I commented recently on
this post at
FRIDA, about disabled teenagers
Anne Jennings and
Kirsten Pass being named as
homecoming queen* at their respective high schools.
*Before that, the only time i had ever heard the phrase "homecoming queen" was, er, in a
Monkees song, so i had to look it up...
My original comment was:
Hmm. No feminist critique of the whole concept of "homecoming queen", then?
Sounds like similar ambiguities are at play here as i wrote about in this post: http://biodiverseresistance.blogspot.com/2008/07/britains-missing-top-model.html
Also, it strikes me that this could be a really patronising, "special award" kind of thing that could be really, really sickening and demeaning if handled even slightly in that "inspirational" kind of way (which i strongly suspect it was)...to which Linda Edwards replied:
Shiva
yes, there is strong feminist critique and there is also a strong feminist-disability critique of images of women with disabilities in the media by the feminist-disability scholar Rosemarie Garland Thomson. There are ambiguities and tensions at play here - perhaps one of the tensions we feel is that her selection is kind of subversive and kind of not. Whilst it does not challenge or subvert the status quo around beauty pageants, the selection of a women with Down syndrome as homecoming queen on the other hand, with regard to the representation of women with Down syndrome it is very subversive. Why do people feel uncomfortable about the selection of a woman with Down syndrome as homecoming queen? Are they uncomfortable with it for the same reasons that are critical of homecoming queen events in general. Is it patronizing or demeaning. It strikes you that way, but I don't think Ann feels that way. By all accounts, she is overjoyed. Whilst a good part of me feels uncomfortable, a good part of me also feels overjoyed for her.to which i then replied:
I suppose i can't help thinking that, given the nature of the event (based so firmly on conventional images of femininity and female beauty), the young women in question can only have been picked for horribly patronising and tokenistic reasons. Which may make me more of a cynic than i should be, i don't know...
Having fairly recently been a teenager myself, i can also all too easily imagine the probable reactions of "normal" teenagers to it (or, at least, those of "normal" teenagers in working class areas of the UK... tho, from pop culture, i can't imagine the US being *too* different) - either a combination of disgust, mockery and resentment, or a patronising "awww, isn't she sweet and inspirational" attitude.
I think it's also interesting how people with particular impairments tend to get portrayed as "inspirational", "morally superior" etc, while people with other particular impairments get portrayed as "unfeeling", "inhuman", "dangerous" etc. It reminds me of the "noble savage" contradiction of how indigenous peoples were portrayed by European colonisers, and some particular ethnic groups were singled out for portrayal as one, and some as the other.
I cannot imagine someone with, say, autism or schizophrenia, getting this kind of news portrayal, while people with Down's get it very often...(The "noble"/"savage" dichotomy is something i intend to get back to in another post i have planned, about the parallels between disability experience and postcolonial experience... tho it's one of literally *hundreds* of vaguely-planned posts i have, so whether it'll actually materialise is another matter...)
and Linda responded:
You're concern seems to be centred on the thoughts of everyone else such as the reactions of teenagers to her selection, and the reasons why her classmates selected her. But what about you - what tensions are at play in your reaction? You wonder if teenagers are resentful or disgusted about her selection - are you resentful or disgusted, or are you thinking, oh, how sweet? Or are your feelings more nuanced, both positive and negative? I'm also reading your comments as being afraid for her, as wanting to protect her, and as projecting your own thoughts onto her - putting yourself in her place and thinking that if you were selected, you would feel patronized? According to the Chicago Tribune, her friends selected her because she is a lovely person who often hugs her friends. Isn't that a bit subversive? Doesn't it challenge the status quo in so far as her selection is based on something other than traditional notions of beauty? Whilst its possible that some of tensions you allude to, such as a little bit of tokenism, were at play during the selection process, its still kinda subversive. I'm thinking with regard to those teenagers who may be resentful or disturbed by her selection that its best to have discussions with them about that. Why are you resentful? What bothers you about it? And to convey to them that I think she is beautiful and to open them up to that idea. Yeah, I'm critical of beauty pageants - but I am awfully happy that Anne is so excited about being chosen.As the FRIDA blog has several new posts a day, meaning that posts disappear off the front page quickly, and not many of those posts get comment threads, while i felt like i ought to respond, i decided that a better place for the response would be here...
