Disability and Representation

Changing the Cultural Conversation

Inspiration Porn: Where Gawking, Guilt, and Gratitude Meet

I have a confession to make: I am fascinated by inspiration porn.

Why the fascination? It derives from the fact that what appears to be happening on the surface of inspiration porn is in absolute contradiction to what is going on beneath the words and images. In fact, my working hypothesis is that inspiration porn reveals a great deal about everything that is wrong with the way that people view disability.

For those unfamiliar with the genre, inspiration porn consists of the objectification of disabled bodies for the purpose of inspiring able-bodied people. Disabled people are its subject matter, but able-bodied people are its audience. And what should able-bodied people be inspired to do, you ask? It’s simple: they should adjust their attitudes, quit complaining, and go on to achieve great things through hard work and willpower. Of course, the ideology of inspiration porn completely ignores the bigotry, the economic injustice, and the basic human limitations that keep most people from actually being able to do all of those things.

But inspiration porn cares nothing for social context, because social context only gets in the way of inspiration. So, in its zeal to get able-bodied people to stop being such shleps, inspiration porn manifests itself for their delight in both visual and textual form. Visually, the genre makes use of a photograph of a disabled person with “inspirational” and guilt-inducing text attached, generally along the lines of What’s your excuse? or If this person can do it, so can you! Textually, it consists of a story or anecdote about brave, or gritty, or determined disabled people overcoming obstacles and not letting disability get in the way of their dreams.

I’ve recently read Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s 2002 article “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography,” and it’s given me a number of insights into the genre. (The article has also inspired me, you should forgive the expression, to read her 2009 book, Staring: How We Look, for further ways of looking at the problem.) In “The Politics of Staring,” Garland-Thomson creates a taxonomy in which disabled bodies are represented in popular photography according to four different categories, one or more of which can be present at any time:

1. The wondrous elicits admiration or astonishment at the disabled person by juxtaposing what is considered an extraordinary body with pedestrian surroundings, bringing together the exceptional with the ordinary. Among its many problems, this particular approach has the impact of making disability look unusual and distances the viewer from the fact that disabled bodies are relatively common (Garland-Thomson 2002, 59-61).

2. The sentimental elicits pity at perceived suffering and arouses a humanitarian desire to help and to feel oneself sympathetic, kind, and noble. As Garland-Thomson points out, this genre grew out of “the larger nineteenth-century bourgeois culture of fine feelings” in which “[t]he pathetic, the impotent, and the suffering confirmed the Victorian bourgeoisie by arousing their finest sentiments.” (Garland-Thomson 2002, 63)

3. The exotic dramatizes disabled people as though we are alien life forms and uses, in Garland-Thomson’s words, “the hyperbole and stigma traditionally associated with disability” to sensationalize images of disabled people as disturbing and larger than life (Garland-Thomson 2002, 69).

4. The realistic attempts to erase the difference between disabled and nondisabled people by hiding visible indicators of disability and “normalizing” disabled people (Garland-Thomson 2002, 69).

Most visuals communicate different messages based on the context in which they appear and the text that accompanies them; these differences are especially striking when it comes to the ways in which images of disabled people are purveyed. Take, for example, the following photograph of a disabled swimmer that has been making the rounds on tumblr:


Source: tumblr.com

For me, one of the most striking things about the photograph is how ordinary it feels: it’s simply a woman walking away from a swimming pool. When I try to fit the photograph into Garland-Thomson’s taxonomy, I fail. I see no trace of the sentimental at all, no helplessness, nothing to pity. I suppose I could assign the photograph to the category of the wondrous, since the picture juxtaposes the unusual (a swimmer with a prosthetic leg) with the pedestrian (people gathering under an awning, a man in a baseball cap looking out over the wall, another swimmer standing nearby). But since the woman is simply walking, I feel little sense of amazement.

I could also assign it to the category of the exotic, since in defying the stereotype of disability as weakness and frailty, the subject appears almost larger than life in her strength and power. The fact that the other swimmer is rather unabashedly staring at the woman’s prosthetic adds to the sense of her being cast as other and alien. But given that the exotic depends upon sensationalism, and that there is nothing particularly sensational about a woman walking away from a swimming pool — after all, that’s what the prosthetic is designed to enable her to do — that category doesn’t quite fit either. In fact, the photograph seems so (pardon the pun) pedestrian to me that I’m tempted to put it in the realistic category, but because there is no attempt to hide the subject’s disability, that category doesn’t apply.

Watch what happens, however, when the photograph is framed in a different context and with an accompanying caption:


Source: tumblr.com

The photograph is posted on a site about high-level athletic training that exhorts its readers to increase their level of commitment and make their bodies stronger and stronger. The site is replete with photographs of triathletes, and focuses particularly on the muscular nature of their bodies. One photograph of an athlete’s well-muscled legs is accompanied by the caption He didn’t get these without sacrifice. Get out there. Another photograph ridicules a fat, round man with the caption Spandex: It’s Not For Everyone. It’s clear that resting on one’s laurels, being satisfied with one’s level of training, or even, God forbid, having softness, visible fat, or frailty in one’s body is not of value. The point is to be lean, tough and, to borrow Paul Longmore’s wonderful turn of phrase, “severely able-bodied.” (Longmore, quoted in Garland-Thomson 2004, 33)

Enter the disabled body. The woman in the photo is clearly an athlete; her body is strong and powerful. One might be tempted to say that the exhortation at the top of the page is directed at the woman herself; after all, there is nothing wrong with high-level athletes, disabled or not, increasing their levels of training. But in the context of the site, her prosthetic leg sticks out, as it were, because it is so at odds with the many pictures of well-muscled legs and the celebration of abled bodies being as able as possible. Moreover, her disability catches the eye and sets her apart because she is the only disabled person in all of the photographs. In the context of the site, then, she is represented as both wondrous (familiar and ordinary as an athlete, but extraordinary and out of place as a disabled athlete) and exotic (strong and powerful in her body, but alien and apart in her prosthesis). On both scores, her photograph invites gawking.

