Subscribe to our Mailing List

Get the news right in your inbox!

The Princess and The Prosthetic

#NotAWitch

November 5, 2020 in Uncategorized - No Comments

If you didn’t know it already, the children’s book The Witches by Roald Dahl, has been turned into a movie starring Anne Hathaway.  Hathaway plays the main character, you guessed it–a scary witch.

In the book her character, The Grand High Witch, has “claws” for hands to up her frightening factor.  There is no mention of missing fingers.  Growing up, it was one of my favorite books and Roald Dahl is a beautiful storyteller.

In the movie adaptation unfortunately, HBO Max and the producers decided to portray Hathaway’s terrifying character with missing fingers–which resembles limb differences like Ectrodactyly and Syndactyly or “split hand.”

 

We are better than this.

By portraying “villains” as having disabilities–we continue to perpetuate the narrative that people with disabilities are something to be feared and abnormal. The lack of awareness, empathy, and inclusion of Warner Brothers Studios is abysmal.

We continue to discount the experiences of others because we don’t SEE from their perspective.  We don’t invite them to the conversation.  They don’t have a seat at the table.

I can’t count the number of times people have openly STARED at Callie walking in her prosthetic.

Pointed and laughed even.

The amount of grown adults that have made an awful face and pulled back in disgust while she was swimming.

The amount of parents who have pulled their children AWAY from my daughter while in the pool as if she was not “good” enough to play with.

The amount of children who have called Callie a “weirdo” or said that her leg looks “gross” or “scary.”

The amount of people who “fight” for inclusion but leave out the disabled community.

The amount of times Callie has tearfully asked me to be “just like everyone else.”

Where do you think they learn that behavior?

Sure…..some of it’s sheer ignorance.  Absolutely.

But the rest of it?

It’s in the media and content we consume.

When we accept narratives that are portrayed in movies like The Witches, scatter dismembered limbs in our yards at Halloween, and call people with lower limb amputations “pirates”–we normalize using limb difference as something that’s frightening.

We normalize a negative stigma, a lack of awareness, and frankly uncreative ways to define characters.

You reinforce that disability is dreadful and scary.  You normalize that the disability is “bad” and needed to be “overcome” to be normal.  You normalize that a disability needs to be hidden away with gloves.

Differences should not be used to portray disgust.

Or to frighten people.

At all.

It literally works to undo what everyone who works so hard to change with children with limb differences.  I don’t ever want Callie to feel ashamed or hide her limb difference.  I don’t want her to get bullied or made fun of by other kids.  I don’t want her to question who she is or her value.  I don’t ever want her to feel like she is anything less or that her uniqueness is something to be frightened of–because it’s not.  I don’t ever want her to watch a movie and see someone like her portrayed as a monster.

Imagine if you saw someone “like you” portrayed like that?

We can do better.

 

Jaime

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for stopping by! My name is Jaime! Wife to my better half, James, who is my moon and all of my stars. We are parents to our little warrior princess, Callie Grace. We started this blog to share our journey as we navigate through our crazy beautiful life. Callie is a lower limb amputee and I am a Type One Diabetic. We are hoping to change the face of beauty one step at a time! We hope by sharing our story, you leave with a little bit more inspiration and hope! Thank you so much for stopping by and joining our tribe!

All posts

No Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Me

About Me

Jaime

Hi Y'all! I’m Jaime, a proud working mama, author, girl boss and wifey to an ultra-adorable husband. I am a huge book nerd, I drink coffee like my life depends on it, and run on dry shampoo and Amazon Prime. Leopard print is my favorite color. I am a story teller at heart and this blog is a virtual scrapbook of our crazy beautiful life. I'm a Type One Diabetic and our little warrior princess Callie is a lower limb amputee. By sharing how we’ve chosen to flourish in the garden we’ve been planted in, we hope you can take some small nuggets of hope, inspiration, and laughter. We are so grateful that you’ve found us—welcome to the fam. We embrace our perfectly imperfect lives and don’t let the doctor’s appointments, spreadsheets, speaking engagements, 10th birthday parties to plan, housework or date nights overwhelm us. Those things are just the beautiful reminders of all the blessings in our lives. Read More

Jaime

Archives

Let’s Hang Out

Subscribe to our Mailing List

Get the news right in your inbox!

The Princess and The Prosthetic

Popular topics

Latest Posts

×
%d bloggers like this: