The Sundance Channel is premiering a new reality/documentary series entitled Push Girls, which focuses on four Los Angeles women who have varying degrees of paralysis and use wheelchairs. The first episode is available on the website and I plan on watching it when I have the time. It’s great to have any representation of disability on television and I’m glad these women are getting a moment to shine in the public eye.
But based on the trailers for the show and interviews like this one from Ellen, Push Girls seems a bit too narrowly focused for my taste. All of the women are astonishingly beautiful and seem to require little personal assistance. They also acquired their disabilities later in life. I’m sure they encounter plenty of discrimination and clueless people, but their experiences are bound to be vastly different than those of most people with physical disabilities. The show could be so much more interesting if it included stories of women with other disabilities who may not be as attractive as these four, but who still have interesting stories to share.
It may sound like I’m hating on the show because it features women who are gorgeous and nobody who looks like, well, me. That’s not my intent. Plenty of people with disabilities are physically attractive and their experience of gimpness is just as real as mine. I’m just not sure that Hollywood can grasp any notion of disability that goes beyond an attractive person in a sitting position. I can’t remember the last time I watched a TV show or movie featuring a person in a wheelchair who didn’t look like an actor sitting in a wheelchair. Push Girls is a step above that, certainly, but I just wish that the show’s producers had shown more of an interest in showing the audience a more complete picture of disability.
