Pushing beyond what's expected?

Since the Kardashians seem now to have spin-off shows for every combination of family members possible, the market for new reality TV shows seems rather saturated. But apparently, American TV channel Sundance thought otherwise and found a new twist on the genre: At the moment, it is airing the first season of a show called Push Girls. 

Push Girls

It centres around 5 sexy ladies living in California, but what sets them apart from Krazy Kim & co. is not only that they are not related, but also that they are all - wait for it - in wheelchairs, which is definitely a far cry from other reality TV episodes that include disabled people.

The Kardashians keep up with disability inclusion.. or something.

Intrigued, I started watching Push Girls, and so far I have mixed feelings about it, but I like it well enough to keep watching.
While the show definitely uses the supercrip trope and aims to portray those disabled women in a 'positive' light, it also addresses some social or political issues. Some of those are clearly linked to disability, for example when Push Girl Mia has difficulties finding accessible housing. Other issues, however, are relatable for everyone, and this is Push Girls' strong point. Auti, one of the main ladies, has difficulties getting pregnant, but the main reason for this is not her disability, but that she is 42 years old.
The advantage of using 5 disabled women as the main cast is that there is no token disability girl whose storyline is built only around her wheelchair.  The producers have to find other storylines that set the girls apart from each other, and for some parts of the show the wheelchairs fade into the background, and we might as well watch the Sex and the City girls. Those moments definitely make Push Girls interesting for me, as they provide a much needed example that disabled people, can be interesting and funny on TV even when the disability is not on focus. For a light-hearted genre like a reality show, this is definitely a step in the right direction, especially because I think disabled women who are not portrayed as damsels in distress or as de-feminized are still underrepresented in the media.
And those Push Girls are modern, feminine, girl power ladies: They all date, have careers, work out and always sport perfectly blow-dried hair and glossy lips. Indeed, they positively remind me of the Becky Barbie doll, who was released in the 90's and created a small scandal when her wheelchair could not access Barbie's dream house and thus was a bit too realistic for over-protective parents.

Push Girl Tiphany

Barbie's friend Becky
 

The main flaw of Push Girls are its narrow standards of both female beauty and disability. All five women were born non-disabled, and four of them had car accidents during their 'wild' youth that left them disabled. They all have bodies that look, at least in clothes, non-disabled and respond to the narrow Hollywood standard of female beauty.  It's not a show about disability, it's not even a show about women in wheelchairs. It's a show about women who look like models, had a car accident and are now paraplegic. Is this really the only way disability can be shown on TV in a sexy manner? I won't go on about Hollywood beauty standards, as I find it a tiresome and frustrating subject, but I do wish non-disabled viewers of Push Girls were not left under the impression that all wheelchair users had car accidents, and I think the show could stick closer to reality by showing someone with a body that looks different from a non-disabled body, as I think right now they leave out to represent a huge part of wheelchair users.

Push Girl Chelsie

The 'car accident' back stories, which are brought up in almost every episode, are there, I think, so that a non-disabled audience can relate to the women, thinking 'oh, they were just like me'. But because they are brought up so often, they do amount to a giant snooze-fest and are frustrating for the disabled audience, because such a narrow disabled identity is portrayed. It is interesting to see how different the women deal with their disability, butif the producers would add one person to the cast who was born disabled, it would bring much needed variety to the show and provide a different view-point, so the show would be much more representative of wheelchair users than it is right now.
It is good to see that a TV show portrays disability in a stylish, light-hearted and sexy manner and shows real disabled women. But Push Girls could be much more representative, interesting and less repetitive if the cast was a bit more diverse.

What about the Superhumans?

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with my friend, and fellow Disability Studies academic, Louise Hickman about the Paralympics in general and about Channel 4's 'Meet the Superhumans' advert for the Paralympics, which you can watch here.

 It has inspired (no pun intended) me to write down my thoughts about the advert.

First of all, I like the ad, for the simple reason that I think it does what it should do, without grossly offending anyone.
It does make the Paralympics seem cool, fresh and interesting. The two main attributes of the video that make this happen are the music, and the scene with the pregnant mother, the car crash and the war scene.

The music is by Public Enemy. Now, if you are really into disability activism, you might shout out: 'Why didn't they let someone who is disabled themselves provide the music? The Dean Rodney Singers, for example?'
Because the music works. It is exciting and energetic, and provides a great rhythm for the video. It makes you move and it makes you want to be involved with what's on the telly. Also, I think the main goal of the video was to make non-disabled people buy a ticket for the Paralympics.  In a day and age, when Blogger still highlights the word 'Paralympics' for me, because apparently it is not a real word, and maybe I meant 'Paralytics' instead, that's a reasonable goal, in my book.
It is a shame that disabled musicians are vastly underrepresented in the charts, and I do hope Channel 4 will do their bit to include Disability Arts alongside their Paralympics coverage, but for this video, the track works perfectly. It seems like they wanted to use a well-known artist that is liked by many people and Stevie Wonder probably wasn't available to do a song.

So we have some sporty people with amazing bodies, and some good music. A nice video, but not enough to make it all that memorable. Enter the pregnant lady, the war scene and the car crash scene.

 
In the audience that is not aware of most of the discourse around disability, this triggers probably some uncomfortable feelings, which are quickly resolved when the scene is over and the video goes back to showing the athletes, full of energy and life. It can suggest, but only very subtly, the context of disabled people overcoming struggles, being inspiring and all that. It can also suggest that most of those athletes have a human-interest story to tell. Both those things are problematic from a disabled activist point of view, but again, it might be just what it needs to fill those stadium seats.
Also, those scenes show disabled people everywhere that while they might not have the gorgeous bodies of the athletes, or their energy, we all have this story in common, and we all have in common that people want to know about it, whether we like it or not. Because the scene does not clearly mark those events - the car crash, the bomb' as horrible or tragic, but just acknowledges that they are part of the story, in my point of view the the video works, with a little bit of goodwill, both for a disabled and a non-disabled audience.

At no point the athletes seem to be struggling with their bodies - or at least, not more than any athlete would. Sports on this level always includes a struggle with one's body - the idea, that one has to push their body beyond its limits to achieve things that maybe it was not built for. It doesn't imply that ALL disabled people are superhumans, but that the paralympic athletes are - just like all athletes you've met before you met those superhumans.