Where are the female adventurers?

Where are the female adventurers?

The television researcher has become a kind of archetype: fesch, fearless, personable - and almost always male. We ask, where are the adventurers?

"Did you see walking the Himalayas?" asked Peter's father. "The moderator in it reminds me of Pete."

"Big dark and good -looking?" I asked. "Well, I can quite agree."

Later this week I started with the television series and found that moderator Levison Wood (picture below) actually looked a bit like Peter.

We watched with interest until Levison made a meal out of it five minutes later.

It is true that moderators have to add color and enthusiasm to their travel stories (otherwise we would only have a guy who goes for 45 minutes), but occasionally the drama seems to be exaggerated. When Bear Grylls makes his action-man montages with vibrant music and sharp camera hinges, you know that a team of producers stands around, looks after the lunch buffet and looks at the clock.

The television researcher has become a kind of archetype: fesch, fearless, personable - and almost always male. From Levison Wood and Bear Grylls to Simon Reeve and Ben Fogle, the face of the adventure apparently looks like this.

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clockwise from top left: Ben Fogle, Levison Wood, Simon Reeve, Bear Grylls

I wonder: where are the female adventurers on our television? With the exception of Saba Douglas-Hamilton, which I have crushed for a decade, I can not call a single woman who moderates her own travel show. And that is not due to the lack of female adventurers.

We have a whole range of inspiring, brave women at their disposal, from Edurne Pasaban, who has climbed all 14 eight -thousanders, to Bonita Norris, the world's youngest person who has climbed Everest and achieved the North Pole (and has no less experience in presenting).

"The television researcher has become a kind of archetype: fesch, fearful, personable - and almost always male"

The gap between male and female adventurers is also present in literature. Certainly there are best -selling travel books written by women, but often they concentrate on love, heartache or spirituality. Books like Elizabeth Gilberts Eat, Pray, Love and Cheryl Stayeds are marketed as travel literature, but better fit into straight memoirs because they do not look outside, but inwards.

Some writers break with the shape, but the Dervla Murphys and Freya Starks of the field rarely secure the same level of attention as the Bruce Chatwins and Paul Theroux. It seems that when writing travel there is the greatest appetite for male stories about ventures and actions and female about healing and feelings.

So who is to blame for the lack of female adventurers on our shelves and screens? Is it the publishers and producers who avoid risks like the plague? Is it the women themselves who don't push for recognition? Is it the audience that still prefers its big, dark and handsome adventurers? Is it a complicated mix of all three?

I asked Peter about this thought and his answer was true: "It could be that discoverers are usually male because of the 007 thing: he wants to be men and women want him. Conversely, it may not work so well."

I wonder if he is right: overlook producers and publisher female adventurers because they don't meet their narrow -minded ideals? Perhaps, like so many topics in the gender debate, things will go out on simple desire: adventurers have no their own shows because they themselves cannot get through with it on the slope of a mountain or a dune.

Maybe if it is true, the saddest reason of everyone.

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