And yeah, that turtle guy made me cringe. I think that was probably the worst one.

And actually, I have to admit that until you mentioned it, I had no idea creature discomforts was anything more than a strange trademark for that specific campaign (I mean, think about it, “creature discomforts” and disability, how coincidentally odd). I had no idea this was an established euh, line or franchise or whatever it is but then, this is outside of my habitual cultural references.

Anyway, I think this could have been interesting but unfortunately, they fell victim to all the usual clichés. And yeah, I agree, people with disabilities came off looking sad and isolated. Of course, some of us are sad and isolated but I do not think these ads were necessarily served by inordinately focusing on that.

As for gender, double yeah, there could have been more females. And actually, there could have been more types of disability. What about visual or auditory or cognitive impairments ?

And yeah, yeah, there are different attitudes between men and women wrt disability but I would add that my experience has been, beyond social conditioning, that a lot of this is influenced by when and how disability came along. Most men I have known who have been disabled from birth or early on tend to be less euh, macho about their situation and less prone to reject the disability identity.

So basically, a lot of “yeahs” to your comment that I really enjoyed :)

Also, this is a picky point but I believe the majority of female wheelchair users are NOT spinal cord injuries. It irritates me when you always see the SCI guy who is saying, “Just watch what I can do!” I mean, first, in my experience, these guys have the same macho pre AB attitude, I haven’t found one yet who will talk about disability issues, indeed, I have had several say, “I’m not disabled!” and wheel away from me (and then go home in thier adapted cars). Well super. Show me the woman with Lupus or MS, wearing a cooling vest and spending more energy than Mr. Bungee cord because she is DETERMINED to weed her garden. That is my real experience talking to people in wheelchairs. I talked to about 6 guys; none of them would use the handidart system, it was independance, adapted vehicles or nothing. I went to an MS meeting - there were 3 vans full of handidarts bringing women to the meeting. There are guys out there who aren’t SCI who use wheelchairs, and there are guys who aren’t all “I’m not disabled” (though I asked several home care workers why I have and go to blogs of Chronic illness and there are zero to few guys there and they laughed and said, “Because they are guys! They don’t TALK. They don’t admit those things in public!”

So, that was my, er, extremely long review - great concept, I wanted a better execution - more women, more women in chairs, less SCI, more diversity, more showing people integrated into society.