Healing, Empowering and Thriving: hypocricy

This life of care-giving, year upon year, takes the mind where minds don't usually go! That's not an original phrase but robbed from the rock opera "Tommy'" by The Who. Most readers are too young to have a clue about this rendition. Anyway, psychic triggers abound after the years and issues which most people in the "real" world would ignore ignite atomic explosions in my soul. Last week, the trigger was organized religion....'nough said!
Today, alas, today, it was the use (abuse) and handicapped kids in fashion advertising to promote the delusion of inclusion. It reminds me of the day when blacks were included in advertising as long as they were light skinned blacks. Blacks who were really dark-skinned reminded the masses of the agony of the years of ignominious slavery...can't do that, can we? So we carefully picked just the right shade of black and the right features so these folks who appeared with whites in fashion mags looked like darker skinned whites. Triggered the ever loving crap out of me.

Delores Cortes, Spanish Designer

So, now we enter the world of disability inclusion; just so that we are all marginally PC and we can get the disabled community off our backs. I mean, really now, with ADA, IDEA and the like dribbles of legislation, what more do these folks want.
I am watching fashionistas use handicapped disabled kids to promote their new lines of wear. First, light skinned blacks, then plus size women, now disabled kids. Is there no extreme that we will go to in order to make a buck? Here's the rub which triggers ever frayed nerve in my jangled tangle of neurons which even a valium won't abate.

Our friends at Target

First take the right kid...someone with Down Syndrome who is cuter, more adorable, more hugable than the highest angel in the heavens. Then take said child and use them to promote swimwear, to promote inclusive clothing in a chain store striving to break the corporate delusions of a Chick-fil-A or a Wendy's or a Limbaugh sponsor. The message is that we are so fuckin' good because we include the adorable disabled child.
Now this child has none of the pronounced features of a moderately severely DS child and could easily be mistaken for Sally down the street. The issue is not because of a commitment to disability awareness or the promotion of inclusion in society. The message is not that the lives of the severely disabled are worthy of life in the fullest. The message is we "luv" cute disabled kids and we want to to know this so you buy our product. The same is true of the purveyors of adaptive and assistive equipment...cute, well-groomed, almost normal looking kids. I know, and if you follow me in this blog, that all disabled kids, even the most severe are beautiful...I somehow think that society does not subscribe to our definition of beauty.

And our friends at Nordstrom's

Did you ever see an advertisement for a product which features a kid with a trach, with a g-tube, having a massive seizure? How about spastic kid with contorted hands and feet? How about a kid modeling an aeropostale shirt with severe scoliosis? Better yet, how about a kid in a wheelchair with a urine collection bag attached to the side? Now that's a pair of jeans that would sell and make the manufacturer a billion..

One cool dude...what's he selling?

Why do I feel that a rampant hypocrisy underlies the depiction and the inclusion of adorable disabled kids in advertising? Why do I feel that the really really severely disabled are unworthy of fashion modeling? Why is that I feel severely disabled can't sell clothes, standers, wheelchairs or modified toilet seats? Something is wrong and like I said my "mind goes places where minds don't usually go?" Is this my descent into madness?