The disability paradox

Despite the increasing representation of disability in the mainstream media, there is still a lack of representation when it comes to invisible disabilities.

by Stephanie Mantilla

Some of the ways we often think about disability is being about people’s bodies, or their kind of deficits, or the fact that they might have a particular impairment.

This was part of the response that disability and media expert, Professor Gerard Goggin gave me when I asked him to define disability. It’s almost ironic how the phenomenon he captured within such a small statement is having such large repercussions on people’s lives. However, to understand this cruel irony there are a few key ideas that must be understood first.

We used to equate the disabled with 'the grotesque'

People have written how the freak in circuses and movies was 'the grotesque'— the person with disability was often that.

Goggin explained that in the media there is an unspoken “hierarchy of disabilities” which determines which ones get the most representation. This works in favour of people whose disabilities are "desirable, sexy and newsworthy" which tends to be people with highly visible disabilities such as the infamous ‘blade runner’, Oscar Pistorius. However, it doesn’t work in favour of people with invisible disabilities. This isn’t a difficult trend to reaffirm. For example, how often do you hear about Morgan Freeman’s fibromyalgia? The confronting reality is that because of this hierarchy, more people probably know who Morgan Freeman is than know what fibromyalgia is.

This means that despite statistics, such as the GLAAD Where We Are On TV Report, showing that there is increasing disability representation in the media, albeit slow, people with invisible disabilities are still struggling to get any representation at all. Goggin explained that this a "paradox" in media representation, where “on the one hand there is more awareness and disability representation in the media, but on the other hand there is a long way to go.”

How ‘sexy’ the disability is, depends on the body

Goggin explained that disability has become “about policing bodies” due to the concept being associated with the physical injured body.

This is the idea that decides which disabilities are “sexy” enough to be on the top of the hierarchy and in turn, causes the media to under represent people with invisible disabilities.

What is perhaps even more concerning is that 90% of disabilities are invisible, which means that this lack of representation directly affects the vast majority of people with disabilities. This is why for people with invisible disabilities, they are not fighting the same fight as people with highly visible disabilities.

They’re not fighting for the recognition of their humanity. They’re just fighting for recognition.

Although this seems like an easy paradox that the media should and could address, it becomes even more problematic when you realise that the media plays a key role in how we imagine and react to disability.