On the table….(someday)

I woke up this morning to a dreary day.  Rain falling softly outside and  a little giddy about it for two reasons. One it gives me the opportunity to not have to go anywhere and two the rain will make my flowers that much more beautiful.  So I poured myself a cup of coffee, grabbed a cozy blanket and checked in to see what was going on in the world.

I came across a video a friend had posted on Facebook by Colbie Caillat called “Try”.  She talked about how much she liked the video and the singer herself.  I could not agree more.  I am a huge fan!  I clicked the link to watch.

Colbie Caillat’s Self Acceptance Anthem – “Try”

I loved the song and I loved the message in the video but my stomach sank at the end of it.  Coblie like many others made conscious decisions through out the video to include every age, a diversified ethnicity, as well as a beautiful women who does not have any hair.  Loved every part of that.  Through the whole video I am thinking in my head this is progress!  This is progress.  But at the end of the song I knew that once again the largest minority in the world was not even on the table.  Not even thought about.  There was no one in this video living with a different ability.

I know it was not intentional and this was not the first time……

or the last that they will talk about self perception and forget about the population that just might struggle with it the most. I will continue to wish that producers will someday think about our world just a little bit longer.  Hope that someday they will picture someone born with an extra chromosome or someone using a wheelchair for legs.  If they really thought about it I know they would have been included too.

I once had a conversation about a plea I had written in previously about the r-word and how offensive it was to my daughter and our family.  She told me her first reaction was that I was being overly sensitive.  I was taking this advocacy for my daughter a little too far.  It caught me off guard but I was happy that she was being honest with me.   She went on to say that as she thought about it she realized that if anyone called another person a derogatory comment that happened to relate to a condition that her children had it would floor her, push her over the edge.  She would not allow it.  It clicked and she was now in my shoes.  She was in the shoes of all parents and individuals living with a disability.  I knew at that moment she would never use that word again and she would teach her children not to use that word.

Some might read this and think that I am overly sensitive and maybe I am.  I just pose the question why?  How is it that individuals with different abilities make up the largest minority in the world and when the planning goes down for music videos, self awareness projects, advertisements, and publicity ideas they are never even talked about?  Never even thought of.

I continue to stand strong in my view that change will be slow, acceptance will be hard, and employment will be almost impossible the longer they are not on the table.  If our media continues to ignore this huge population of real people, our society will continue to forget about them, unintentionally.