Blog post #2: The gaze

Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body— and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty—as the sole determination of the aesthetic. It is not a matter of representing the exclusion of disability from aesthetic history, since such an exclusion has not taken place, but of making the influence of disability obvious.

-- Tobin Siebers, p. 64, "Disability Aesthetics"

So, here's the deal: I'd like you to find a visual artifact (e.g., a newspaper photo, an advertisement, a youtube video, a book cover) that deals with disability in some way and analyze it using the frameworks provided by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Tobin Siebers, respectively. (Also: Either embed your image/artifact, or provide us with a link or description.)

Consider the following in your analysis: What disability rhetorics (wondrous, exotic, sentimental, realist) do you see? What are the implications of these rhetorics? That is, who are they meant to persuade, and in what ways do they, as Lennard Davis might suggest, enforce normalcy? And finally, what might Sieber say? Do you notice a disability aesthetic at work? Why and how?