On representation
Seeing yourself for the first time, telling diverse stories, and the need for more
Hello, happy Tuesday,
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about representation, particularly in the media. Partly this is because I had a big piece about the power of the disability community published in the FT Magazine. The reaction to the piece has been really interesting - people have been very kind and complimentary, but many have also pointed out that they had no idea this community existed or how important it can be. It’s great to have an opportunity to tell them about it, but isn’t it strange that they’ve never come across it online? It really shows how disability is still kept apart and left in its own silo, when actually it is part of everyday life, and maybe nondisabled people would learn a thing or two about their own lives if they engaged with the community. And that’s something the media could help to achieve - not just by covering disability stories but also because publishing disabled writers funnels readers to our social media accounts (I am on Twitter here), and people can take it from there. Visibility is key.
Talking of visibility, I can’t tell you how happy I was with the illustrations in the FT piece. When they showed me the mock-ups - which were all great - I asked if it would be possible to include a powerchair user, because we so rarely see them in the papers and because, after all, I use a powerchair. It’s an important part of my identity, if only because I am forever battling the assumption that I use a manual chair (and all the implications around access that come with it). I wasn’t sure the FT would have time to change the illustrations, and I stressed that it wasn’t a big deal, but before I knew it a new drawing came through. It looked like a real disabled person living their real actual life. And it looked great. I spent the whole weekend admiring it in print and grinning to myself.
There was a double joy: the personal glee at seeing an illustration of someone who looks like me and the more considered happiness of knowing a young disabled person might see it too and feel represented. I wonder if people who see themselves represented all the time understand the absolute wonder of the moment it happens for the first time. Which made me think about all the other disabled people who aren’t represented in the media, for whom this moment still hasn’t come; people with chronic conditions or learning disabilities or any number of other things. We are still so far behind when it comes to reflecting the society we are supposed to serve.
All of this was in my head when I logged on to speak on a disability in media panel for KCL. I was on the panel with some familiar and friendly faces (go and follow Lydia, Rachel and Jamie) which is perhaps why it turned into such a frank and occasionally furious discussion of journalism’s many and varied failings. Sorry, students in the audience. The thing we came back to again and again is that so many newsrooms see disability stories as niche, over there, separate - and therefore unworthy of mainstream coverage. This means that when disabled journalists do make it into one of these spaces and start pitching stories on disability, they can be brushed off, assumed to be using column inches to air their personal grievances rather than using their lived expertise to tell better stories. Three of us on the panel had almost identical stories of trying to tell a well-evidenced story, only to be told it was ‘just anecdotal’. A usually hard-to-shock bunch, we paused to stare at each other in disbelief. (These stories, as it happens, were all based on case studies, a backbone of journalism. Somehow, only when the people involved were disabled did case studies become anecdotes).
I finished the zoom feeling partly angry - and partly reassured that I wasn’t imagining things. But it also reminded me why I do what I do, why I tell the stories I tell, and replenished the fire in my belly. I am so lucky to have had a career that has opened doors and convinced editors to allow me to write this stuff (look out for a piece in G2 tomorrow) and it is an immense privilege to be trusted by my community to do it well. Someone I interviewed recently told me it was nice not to have to give the usual social model spiel they have prepared for journalists. They knew that I knew, and they were therefore (I hope) able to express themselves how they really wanted to. The story (I hope) is better for it. That is the power of representation in the media. We need so much more of it.
Which brings us to something more cheerful. This month I’ve been selected to join Substack Go, a programme run by the company to help us writers grow these newsletters we’re writing. Today I had the absolute pleasure of meeting my ‘writer squad’ - the small group of writers I’ll be doing the scheme with - and they were a really interesting, really diverse bunch who are all telling new and different stories in new and different ways. It made me hopeful for a future media landscape where we hear all sorts of voices. Change seems to be coming - maybe, just about - one email newsletter at a time.
See you next week,
Lucy
Links of the week
Here’s some cool internet reading from the last seven days ish:
Once again, Hugo Rifkind’s Our Week column is a thing of pure joy (Times, paywalled)
Rifkind also wrote a powerful thread about remembering those killed in the Holocaust who don’t have any living descendants to do so
I can’t decide whether I’m impressed or terrified by this plan to reintroduce the woolly mammoth and save the Arctic permafrost (Times, paywalled)