 "I'll Trade You the Pink-Ribbon Teddy Bear for Jerry Lewis Any Day"—By Ingrid Tischer Published: November, 2005 Every family has its stories. In my family, many of them end with The Debunking of the Experts. A classic one is about the first specialist the pediatrician referred my parents to when I wasn't crawling. "She will never walk!" he is said to have declared. Say what you will about fearing the unknown; my parents were buffeted around by so much medical certainty, it's amazing they didn't develop whiplash. Long story short, I did walk, and I went to school, even though a misdiagnosis required my parents to find proof I was educable. Later, I defied other odds and went to work. My family never expected anything else. That was fortunate, because if I lacked stereotypes that hold many girls and women with disabilities back, I also lacked role models. No one else in my family is visibly disabled and I was mainstreamed after a "special" pre-school/kindergarten. I have almost always been the only "out" disabled person in my workplace. Once I tried to downplay the disability but now I question why I'm so often the one "special needs" employee: the woman with muscular dystrophy. Last Labor Day was the 40th Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy. It was tough to watch mostly because of the cognitive dissonance of seeing people who are ostensibly like myself, yet not. Not because they're more disabled but because they're portrayed as wretched/heroic. So not me. I've contacted friends and colleagues for the past two years, asking them to send emails of protest to the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). I do it because I'm employed and too few women with disabilities are, a situation caused in part by the stereotypes the Telethon perpetuates. Barbara Ehrenreich complained, quite rightly, about the infantilizing treatment she received after being diagnosed with breast cancer. MDA may think it has sidestepped that issue by using actual children in the Telethon. It's hard to complain that Lewis is treating kids like children. But I'm pretty sure no one ever told Ehrenreich that she was half of a person because she had breast cancer. That's what Lewis said on CBS Morning Show in 1999: Having muscular dystrophy makes you "half a person." Whenever I think about that, I want to say to Ehrenreich, "I'll trade you the pink-ribbon teddy bear for Jerry Lewis any day." Minutes after I tuned in this year, a little girl was profiled in a video montage before she and her parents joined the host on stage. She sat listening quietly as her parents talked about how their little girl didn't have a future. | ||
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