We Can’t All Be Paralympians (and that’s okay)

We can't all be Paralympians and that's completely okay. Imagine how ridiculous it would seem if every time you saw someone running for the bus you suggested they train for the Olympics, and yet this is something that regularly happens to anyone who is visibly disabled.

Paralympians should be celebrated for the elite athletes that they are and the immense amount of training that they do. Let’s get rid of the assumption that every disabled person would want to be a Paralympian. The issue for me is that there is often no middle narrative, disabled people are too often represented as extremely ‘vulnerable’ and dependent on benefits or superhuman and bound for the Paralympics.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to have heroes and there is no doubt that over the years, the Paralympics has been one of the only events to allow disabled people to be front and centre, but we need to acknowledge that there are many disabled people trying to live the same life of working and having families.

This is something that I love about Toyota’s ad campaign during the Paralympics because it juxtaposes the athletes’ lives as elite sports-people next to their everyday lives of changing nappies and navigating family dynamics. The more we can have this kind of representation showing the real lives of disabled people, the more we can work on barriers being removed, without this only being prompted by a Paralympics being around the corner.

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