Gina-Marie An & Rosemary Pauley
Dr. Foss
April 23, 2020
ENGL 384
Inspiration Porn and Overcoming Narratives: Objectifying Disabled Lives
Throughout the course of our semester, we have addressed many ways in which disabled people are mistreated and misrepresented. Inspiration porn and overcoming narratives are particularly common yet highly offensive acts that are harmful towards people with disabilities. Able-bodied people tend to put a cap on a disabled person’s ability and infantilize their achievements through unnecessary praise, whereas their accomplishments are only viewed through their disability and not their own strength. They are often praised for attempting rather than achieving by able-bodied people, and that can be used as fuel for nondisabled people to work harder or whatever other cliches the inspiration porn is pushing towards. The objectification of disabled people is perpetuated by the presence and normalization of inspiration porn and overcoming narratives.
The term “inspiration porn” was coined by journalist and disability rights advocate Stella Young. Inspiration porn refers to when nondisabled people use the lives and stories of disabled people to inspire them, or use them to help or better themselves in some way. Examples of this could be inspirational posters that feature a disabled person doing some great feat or simply just doing an everyday task in a different way than an able-bodied person might do as if this in itself is some extraordinary feat. Already this poses a problem in making a spectacle of how people with disabilities exist in an ableist society, but it also continues the centuries-old stereotypes and assumptions that people with disabilities are somehow different or unconventional. They emphasize the idea that existing as a disabled person is difficult and effortful enough to inspire nondisabled people to work harder and do better in whatever they are trying to achieve.
Young addressed the prominence of these viewpoints, “we’ve been sold the lie that disability is a Bad Thing, capital B, capital T. It’s a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional. It’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t make you exceptional” (Young 2014). Nondisabled people tend to see simply living with a disability as an achievement and use that as motivation or inspiration for themselves. Because society is inherently ableist, these assumptions about disability are widespread and widely accepted, allowing inspiration porn to be the popular and unsuspecting form of objectification that it is today. While many nondisabled people might think of these instances as a harmless way of uplifting people with disabilities or acknowledging them in a positive way, in actuality, it is condescending and belittling towards people with disabilities. Acting as if disabled people are accomplishing something incredible just by living out a normal life infantilizes and devalues them as people while also giving nondisabled people a source for inspiration porn and self-improvement.
In her TED Talk, “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much,” Stella Young talks about her own experiences with nondisabled people expecting her to be uplifting and inspirational in every interaction with her, as if that is all that disabled people are meant to do. When explaining her use of inspiration porn, Young said, “I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people.” Able-bodied people are actively objectifying disabled people by using their stories and lives for their own beneficial reasons. This practice is extremely hurtful for people with disabilities because they are not only being used to the advantage of people without disabilities, but they are also being socially separated from nondisabled people. Value is being placed on these perceived achievements or accomplishments rather than the life of the actual disabled person. These uses of inspiration porn are essentially a more subtle way of putting disabled people on display, with the unsuccessful intent of addressing disability in a positive and opportunistic way. This objectification of people with disabilities is played off as acknowledging diversity and celebrating differences instead of being treated as an unethical practice.
An acknowledgment of inspiration porn can be found in a poem by Jillian Weise that we analyzed in class. In Jillian Weise’s “Nondisabled Demands,” the extent to which nondisabled people are intrusive in getting information about disability for inspiration porn is made abundantly clear. In the last stanza, Weise writes, “We’ll rope you / to the podium and ask / What do you have? / … Then we get to say / You’re an inspiration.” The image of roping someone to a podium for the entertainment of others is a prominent example of the objectification that surrounds inspiration porn. Personal information seems to be taken against their will, leaving disabled people feeling violated and used for the benefit or entertainment of others. Nondisabled people feel a sense of entitlement to know the intimate details behind someone’s disability. That entitlement then extends to using those details for their own benefit in cases of inspiration porn, further asserting their needs and wants above those of people with disabilities.
Weise’s poem also calls attention to how inspiration porn not only uses the stories of people with disabilities but also takes those individualistic narratives away from disabled people. After nondisabled people force out the details of their disability, their worth and ability are interpreted by nondisabled people. The narratives that are supposed to belong to disabled people are manipulated into something for the benefit of nondisabled people often at the expense of the disabled person’s opinions or feelings. When Weise notes in her last stanza that nondisabled people get to make the choice of labeling someone as an inspiration, they are also making a choice about what meaning is carried by their story rather than letting the disabled person have control of their own narrative. Inspiration porn objectifies people with disabilities by taking this control away from disabled people.
