Help Crutch Their Steps

In her persuasive piece "Disability", Nancy Mairs discusses how society's media lacks the representation of the disabled. Since "[depicting] disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself", there is an underrepresentation of this minority group. It seems as if being disabled is an error that needs to be concealed and that only being ordinary is a positive characteristic worth representing. According to dictionary.com, ordinary means "of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional." Media is constantly pushing for images like the perfect body, the idealized family, the absolute career, and the ideal lifestyle. People are blinded into thinking that those ideas portrayed in the media are what is normal. Society is only generalizing what would seem like a perfect image. However, as those ideal images gain popularity, they gradually become the ordinary. Basically, being normal is to not stand out.

In the midst of all the promotion of perfect images, representation of disabilities falls beneath our field of vision. People with disabilities are hardly ever featured on TV shows or commercials, unless the point of media clip is to promote a hospital or disability center. I have noticed minimal traces of disability in other areas as well: the blue lines signifying handicap parking, the ramps beside the stairs for wheelchairs, and the Braille carved beneath room plates. Those necessary accommodations for the disabled are indeed present. However, it is sad that those are the only aspects of disability I can recall. Disability is harshly ignored by society as a whole because of its abnormality. Sometimes we can't ignore it when those disabled make a public statement or achieve some amazing feat. People like Steven Hawking with his outstanding intelligence and Oscar Pistorius competing in the normal Olympics can't but stand out in our eyes. This is when society's media spams their news everywhere. In a way, media is again exemplifying the abnormality of the disabled by promoting them even more when they achieve the unexpected.

The disabled should be equally represented like any other civilian and represented in a way so that it won't be jaw-dropping just to see them featured. Disability or not disability we are all imperfect humans.