Normal Is What We Make It

 After reading pieces such as “Disability” by Nancy Mairs, I feel that I have gained much more insight from a new perspective that I wouldn’t usually consider. In this specific essay, Mairs writes about her personal experiences with living with a physical disability with the intent to inform readers. It’s very common to hear that “representation is important” within our society, however, its not too many times that we hear people who actually suffer from misrepresentation speak out about these problems. It’s always interesting and important to hear different stories from many people on a subject in order to determine what is in the best interests of society, and in her essay, Mairs does just that. Being a person with a physical disability, she depicts how the lack of representation makes her feel alienated and isolated from other people despite seeing herself as fitting into most norms. 

 

In order to truly represent people of all demographics, we first need to observe who is obviously not being presented in the media or other smaller scale events. Once its decided who we need to represent, it needs to be done correctly. Normalization of certain things is very common in society, and most of the time its for a good reason. Being able to normalize differences, specifically physical (and mental) disabilities, we would be able to make disabilities part of the ‘norm’ as well, which would lead to full acceptance. This is unfortunately necessary since people who don’t fit the “normal standard” are still judged and pushed away despite them being as normal as they see themselves. When information such as this comes from a person with very personal experience, it is much more reliable than the opinion of a TAP who can’t directly speak from experience.