Disability

In Nancy Mair's essay on disability, she comments on the lack of disabled people in advertisement. Mairs proves that though she may have a disability, she still remains "Ms. Great American Consumer" (14.) Part of Mair's claim is that both disabled and non-disabled people need to accept disability as an ordinary part of life; she believes representation in advertising would help accomplish this goal. While adding this representation would be beneficial to disabled that are viewing, it would be a horrible marketing strategy.

Would you rather buy the dog food bought by someone in a wheel chair or someone who was beautiful and perfect in every way? Everybody wants to achieve the inhuman level of perfection they observe in advertisement. The person pouring the food is perfect, I want to be perfect, surely that's the type of dog food for me. Nobody strives to be pouring from a wheel chair.

The advertisement creators have been given a simple choice: fight the good fight, or do their jobs to the best of their ability. They could portray handicapped in their ads and help them be accepted and even accept themselves. However this option would scare ordinary viewers and sales would go down. Ad executives aren't ignorant of the handicapped's struggle. They aren't heartless or indifferent. It's capitalism, pausing for morality or social justice would directly contradict the goal of the ad itself, so there's no place for it. You can't blame advertisements, they're just doing what society wants to see. The problem isn't the media that people are being fed, it's the people themselves.

Allow me to play you out...