For the able-bodied audience, this gawking is put to significant use in the inspirational text beneath the photograph, which reads No excuses. This text brings the image squarely into the realm of the sentimental. The message is If this (poor, one-legged) crip can be this strong (and brave! and gutsy!), you have no excuse for not training harder. The reader is thus made to feel guilty for not working as hard as the disabled athlete. The narrative is not one of amazement; it’s one of pity. Yes, she is still a strong, athletic woman, but her image is not inspirational because she is an athlete. It is inspirational because she has a prosthetic leg. The text implies that it is some sort of superhuman feat for a disabled person to be an athlete, which assumes that there is loss and deficit that she constantly has to strive to overcome. If a disabled person can do the impossible, the reader is exhorted, how much more should able-bodied people feel grateful for their able bodies and push those bodies to great lengths.

As is always the case in inspiration porn, the disabled body has become a vehicle for inspiring others — nothing more. The woman’s subjectivity has been erased. What is her name? Does she gain satisfaction from her sport? How often does she train? Where has she competed? None of these questions are answered. As opposed to most of the other athletes represented on the site, her face is not visible and she is not even shown participating in her sport.

The website and its use of a disabled figure reflects the way in which our culture is saturated with the idea that one simply has to work hard and get tough in order to succeed. With hard work, willpower, determination, and a can-do attitude, we are told, anything is possible. It is in the service of this mythology that inspiration porn lives and thrives.

Sources

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography.” In Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, edited by Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 56-75. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America, 2002.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Dares to Stares: Disabled Women Performance Artists and the Dynamics of Staring.” In Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, edited by Philip Auslander and Carrie Sandahl, 30-42. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Staring: How We Look. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Train More: Harden Up. http://itsnotsupposedtobeasy.tumblr.com/post/20068403986/no-excuses. Accessed June 3, 2012.

© 2012 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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    6 comments already | Leave your own comment

  1. 6/3/2012 | 8:31 pm Permalink

    Wow, this is so true and so well-said. I love how you can so beautifully sum up what I am thinking in my muddled mind. So many people send me these types of inspirational porn and I never know what to say to them. One acquaintance sent me a video about a young man who is crippled but also an amazing musician. She told me she sent it because, “I needed the inspiration.” I guess she somehow thought that this story of the young man (whose parents sacrificed a great deal to help him with his music) would somehow inspire me (the mother of a child with autism.) It didn’t inspire me; it insulted me. And I had a hard time expressing why. Your post has helped me figure out my feelings on the matter. Thanks!

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    • 6/10/2012 | 3:16 am Permalink

      Oh, wow.

      That reads to me like your friend was trying to remind you how things can always be worse, or, maybe tomorrow your autistic child will wake up and have all these amazing Things about them that will ‘balance out’ that whole autism thing. (maybe s/he does have some amazing talent; either way, it’s like when people say, “I have a blind third cousin” when I tell them I’m hard of hearing)

      As an autistic person I find neither of the above options particularly attractive.

      You’re a mother of a child. Regardless of how easy or difficult or different other people perceive it, that is your child. S/he doesn’t need any other validation, like a special talent, or anyone else’s “pat on the head” to be “worth” whatever it is you may “suffer.”

      Meanwhile, your child is an individual.

      –egh, I’ll halt there.
      Sorry for ranting; I grew up with a mom that thrived on this kind of attention and it’s refreshing to see mothers like yourself who do not.

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  2. 6/6/2012 | 3:44 pm Permalink

    I see what you are meaning. When I see these pics being shared on FB I wonder if the sharers think about what they would feel like if they were the one being photographed? I would not like it one bit. It would feel insulting. I don’t want to be a token, or a inspiration. I just want to be considered equal and that can’t happen if people are looking down, or up at me.

    Also, pics of mixed animals sleeping next to each other is considered the same thing, but it rubs me the wrong way the same as the disability type of ‘inspirational’ photos do, but I can’t really tell you why. They just feel fake and kind of like they’re not fixing anything wrong with the way society addresses our differences, but just minimizes the seriousness with a distraction of cute animal pics.
    Anyway, I just thought I’d check out your new page. I like it!

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  3. 9/15/2013 | 2:51 pm Permalink

    Great article. I don’t have anything meaningful to add. You’ve covered much of it so well. I just wanted to give you feedback so hopefully you continue to be a resource. Thank you.

    Respond to this comment

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  6. Quora

    Is it offensive to people with disabilities when people post inspiring pictures of people with disabilities?…

    Here is a blog post by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, a disability rights activist, that I think eloquently explains the problematic nature of inspiration porn and cites the disability theory that goes along with it: http://www.disabilityandrepresentation.co

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