It’s like ‘Lord of the Flies’ on crack, says one actor

From Time Magazine:

UK television executives have developed a new show in which six strangers are marooned in a remote locale and must struggle to survive. The catch: the show is fictional, but the actors have disabilities in real life.

“Cast Offs” is described as the “twisted brainchild” of producer Joel Wilson, and was originally envisioned as “as something broadly satirical that would poke fun at the way disability is generally viewed … We wanted to show the disabled were no more and no less f___ed up than anyone else.” Writer Jack Thorne, who has a disability, created a script in which the castoffs “soon reveal their true colors by endlessly complaining, shirking responsibility and squabbling with one another.”

Among the key plot points: a sexual relationship between a woman with dwarfism and a man who uses a wheelchair. The show debuts on Britain’s Channel 4 next week.

Earlier post: Opinion: British reality show shatters stereotypes

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Clerk says she was banished to the stockroom because prosthetic arm didn’t fit retailer’s image

From the [UK] Daily Mail:

A law student and part-time clerk is suing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination, saying representatives of the firm’s London store banished her to the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn’t comport with the company’s image.

Riam Dean, 22, says she was told she had broken the company’s “Look Policy,” that lists in minute detail the requirements for staff appearance.

She said she had been given permission to wear a long-sleeved cardigan to cover the join between her arm and her artificial limb, but that a member of the retailer’s “visual team” objected.

Dean is seeking damages of £25,000. Four years ago, Abercrombie settled a £25million lawsuit, in which nine former employees alleged that they were forced to work in stockrooms or take night shifts cause they did not fit the “Abercrombie look.” All the litigants were from ethnic minority groups.

From the New York Times:

Susan Schweik, professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, explores historic attitudes toward people with disabilities in her upcoming book, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, to be released this spring by New York University Press.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cities across the nation passed “ugly laws” that targeted unsightly beggars and seemed to criminalize disability itself.

Before social welfare laws, some disabled people had no choice but to beg, Professor Schweik said. “It was a status system,” she said of the law’s enforcement. “Unsightliness was illegal for people without means.”