I was on a train with my earphones shoved in my ears completely ignoring my fellow commuters (as is my want early in the morning) while reading inane things on twitter. My everyday life in which I do exactly the same things as everyone else should not inspire people, and yet I am constantly congratulated by strangers for simply existing. When my parents explained all this to the well-meaning nominator, they said "yes, but she's just such an inspiration".Īnd there's the rub. I was doing exactly the same things as my non-disabled friends. I wasn't feeding orphaned Chlamydia-infected baby koalas before school, or setting up a soup kitchen in the main street, or reading newspapers to the elderly at the local hospital.
![inspiration porn inspiration porn](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/54/fc/a9/54fca965dd28e23f087ba0c618ce4d2b--mass-effect-tali-short-hair.jpg)
I went to school, I got good marks, I had a very low key after-school job, and I spent a lot of time watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek. she hasn't actually achieved anything out of the ordinary." My parents said, "Thanks, but there's one glaring problem with that. When I was 15, a member of my local community approached my parents and told them she wanted to nominate me for some kind of community achievement award. It's no coincidence that these genuinely adorable disabled kids in these images are never named: it doesn't matter what their names are, they're just there as objects of inspiration.īut using these images as feel-good tools, as "inspiration", is based on an assumption that the people in them have terrible lives, and that it takes some extra kind of pluck or courage to live them. In this way, these modified images exceptionalise and objectify those of us they claim to represent. It's there so that non-disabled people can look at us and think "well, it could be worse. So they can go, "Oh well if that kid who doesn't have any legs can smile while he's having an awesome time, I should never, EVER feel bad about my life". Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn it's there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. I'd go on, but I might expunge the contents of my stomach. Then there's the one with the little girl with no hands drawing a picture holding the pencil in her mouth with the caption, "Before you quit. Yes, you can take a moment here to ponder the use of the word "invalid" in a disability context. The Hamilton quote is plastered across the photo.Īnd there's another one of a little boy running on those same model legs with the caption, "Your excuse is invalid".
![inspiration porn inspiration porn](https://themighty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ThinkstockPhotos-536250001-1.jpg)
Those legs, for the record, cost upwards of $20,000 and are completely out of reach for most people with disabilities.
![inspiration porn inspiration porn](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YmGtGaXbJSQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
It's of a little girl running on a set of prosthetic legs alongside Oscar Pistorius, also using similar prostheses. Increasingly, they feature the Hamilton quote. Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary - like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball - carrying a caption like "your excuse is invalid" or "before you quit, try". Those images constitute what's called inspiration porn. Firstly, I want to address the images that his slogan so often accompanies. Although how it qualifies him to make such a bold sweeping statement about disability, I can't quite grasp. Hamilton is a figure skater who has had cancer more than once and has survived after lots of treatment. He's the one who said "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." You know, that quote that's plastered all over pictures of disabled people doing completely normal things and shared far and wide on social media. I don't know Scott Hamilton personally, but that guy is really starting to burn my crumpets.