Firstly, no, i myself am not resentful or disgusted at this, but nor am i thinking "awww, that's sweet" or anything similar. As for "being afraid for her" or "wanting to protect her"... well, that's possibly true, but (I hope) not in a paternalistically "protective" way - more in the sense of strongly identifying with her, and finding it all too easy to imagine the kind of reactions she would get, most of which I can see as strongly negative.
I don't know if
exactly the same teenage culture exists in the USA as does in the UK, and i am very, very sure that class plays a huge role as well (and have no idea what sort of class or economic background Anne Jennings, Kirsten Pass or the majority of either of their classmates are from), but there is a
profoundly disablist (and lots-of-other-things-ist, eg homophobic and transphobic, but i really do think that disablism is by far the strongest and deepest-seated prejudice in it) teenage culture in most working-class schools in the UK. (I think the middle and upper-class teenage cultures are arguably just as disablist, but it's expressed in a much less violent and hateful way, which is in part where the class factor comes in.) Words like "spastic" and "retard" are among the commonest and most unquestioned insults, and there is (or was when i was at school) a real disgust towards disabled people, even among otherwise unprejudiced people, that is hard to describe but, i think, has to be witnessed first-hand for its full extent to be understood.
When i was about Anne Jennings's age (and, at the time, not diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum or self-identified as disabled), i volunteered on a summer "activity scheme" for young people of roughly the same age group with learning disabilities - who were a fairly mixed bag, with a couple of people there who actually only had physical impairments and no "learning disability" label, some autistic, some with Down's or other syndromes, some nonverbal and regarded as "profoundly" impaired, others very verbal but with an obvious, significant difference from typical peers in vocabulary, non-verbal communication or topics of interest. All noticeably dressed (or were dressed by their parents) and acted in social ways as if they were significantly younger than a "typical" teenager (I have more to say there about cultural perceptions of age and maturity, and what it really means to "act younger" or "act older" than one's actual age, but i think that has to be saved for another post).
The majority of the "non-disabled" (in quotes because several, including me, actually were disabled, but did not have a "learning disability" label) young people who volunteered fell into a few categories: those from very middle-class or very religious backgrounds who had a strong ethic of altruism or "doing good" and were less invested than most in the (pretty viciously enforced) norms of "mainstream" youth culture, those who had siblings or family members in the "client" group, and some who were very marginalised and had a strong identification with the disabled young people for one reason or another (which category i was in). I was not the only person there, but one of very few, who tried to treat all of them as my equals, as a matter of fundamental principle, and tried to break the disabled/non-disabled divide (it took me a few years longer to realise how systematically that divide was part of the whole foundation of schemes like that one).
Several memories stand out strongly from that experience, all of which deserve writing about by themselves: one young woman, the same age as me, who kept hugging and being physically affectionate with me (over which i was taken aside and told to tell her that this was "inappropriate"), and said to me several times "we're the same"; someone in my class at school whose brother was a "client", but who became cold and unwilling to talk to me when she found out I knew her brother, and adamantly did not want to be associated with him in any way in front of anyone else at school; my being mistaken for a nonverbal "client" by another volunteer, and the ensuing embarrassment on her part (which to me was baffling, but then raised the very troubling question of whether i
should be embarrassed by such a supposed category error); most of all the strength of the identication i felt with the learning-disabled young people, which troubled me deeply and left me reeling (and which probably sowed some of the first seeds of my own eventual self-diagnosis some 5 years later).
