Beauty pageants should have died along with vinyl records and disco. But for some reason, they persist. And as long as there are beauty pageants, there will be scandal. The Wisconsin Miss Wheelchair has been dethroned after she was photographed standing up and the picture ran in a local newspaper. The woman in question has a form of muscular dystrophy and uses a scooter for mobility, but she can still stand. The pageant officials were miffed by this revelation and stripped her of her title. Silly, yes? The pageant officials seem to regard disability as an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you use a wheelchair or you don’t. Look, if you want to have a pageant for women with disabilities, fine. But the rigid requirement that your contestants be in wheelchairs all the time seems to fetishize the wheelchair to the point it’s a little creepy.
Amen, brother.
From what I recall of reading the story, it sounds like she tried to check out if she was eligible according to their rules before entering, and she was. If they wanted someone who was in a wheelchair all the time, they should have changed the rules to say that, no?