Some things never seem to change: further towards an affirmation model

Abstract

In this article I consider the regurgitation of sadcrip/supercrip stereotypes in current television charity advertisements. I suggest that, as part of a discourse identifying impairment as tragedy, these have an insidious impact not just on the way wider society regards disabled people, but on the way disabled people are able to regard themselves. I discuss the affirmation model, an idea grounded in the notion of Disability Pride and in disabled people’s own voices, proposed by Swain and French in a Disability and Society article in 2000. Reflecting on my own work on this idea, I propose a new and hopefully more accessible affirmation model definition of disability.

Keywords:

• Charity advertisements
• sadcrip/supercrip stereotypes
• disability identity
• affirmation model
• impairment definition
• disability definitions

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Laura Smith for permission to refer to her comments about the affirmation model in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.