The point of this anecdote is that, having observed the reactions of typical teenagers to learning-disabled people of their own age, the depth of the prejudice was incredibly clear to me. One young woman who volunteered on one of the projects was utterly horrified and disgusted by a young man with a learning disability (i
think he had Down's, but can't remember for sure) being attracted to her in a physically affectionate way, and left over it. I can be about as sure as I am of anything that a person with an obvious impairment such as Down's would
not have been accepted into friendship groups or treated as an equal or even a valid human being by the vast majority of teenagers at my school.
The cultural standards of attractiveness, in particular, were so rigidly and viciously enforced that i was met with shock, disbelief and even something close to anger when I told a (very attractive) young woman who was generally friendly towards me that i found her more attractive when not wearing make-up. Being overweight (by an extremely arbitrary standard), having any remotely unusual facial feature or not wearing the "right" clothes was considered a perfectly valid reason for vicious insults and even personal enmity (from both men and other women) - I really dread to think what kind of response trying "to convey to them that I think [a young woman with Down's] is beautiful and to open them up to that idea" would have got among even the most outspokenly anti-racist and anti-homophobic young people in that cultural milieu.
(I do, and did then, think that some people with Down's
are attractive - the UK stage actress
Sarah Gordy being a case in point - but the thought of
saying so openly in that milieu would have been so unthinkable that, to be honest, I would still be too scared of the disgusted response to say so in any setting other than a mostly-disabled one now... probably a good example of internalised prejudice :(
ETA: from the Chicago Tribune's
photo gallery of the story, i'd say Anne Jennings is arguably quite attractive too... tho discussing the attractiveness or otherwise of a 17 year old now, at 26, makes me feel kind of squicky regardless of disability issues or anything else...)
(This all was approximately 10 years ago, and i am aware that inclusion/integration in schools in the UK has progressed somewhat in that time, and that a lot more kids with learning disabilities and/or physical impairments are in mainstream schools now.
Maybe things would be different in teenage culture now, i don't know. My school was one which was selective by 12-plus exam results, which of course meant it had no pupils woth a "special educational needs" label, and was also very physically inaccessible (stairs to get nearly everywhere). There were a few others besides myself with fairly obvious, albeit undiagnosed, neurodiversity (most of whom were very marginalised within the school), and a few with relatively minor physical impairments, which were regarded as irrelevant except on the sports field... as long as they could get up stairs to classrooms. Other, non-selective local schools had some pupils with diagnosed mental impairments, but all those who were clients of the activity schemes i volunteered for went to "special" schools.)
If the friendships that Anne Jennings has with her classmates are genuine and equal ones, then i am immensely happy that this is the case, and think that's an incredibly positive thing for society. Maybe this is, in fact, one way in which US youth culture is more positive than that in the UK. Maybe it is my problem that i read things like this and take a default position of cynicism... i don't know, but that comes from my experience. Even if Anne Jennings and Kirsten Pass do feel unambiguously happy about their awards, i can't help seeing an ugly kind of well-meaning-but-probably-hideously-backfiring patronage in them being chosen for them. I can't help thinking that they are undoubtedly aware of the disablism of the society around them, of being regarded as negatively "special", and that they must experience some dissonance at their being singled out as positively "special" and held up as examples for their typical classmates.
I'm probably not articulating this very well, but even though the choice of a young woman with a visible impairment to win a contest closely associated with stereotypical notions of femininity and attractiveness/beauty is undoubtedly subversive in one sense, i can't help thinking that it would fail at subversion, and quite possibly result in increased bullying and abuse of the winners by typical young people whose attitudes I can only too easily imagine.
And that was really rambly, really badly expressed and probably still didn't say very much useful - but i just really felt a) that i needed to respond to that exchange and b) that i wanted to post something tonight... Linda, not sure if you read this blog but your further thoughts would be welcome - as would anyone else's, in particular those of any disabled people with more recent experience than me of the "mainstream" youth culture/school system...
