Pin Ups of the Week! Disabled Heroines

Characters with disablity are often portrayed very thinly and in service of abled viewpoints in all media and Romance is no different.

Also, in Romanceland as in life, men with disablities are seen as more "heroic" with all that means than women. Therefore, there a lot more disabled heroes than heroines to be found in romance novels.

However, there are also wonderful portrayals of heroines in this genre that let us be seen and are worthy of reading.

I have a genetic disability called Duane's Radial Ray Syndrome. Because of the inhertibable nature of my "condition" (We have had malformations of the limbs for 5 generations but not so far in my child's.) I have spent oodles of time thinking about what it means to have a disabled identity. I am not going to power off on that here but I wanted to say that I have given a great deal of thought to this Board in context of visibility, as scholarly resource, and as a visual discussion of the portrayal of disabled women in Romance.

In other words, it is not meant to be inspiration porn as Stells Young so elegantly puts it in her TED Talk. But people make porn where they will. I can't control that. lol

This Pinterest Board houses books with love stories that run the gamet of disabilities and also show the beauty, diversity and ugliness in writing about disabled women.

The images are of women who have self identified as disabled. I hope this Board causes the writers amoung you to create carefully with real people and not social scripts and foils in mind.

There is a world waiting for the wonderful love stories of disabled heroines to be told with skill, complexity, and insight.

Here is the link to the Board: Disabled Heroines of Romance.

Happy Reading!

Push Girl