What has changed and what haS remained the same?
Like most of us, we are all looking back at our daily memories on Facebook and shuddering at the statuses we wrote in the early 2010s. This was before Twitter had truly taken off and it was normal to post everything you were thinking, feeling, and doing. Case in point:
Oddly enough, I remember why I posted this. It was early in my senior year of high school and that day we were all being measured for our caps and gowns to wear at our graduation ceremony in June. The people taking my measurements were polite to my face, expressing genuine concern that they did not know if they could make a gown in my size. I understood their concern and told them that whatever they were able to make for me I could probably have altered to be fit. Nine years later and I still struggle finding clothes that fit without needing alterations. What I did not understand is what happened afterwards. As the post clearly states, I overheard these adults talking about me behind my back and, while I don’t remember the exact words they used, I remember they made me feel smaller than my 4’00” stature. It was the first time that I can remember feeling like my height was an inconvenience for others.
Reading the post in 2021, I can say that the statement is technically true if you read it literally. Being four feet tall does not make me disabled. Being a dwarf does. What is not said but rather implied is that I thought being labeled “disabled” was bad, that I was hurt that they assumed (correctly, mind you) that because I was a little person, I am disabled.
This thinking reflects how I was raised. I knew that I was different, that there were things I could not do, but don’t remember my dwarfism being defined (at home) as a disability (I could be wrong). Did I have special accommodations made in school? Yes. Did I think that they were because I was disabled? No. I thought I was given a footstool, had a phonebook taped to the back of my chair, and permission to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office simply because I was shorter than my classmates. When I realized that being a little person also meant that I was a person with a disability, I fought against it. I insisted on having fewer accommodations made at school, would demand that I be treated like everybody else even when I knew it wasn’t true, and would never admit to myself or others that I was disabled. I wanted to be thought of, as my dad would say, “one of the guys”. I wasn’t fully aware of the stigma that surrounds disability, but I sensed it. Trying to fit in as the only little person in an average-sized school was hard enough, I thought embracing the term “disabled” would make it that much harder.
Looking back, I realize how far I’ve come. Moreover, I realized how much society and the environment have remained the same. Now, in 2021, I don’t view “disabled” as a bad word. It is simply one word that describes who I am. It doesn’t define me. Yet, there are times where society and the environment still makes me feel that my disability is an inconvenience. Accepting that I am disabled means understanding that there have been and perhaps always will be barriers that I have to overcome- visible and invisible barriers constructed by a society and environment that is inherently ableist. I can’t change who I am. I am a little person, I am a disabled person, I am me. What can, and needs to, change is society’s perception of what being disabled truly means.
Disability is beautiful. Disability is dynamic. Disability is powerful. Disability is NOT a burden.
