Catwalking Towards Equality

Just yesterday, I was routinely walking into Troy High at about 10:30 am for synchro practice. As I was walking in, a young boy of about 4 years old was walking out the door. At once, I noticed his bright yellow walker and his unique, to say the least, style of walking. A moment late I realized his father was not walking alongside him, but rather a few feet ahead. Whatever the reason for this was, it just made me feel all the more sympathetic for him. Then came the feeling of guilt; having the urge to stare at him but not doing so because it is disrespectful made me a culprit of the stereotype that people with disabilities are “different.” Although we talked in class about how society has these preconceived notions about disabled people, I did not grasp the entire meaning of this until yesterday. This made me realize that due to the lack of representation of disabled people in media, us “TAP’s,” (Mairs) disregard disabled people as part of the norm.

In order to defy this common stereotype, disabled models were given the chance to walk on the New York Fashion Week catwalk. The goal, essentially, was to “depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life” (Mairs) in a society wher media is criticized for its lack of diversity. Jack Eyers, the world’s first male amputee, stated that the brief moment he had on the catwalk allowed him to deliver the message that disabilities shouldn’t hold one back. Every act of portraying the disabled in media is one step closer to equality for them in a world of  inequitable stereotypes.