"Choosing Disability"

In Laura Hershey’s piece “Choosing Disability,” she talks about the problems with abortion of “fetal deformity” or a “defective fetus”.  Hershey starts off her piece with a being at an antiabortion protest in honor of Roe v. Wade.  She said, “I was confronted by an angry nun whose “Abortion Is Murder” sign hung tiredly at her side.  She stopped in front of me and aimed a pugnacious finger.  “You see?” she announced.  “God even let you be born!”.  I think this is a great way to sum up this article because I’m sure more than just one person thinks this way.  Some think that if a woman knows that her baby is going to be disabled that she should get an abortion.  “In a 1992 Time/CNN survey, for example, 70 percent of respondents favored abortion if a fetus was likely to be born deformed”.  70 percent is a large amount of people that think it is okay to not have a child if they are going to be deformed.  Deformed or not, a person is still a person and should have the same chance as everyone. 

            Personally, I think that a woman should have their own choice to decide what they want to do with their body.  I agree with Julie Reiskin, a social worker who is active in disability rights and abortion rights, when she states “It should be because women have the right to do what we want with our bodies, period”.  Abortion should not be legal to use because of a fetal disability.  Don’t get me wrong, raising a child with disabilities is a very hard task, but that is the risk women know when getting pregnant, so that should be no reason to get an abortion.  You adapt with these disabilities and make the child stronger from these hardships.  I also agree with Hershey’s statement of “Abortion based on disability results from, and in turn strengthens, certain beliefs: children with disabilities (and by implication adults with disabilities) are a burden to family and society; life with a disability is scarcely worth living; preventing the birth is an act of kindness; women who bear disabled children have failed”.  I feel that by doing this makes people think that it’s okay to not birth a child because a disability is too hard.  I also think that if a disabled person hears this they feel even worse about themselves and think they are worthless.  No person should feel that way about their own self.  If the people that say these things about people with disabilities were ever in their shoes they would realize how hard it is without other people’s negative comments.

            Just like almost everything else we’ve talked about in class has had influence from the media, abortion has the same too.  People make these choices with social values in mind, such as how are people going to look at them or their child, or how their child will move around, or even if they will have the same opportunities as the rest of the world does.

"Enfreakment of Photography"

The word disabled means having a physical or mental condition that limits movements, senses, or activities.  Disabled can also mean handicapped, incapacitated, out of action, crippled, lame, paralyzed, immobilized, and many more.  The word disabled is used differently by everyone depending on the way the perceive it. 

            “Disabled people are almost entirely absent from photographic genres or discussion because they are read as socially dead and as not having a role to play,” is a quote from Hevey’s “Enfreakment of Photography”.  The first thing when reading this quote that comes to my mind is that the media plays a huge role in every aspect of society.  From what we talked about before the media has played a role in eating disorders, the idea of “perfection”, weight, and now what others think of people with disabilities.  You never see a disabled person as a model in advertisements or anywhere in the media.  I think the term “social death” in this context means that disabled people are somewhat disregarded in society.  They might be viewed as not as important as the “normal” person.  Disabled people don’t matter as much and are less useful to everyone.  I think this is awful to think because no matter what they are still people just like everyone else.  People with disabilities can’t help it because they are usually either born with it or got into an accident that made them like that.  No one should discriminate because someone can’t do the same things as others or think the same ways.  Everyone should be treated the same no matter what race, gender, ethnicity, or even disability.

            I think Hevey’s quote can relate to any one of Diane Arubus’ photos.  The one that sticks out to me the most is the one of the woman in a wheelchair.  The woman is not just in a wheelchair but she is holding a scary mask up to her face.  It is a mask you would wear in a haunted house to scare little kids.  To me this pictures tries to make other scared of disabled people.  It shows them as weird, scary, or creepy.  There is no reason to show anyone like this especially a disabled person.  People shouldn’t be judged by the way they look or if they are in a wheel chair or not, but how they act on the inside.  If they are a good person that is all that should matter, not the way they look.  Before one judges another because they are disabled, they should think I could have been born this way, or this could have happened to me and then see how they act towards someone.  Isn’t the golden rule treat someone the way you want to be treated?

            No one person should be considered “almost entirely absent” or “socially dead” or “not having a role to play”.  Everyone should be treated equally no matter how they were born because anything can happen anyone.  Having a disability does not mean one can treat that person differently or that they don’t matter as much in this world.

            

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

            Beauty is an idea that has somewhat changed over time.  “Beautiful women” have always been petite, curvy, thin women.  “Beautiful men” are seen as very buff and masculine.  As time goes on the idea of beautiful, especially in women, has become thinner and thinner.  In the piece “Never Just Pictures: Bodies and Fantasies” by Susan Bordo, she stated that “models have been getting thinner since 1993”.  As the media gets more and more involved in our everyday lives ideas of beauty, fatness, and eating disorders have been changed and became more important in the lives of the society.

            Eating disorders are becoming more popular in society today.  In Bordo’s piece, she states, “Children in this culture grow up knowing that you can never be thing enough and that being fat is one of the worst things you can be”.  For health reasons, no one wants to be ‘fat’ or overweight.  But that’s not why the majority of people today don’t want to be fat.  The biggest reason today is that people don’t want to be known as the ‘fat’ kid.  The media has somewhat brainwashed people into thinking that being skinny is the only way they should look.  The models that business’ uses are stick thin.  These models to many young kids are not just a person with cool clothes on or a new hairstyle, but they are people that kids look up to.  They are someone that kids want to become when they’re older.  For example, the Victoria Secret Fashion show has so many viewers and encourages girls to want to look like that when they’re older.  There are so few people that actually look like this that they should not be the icons of the world.  It’s even unnatural.  The obsession to look like these ‘Victoria Secret Angels’ commonly lead to eating disorders for many people.  The normal person could never get this skinny so they have to develop an eating disorder to become this thin.  “And these disorders reflect, too, our increasing fascination with the possibilities of reshaping our bodies and selves in radical ways, creating new bodies according to our mind’s design,” is a quote from Bordo that clearly reflects society today.  ‘Our mind’s design,’ has changed so much, maybe not even in a good way, that made young kids feel the need to stop eating in order to achieve a models body.  I agree with the idea that the media and models are responsible for eating disorders to become more and more common.

            Eating disorders develop because no one wants to be called ‘fat’.  In the article “Warning: I Will Employ the Word ‘Fat,’” by Lionel Shriver, he states, “Multiple studies document that children from Iowa to Italy have established a powerful aversion to fat- and to fat children- as young as age 3”.  In these studies children are shown pictures of obese people, people in wheelchairs, disfigured people, or people with missing limbs.  Out of all of these pictures, children are turned off the most by the picture of an obese person.  This is an awful way for children to think because you don’t know someone until you meet them.  There were always those overweight kids in school that people picked on just because of how they looked.  I’m sure most of them were very nice if you actually got to know them.  As people grow older it becomes less of a bother to them to be overweight.  In Shriver’s article he states, “Besides, as I get older, I grow less involved with feeling beautiful than with finding beauty”.  As people get older they realize that looking good isn’t everything.  Both men and women figure out that being a good person and doing what is best for them makes them successful.  In the end, having a model like body isn’t all there is in life.

            Being beautiful is a controversial topic that provokes many good and bad feelings.  Beauty isn’t everything in life and the media shouldn’t put that idea in the minds of the people.