Inspiration porn coincides with the issue and notion of overcoming one’s own disability, often referred to as an “overcoming narrative.” This overcoming narrative addresses the abled perspective and how abled people push their own ideas of disability onto the disabled to insinuate what their disability is supposed to look like, how they are supposed to function, and what the limits to their disability are. Perceiving a disabled person’s existence as overcoming their disability often acts as fuel for the inspiration porn, as well as continues the viewpoint that disabilities must be overcome or removed in the first place.
Jessica Cox, the first world’s licensed and armless pilot, says in her TED Talk, “I grew up in a world built for someone with arms and it has taught me that pity prevents progress.” She describes her perseverance and lack of self-pity that enabled her to achieve far beyond what this world built for arms expected of her. She begins the TED Talk by describing a challenge she once had as a child: to tie her shoes. She sits down and begins to tie the laces with her feet, then as she finishes the last loop and secures the bow tie, the crowd roars into a cheer. However, when she stands up, she expresses, “I want you to look at me again and understand that I am not different.” Simi Linton, in “Reassigning Meanings,” describes the perpetuation of disabled persons and the ways in which even the meaningfulness of disabled lives are dictated by abled perspective and their preliminary understanding of disability. Simi Linton’s description of “nice words” can be shown through the crowd cheering for Jessica Cox. The language of cheer and appraisal, though wordless, exemplifies a crowd that may have viewed her disability as less capable and showcases their happiness or astonishment that she was able to do it otherwise. Nice words, or nice language, can reassign meaning to protect their own egos as a defense mechanism, therefore they will immediately praise the disabled person in order to stifle their prior feelings of doubt and disbelief. Jessica Cox’s quote emphasizes the simple want to be seen, to be seen as human and as equal, and not as a unique and extraordinary case to be idealized and inspired by, simply because of her disability.
Our abled society expects Jessica Cox to be passive, unable to claim an identity outside of their disability. However, Jessica Cox is arguing a similar shift in perspective. Simi Linton argues a change of thinking, a shift in the way we look at disabled persons and assume their social inferiority. Jessica Cox shows this by describing how she was treated and objected to pity. Her disability is treated as a hindrance or something to be ashamed of, until she “surprisingly” overcomes it despite societal expectations. This ableist perspective places value on her for “overcoming” the challenges she faced in their ableist society, making her an inspiration and something to behold.
In Kafer’s “Imagined Futures,” Kafer emphasizes the assumptions of disabled success, and that disabled success is misguided and abled success is simply not for disabled people. It was seen that her lack of arms was a “symbol of undesired futures.” Or rather, that her success was impossible and unexpected. Disabled person’s interaction with the world is seen as useless and even dangerous to the ableist structure that so many nondisabled people exist comfortably in. For example, Cox describes how she is told over and over that she cannot do something, that it is not for her. Cox expressed that this constant denial of participation made her want to prove them wrong. “People with disabilities usually realize that they must learn to live with their disability… The challenge is not to adapt their disability into an extraordinary power or an alternative image of ability. The challenge is to function” (Siebers, 180). It’s important to understand that Cox did not adapt to her disability, her real adaptation was to the people around her who did not have any hope for her. Instead of overcoming a disability like so many able-bodied people interpreted her to be doing, she overcame the confines of the ableist society that was manipulating the way she was to be seen and treated.
Addressing these issues and making an adjustment on the way we view disabled lives can help us better understand and respond better to insensitive behavior and make inspiration porn and objectification a known, inappropriate act. Recognition of this behavior can help dampen the misrepresentation and mistreatment disabled people go through. While disabled people can be and are inspiring, and they absolutely do overcome tough obstacles, it is not fair to objectify their lives and treat them as though they are inferior. They are more than their disability, more than “less than,” and should be given the same choices and opportunities as everyone else.
Word Count: 1766
I pledge. Rosemary Pauley and Gina-Marie An
Works Cited
Kafer, Alison. “Introduction; Imagined Futures.” Feminist, Queer, Crip, Amsterdam University Press, 2013, pp. 1–24.
Linton, Simi. “Reassigning Meaning.” Claiming Disability, Amsterdam University Press, 1998, pp. 8–33.
Siebers, Tobin. Disability in Theory: From Social Constructionism to the New Realism of the Body, American Literary History, Volume 13, Issue 4, Winter 2001, pp. 737–754, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/13.4.737
TEDx Talks. “World’s First Certified Armless Pilot: Jessica Cox at TEDxSouthCapitolSt.” YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 4 Oct. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=31e_xTZHrqE.
Weise, J. (2018). Nondisabled Demands. Originally published in Poem-A-Day on March 9, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets
Young, Stella. “I’m Not Your Inspiration, Thank You Very Much.” TED Talks, uploaded by TEDx, Apr. 2014, www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much?language=en.
