Marked

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After reading There is No Unmarked Woman, by Deborah Tannen, I thought about how this might apply to Disability, by Nancy Mairs. Tannen says that all women are marked by the way they dress, their makeup, and their title. Even the language marks women. Actor, which is unmarked for men, becomes actress, which is unmarked for women. Mairs says that lack of representation and misrepresentation are to blame for society's view of disabled people. Advertisers don't include disabled people in their commercials because they are afraid that they too will become disabled at one point in their lives. TV shows and movies misrepresent people with disabilities by only showcasing their disabilities. This leads society to believe that the only interesting thing about people with disabilities are their disabilities. Mairs uses the example of a TV show, where a woman who is diagnosed with MS decides not to go to Kenya and instead fall into a doctor's "manly protective embrace" (Mairs paragraph 3). This misrepresentation drives society to believe that disabled people are weak and need to be protected. This automatically makes them marked. In the TED talk that we watched, we saw how we use disabled people for inspiration. Since they are already marked, we treat them differently than unmarked people. Some people would say that being marked and unique would be a good thing. However, some days you may just want to be unmarked. As Tannen puts it "Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business" (Tannen last paragraph).



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Comments

  1. Sabrina SongFebruary 1, 2020 at 10:58 AM

    This was a great connection between the two pieces! It's so true that neither groups can avoid being marked. And now I wonder if this is applicable to any minority because if you walk into a room, you will probably notice the black person, but see the white person almost as standard.

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  2. Alex XuFebruary 1, 2020 at 1:08 PM

    I'm thinking that people with disabilities sometimes just want to be seen as normal, especially if it doesn't affect other aspects of their life. We treat people differently if something about them is not normal - or even simply rarely seen - due to our innate biases. Perhaps we could be more open and put aside such prejudices so that we can understand others for who they really are.

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