spouses, co-workers, or dotting boyfriends. I’d sit in my basement drinking iced lemon water learning all the skills I’d need for survival. While I didn’t know what drew me to watching these shows in the mid-afternoon when I was 14, it is the same reason why so many women listen to true crime podcasts and why such podcasts or YouTube videos are almost always exclusively advertised to and for women. In short, I could blame it all on the patriarchy, and while the answer does lie there, there is a deeper reason behind this so-called obsession.
In Jude Ellison Sady Doyle’s book Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, Doyle investigates the same question I’ve posed through a much larger scale as they explore all avenues of patriarchal control over women. Throughout their book, Doyle argues that women become victimized by the patriarchy and this “victimization” manifests in nearly every pop-culture phenomena. This is to say that most pop-culture and culture in general work to maintain patriarchal control over women and feminine viewpoints. Women are “victimized” by the patriarchy and created into a being less than human. Or to put it in Doyle's own words, women are created into monsters by the patriarchy. But how does this all relate to true crime? Well, true crime quite literally confirms every fear of violence a woman has living under patriarchal control and as such reverses the monstrous role women get labeled as. In most true crime women are not monsters but rather victims of patriarchal violence.
A study led by Amanda Vicary—a crime psychology expert and associate psychology professor at Illinois Wesleyan University showed that the number of women interested in the genre of true crime increased by 16 per cent in 2019. In the same study University of Illinois psychology professor R. Chris Fraley noted that: “The researchers suspected that women like true crime stories in part because such stories provide information that the readers feel could help them avoid or escape from a potential attacker.”
Fraley also mentions that “previous studies have shown that women are much more likely than men to fear becoming crime victims, and there may be an evolutionary benefit to learning from others' negative experiences.”
True crime content helps us understand the criminal’s mindset and in this way leads to implicit survival techniques if one were to become a potential victim. It is also the case that more often than not women are the victims in these true crime stories which adds another layer of interest to predominately female viewers or listeners. In fact in the same study, Vicray notes that “women, compared to men, were more likely to be drawn to true crime stories in which they knew they were going to learn about the psychology behind the killer.”
It has also been reported that nearly 75 percent of true crime podcast listeners are women. A 2019 study also found that viewership of true crime TV leans female, and a 2015 poll of readers found that “mystery, thriller and crime” was the genre most read by women. The same poll also found that women were more than 46 percent more likely to have read a true crime book than men. Though this trend stretches out even further.
In a lifestyle article by Marie Claire (I think the category of lifestyle here is also important to point out since it is historically a female centred form of journalism). Nonetheless, in that article a listicle of the best true crime podcasts of 2021 was curated. Out of the 14 listed nearly all of them have female hosts. There seems to be an obvious “trend” here.
But, podcasts aren’t the only popular form of consuming the gruesome true crime content. YouTubers like Bailey Sarian, Bizze Britney and others have all carved out paths focused solely upon reiterating the details of infamous murders and kidnappings whilst giving their audience makeup tutorials. Sarian was among the first to create these types of videos in her series ‘Murder Mystery Makeup.’ This content seems to be presented exclusively for women. Sarian's series combines learning a new makeup look with learning survival techniques, indulging in our fears whilst also finding a new favourite lipstick shade. These YouTube videos are created and told by women for other women and have become a genre of their own. Though, many have criticized content like Sarian's series as exploitative. But, just like the Lifetime episodes I used to watch, these videos and more importantly, the criticism against them, are merely exposing our society’s issues not only with patriarchal dependence but also with the female gaze.
In an article by Vogue magazine, psychotherapist and counsellor Rhea Gandhi stated that “As women living in a deeply patriarchal society, feeling unsafe and frightened is almost a constant state of mind, and perhaps, our deep desire to feel safe and protected by legal systems is sublimated when we watch stories where justice prevails. That sense of justice we feel at the end of a true crime film or series reflects our desire to be a part of social and legal systems that work tirelessly towards women’s safety and protection.” So perhaps there is another layer to this yet again. This idea of the justice that true crime offers presents viewers with a sense of solace in their imagined scenarios where they are the victims. But again, justice (more often than not) is dependent on men within the system of control.
In short, I do think it would be safe to say that the patriarchy is one of the leading causes towards this addiction or obsession with true crime. True crime is the one avenue where women feel as though their fears of patriarchal violence, and perhaps violence more generally, are being acknowledged. But, it is not fear alone that’s drawing women towards these content avenues. Justice, retribution, acknowledgment, perhaps even thrill-- these all may be reasons why women make up the majority of true crime “fans.” Though, as I’ve suggested before it all boils down to the everyday threat of violence women face. True crime allows women to indulge in their fears through an avenue where their viewpoint is not labelled as "crazy" but rather is represented as the majority.
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