GIMP GIRLS AND CRIP CHICKS RULE

I came of age in the late 1970s, when the girls in my high school sported ultra-shiny lip gloss and perfectly feathered hair. They wanted to be like Farrah Fawcett or Margaux Hemingway, pop culture “it girls” who danced the night away at Studio 54.

 

I wanted my share of fun, too. But I couldn’t imagine myself doing the bump or the hustle with a partner on a dance floor. The arthritis had turned my body against itself. Instead of grinding with a hot guy in a club, my joints were grinding bone on bone.

 

I began using a wheelchair for mobility. And I realized that Charlie had no gimp-girl Angels. Faberge wanted no crip chicks in its fragrance ads. It was painfully evident that no women in popular culture looked anything like me.

 

The only wheelchair user I saw depicted in popular media was Ironside, the character Raymond Burr portrayed in the TV cop drama. A former detective forced into retirement after a shooting renders him paraplegic, he becomes a special police consultant who solves crimes in a wheelchair.

 

Loads of action! Snappy dialogue! Wheelchair jokes!

 

I looked around and saw no positive female role models in wheelchairs. No crip chick characters on TV or in the movies. No gimp girl heroines in books or narrators in music or poetry. Didn’t do a whole lot for my adolescent female self-image.

 

Decades later, pop culture hasn’t made as much disability-positive progress as I’d like. But things are undoubtedly better. Case in point: my friend, Stephanie Woodward is in a Honey Maid graham cracker commercial.

 

Honey Maid has launched an ad campaign that features inclusive depictions of American families -- same-sex couples, mixed-race and blended and immigrant families. Stephanie and her niece are featured in a spot showing a disabled aunt and niece making apple and cheddar melts together on their graham crackers.

 

Stephanie is a disability rights lawyer and activist who is currently director of advocacy at The Center for Disability Rights. She signed on for the project, Honey Maid says, because she—and many in the disabled community—want real disabled people featured on TV and in the media, not actors playing disabled people.

 

Check out the ad at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4TncEFoI3Q&feature=player_embedded

DEAR GRANDFATHER: PLEASE LET GIMPS IN THE DOOR

As a wheelchair-using gimp girl, I sometimes hear folks say the reason a place is not accessible is because it’s historic. Statements like “It’s one of those older buildings constructed under standards in force years ago.”

What they mean is it was built back when gimps were safely tucked away in institutions or kept hidden in the back bedrooms of family homes. You know, like the simpler, gentler era depicted in Norman Rockwell’s art: a time when families sat down together every night at the dinner table and the worst trouble little boys got into was dipping girls’ pigtails in inkwells. Page through Rockwell’s illustrations in a book or online and you’ll be hard-pressed to find gimps included in his rosy vision of an America that never was and never will be.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say that a building doesn’t have to be accessible because it’s been “grandfathered.” When I hear that word, at first I picture a kind, gentle older man who loves to go fishing and hands out candy to his grandkids.

But then I remember it doesn’t mean that at all. It’s really an excuse to avoid letting gimps in the door. And a pitiful excuse, at that. The ADA is a civil rights law, not a building code. You can’t deny folks their civil rights simply because you’ve been denying their rights for so long, it’s magically okay to keep denying them. To follow that twisted logic would mean allowing racially segregated lunch counters to remain segregated because that’s how it’s always been.

Creating access in older buildings is often a matter of a couple factors. Are the decision makers in charge truly committed to creating an inclusive community and are the architects and engineers up to the task?

Take for example, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It’s one of the most celebrated art collections in the world. It includes masterpieces by da Vinci, Michelangelo and Botticelli that will make you drunk with joy. And it’s really, really old. It was completed in 1581 for Cosimo I de' Medici, who was not exactly known for being a proponent of disability rights. And yet, the Uffizi is exquisitely accessible to wheelchair users, and proud of its touch tours for people with visual impairments. The elevators and ramps are not big, ugly and awkward. They fit seamlessly into the structure, never taking away from the beauty all around.

How can this be? Shouldn’t they have told gimps, “Sorry, you’ll never see Botticelli’s Primavera because, like, the Uffizi is just too old. And, oh yeah, it’s grandfathered.”

Am I ever glad they didn’t. I’ll take Botticelli over Normal Rockwell any day.

UNBROKEN

Dear America:

It’s been nearly a quarter century since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. Many of you may think folks with disabilities are equal now. That perhaps we should just shut up already and move on.

I understand that reaction. People with disabilities haven’t told their story. We’ve let others – usually clueless, often cruel -- tell it for us.

A common but inaccurate story is told by the business owner who resents the ADA. He thinks he’s done everything for those gimps, even put in a ramp. Why can’t they just be grateful, even if the ramp is dangerously steep? The local news airs a story of the struggling business owner allegedly on the verge of bankruptcy, because those darn gimps insist his ramp isn’t up to snuff. 

But the story fails to explain that the ADA is not a burdensome building code but a civil rights law. It fails to point out that its requirements are usually less expensive to meet than already existing structural, electrical and plumbing codes. The story doesn’t say ramps are involved so people with disabilities can get into the building like everyone else. The story doesn’t clarify that refusing to remove physical barriers is the same as denying basic civil rights by posting a sign saying “Whites Only” or “Men Only” or “Christians Only.”

There are other stories told about people with disabilities rather than stories told by them. Like when the media made Christopher Reeve the de facto spokesperson for every disabled person on the planet.

I have no ill feelings toward Reeve. But Reeve expressed a very different mindset than the majority of folks with disabilities. He lived many years without a disability. After his injury, he was focused on curing disability rather than making a meaningful life with it.

Fueled by the national media, Reeve’s message aligned with the medieval way of thinking: a disabled person is a broken person. And the only way to deal with someone who’s broken is to fix him. There are normal people and there are disabled people. The normal are whole and valuable, and the disabled are broken and worthless.

The media’s focus on Reeve and his obsession with a cure took away the focus on everyday folks living with disabilities. The message was that every red cent should be used to find a cure. Why direct resources to fund affordable, accessible housing so 30-year olds in nursing homes can have full lives in the community with in-home attendant care? The lives of the broken hold no value until they are fixed.

Only a fraction of news stories focus on the modest investments in the built environment and simple reapportionment of government funding that would truly improve the quality of life for millions of disabled folks. The majority of media coverage reinforces vile stereotypes of the pathetic, pitiable and broken.

If news outlets repeated reprehensible stereotypes of African Americans, Jewish Americans and Hispanic Americans, the public would be justifiably outraged. But pigeonholing Disabled Americans as pathetic is still acceptable.

So I implore disabled men and women to tell their stories. To assert their civil rights to employment and transportation and goods and services. To claim the right to a life, just like anyone else.

Tell your story now, or someone else will tell it for you.