The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

Analysis & Response 81 that disability is comfortable and known as well. However, no one desires disability. In fact, it is a terrifying reality that no person can escape the possibility of becoming disabled. However, this is far from ideal, thus the media places disability in a category that is deemed unrelatable to the common American. The media encourages the common American to view the disabled as both defined by their disease and inherently abnormal, but how do the disabled view themselves? Mairs describes the feelings of the disabled as “self-alienation not unlike that experienced by other minorities” (p. 221). Views encouraged by the media are received by the disabled in such a way that they feel as though value as been removed from them, that they are unwanted and that no one is like them. Mairs (2005) challenges the reader to picture themselves in the shoes of the disabled, where “others you can hope to be like - don’t exist” (p. 222). This view of the one’s self breeds isolation, shame and the feeling that the media’s reflection of the disabled could be true. The media is a powerful tool which shapes people’s perception of the world around them, including a largely negative view of the disabled. Mairs (2005) pleads that we change this perception by integrating disability into “the small and common scenes of our ordinary lives” (p. 222). Perhaps this could be accomplished by the personal effort to change our perception of the disabled, working to remove the veil and see the true person behind the disability.