The conversation then came full circle when Ana apologized for an ableist comment made at the top of the show. “Either we get left out of representation, or we die by the end of the movie,” Keah said. The discussion of social media led to a further conversation about the representation - or lack thereof - of disabled people on social media and in American culture generally. And yet, it also provides a platform.Īs she put it, “A lot of what Twitter has done is give me word of mouth… I can’t say that I’m against Twitter because Twitter has given me so much.” Keah described Twitter as a “trash can on fire, but it’s got all the things you love inside the trash can.” Her relationship with Twitter is complicated because there is no shortage of trolls who look to pick fights in her mentions. They also share similar sentiments about social media. Keah has worked to break out of that by writing widely about popular culture, talking about everything from Jane the Virgin to football alongside disabilities, using her own perspective to critique the things she loves. But I know that I’m not here to make able bodied people feel better about themselves because they don’t have a body that’s like mine,” said Keah.Īna and Keah also discuss the way that people who come from marginalized communities are pigeonholed. So, if able bodied people love the hashtag, and the work that I do, that’s fantastic. “For me, it’s just - I go in knowing what my intent was. This led Ana to ask about the phenomenon of “inspiration porn,” and how it feels when people tell Keah they’re “inspired” by her. Despite the whitewashing, Keah continued her activism for body positivity, earning the admiration of people she had not intended to reach. They then discuss the hashtag Keah started, #DisabledAndCute, and how it was co-opted and whitewashed, just like #MeToo and so many other things created by black women. The bedrock of that process comes every morning in her daily routine, when she looks in a mirror and says three things she likes about herself. After years of dreaming about a different body, she began a concentrated effort to love and accept herself. Keah went on to talk about the everyday difficulties of accepting disability when popular culture perpetuates narratives that other disabled people, detailing the process she herself has gone through. “I feel like now, I live in a body that deserves love, whereas when I wrote it, I was unsure that I did,” Keah said. However, she also noted that since writing the piece two years ago, her thoughts on body positivity and self-love have evolved. The jumping off point for their discussion is a piece Keah wrote about loving romantic comedies even though they perpetuate an ideal body image to which she can aspire but never achieve. On this week’s podcast, Ana sat down with writer, journalist and disability rights activist Keah Brown for a difficult conversation about the erasure of disability, ableism, and much more.
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