Disability

This week's ideas about disability have had a very personal and emotional meaning for me. I have some personal experience with the frustrations of disabled people trying to find their place and function effectively in our society. My dad has an illness that doctors have been unable to diagnose/treat effectively. This illness has left my dad in almost constant pain, with limited mobility and with low energy.
The ideas we discussed about the increase in the pace of life making more people disabled is certainly something our family has experienced with dad. At the beginning of his illness the only symptom dad had was a lack of energy. Due to the demands of the working world this lack of energy caused dad to pursue a partial disability classification. It is interesting to note that his problem was labeled as a mental condition in the begging as fatigue was the only symptom. This labeling of his condition as a mental issue had a whole different set of issues attached that I will not get into now. It did, however, make qualifying for disability benefits very difficult.
Another interesting idea from our discussion of disability was viewing disability through the medical model. As we discussed the medical model has some serious issues. My dad had some real problems when trying to address his illness through this model. Many doctors were unable to identify the underlying cause of dad's illness and were unwilling to admit that they did not know everything. Instead they accused dad of faking symptoms and made it impossible for him to receive disability benefits. Our family went to five doctors before we found one who was willing to say dad had a physical problem and the doctor did not have the label for it but it was real.
The ideas we discussed in class about accessibility of buildings is certainly something our family struggles with when dad is accompanying us. Simple things like steps without handrails make many places inaccessible. Places without a place to sit and rest are also inaccessible to dad.
I can identify the idea that disability is socially constructed. Since dad has become ill his life has shifted almost completely into the private sphere, no accommodations are made for his needs in the public world and he often feels ostracized by society. Our family struggles with the social implications of disability and do our best to help be educators and advocates about disability.

Beauty Ideal addition

The beauty ideal has changed a lot in my life time but I don not think that the changes can called empowering. The beautiful woman is still expected to be unnaturally thin, of a certain social class and be very specifically groomed. The changes in the beauty ideal can be said to offer more choices to women but can not be labeled empowering. If the beauty ideal was empowering it would encourage women to accept themselves as they are and reflect a wide variety of shapes, colors and hair types which it clearly does not.