By Heidi Johnson-Wright
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
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