I Am Not Your Inspiration

Let me explain…

I need to start by defining inspiration porn.

First coined in 2012 by disability rights activist Stella Young, inspiration porn is the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability. Yes, this is a real term, it even has its own page on Wikipedia page. When coining the phrase, Stella Young said, “I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people.”

The purpose of inspiration porn is to reduce an individual's identity to only their disability and ultimately results in unrealistic expectations of heroism that are unfairly placed on the disabled.

Why am I bringing this up?

Well, as my mom was reading part II of my conversation with Danielle, she asked me “What is ‘inspiration porn’?” and I was taken aback. She has been immersed in my world since the beginning and yet she didn’t know what “inspiration porn” was. I realized that if she didn’t know, then perhaps it is a topic I need to address.

Inspiration porn runs rampant on social media. There are pages and profiles filled with images of disabled people as if they were paintings in a gallery. Moreover, these pages are not hard to find. Most are public for anyone to access. People use these spaces to call people with disabilities inspirational yet, in the real world, will stigmatize them for being different.

Now, before I go any further, I want to make something perfectly clear:

Disability is beautiful. Disability should be celebrated.

But being disabled does not define nor limit a person.

When I say that people like Danielle, Sinéad, and Michaela inspire me, it is not because they are different or disabled. I look up to these women, and many others, because of their past successes and what they continue to achieve.

Speaking for myself, I hope that when people say I inspire them it is because of what I’ve done regardless of the fact that I’m a dwarf. My height, my disability is a very small (no pun intended) part of who I am. If I wasn’t a little person, I would still have the same goals, the same dreams, the same aspirations. Would I have stood on the sidelines or behind the scenes as often as I did? We’ll never know. But I would always have an interest and passion for sports, for theater, for fashion, and I would still want to make a difference. So, when you say I inspire you or someone with a disability inspires you, really ask yourself why? Stella Young said it best: