From the [UK] Times, BBC News, Associated Press, and AFP;

Riam Dean, 22, was awarded £9,000 by an employment tribunal after alleging that she was harassed and dismissed by the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing chain for reasons related to her disability.

Dean sued the clothing giant for discrimination, saying the firm’s London store banished her to the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn’t meet the company’s “look policy,” then dismissed her over the disagreement. Dean, a law student, was born without a left forearm.

The Central London Employment Tribunal ruled that Dean was “unlawfully harassed for a reason that related to her disability” under the Disability Discrimination Act. The tribunal also found that the firm “failed to comply with its duty to make reasonable adjustments” for her disability.

Earlier post here.

(AP photo)

Efforts of well-meaning doctors, parents often had tragic results, authors find

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Heidi Benson reviews “Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height.”

Authors Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove trace the history of height manipulation over the decades, interviewing men and women whose lives were changed by it. They find some dire consequences, including infertility, depression, and even death.

“This book is not an indictment of technology,” the authors write, “but an illustration of how quickly medicine can move from curing disease, to treating disability, to leveling disadvantage, to satisfying desires for perfection.”

“… we end the book with a plea for an acceptance of diversity and an end of conformity,” Cohen said. “Adolescents will always be miserable, but they may be less miserable if people value and understand diversity.”

Cosgrove (at right) was one of thousands of girls who were given synthetic estrogen in the 1950s to limit their growth. She spent five years taking daily doses of diethylstilbestrol (DES), and has been left with lingering questions about the long-term effects of a drug now linked to elevated risks of fertility problems and cancer.

See also: Tall West Michigan women say there’s no need to be afraid of heights — Grand Rapids Press

(San Francisco Chronicle photo)

From the Associated Press, ABC News:

“When somebody has a disfigurement and don’t look as pretty as you do, don’t judge them, because you never know what happened to them,” she said. “Don’t judge people who don’t look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away.”

– Connie Culp, a 46-year-old Ohio woman who was the nation’s first face transplant recipient, in a press conference at the Cleveland Clinic. Culp had been disfigured by a shotgun blast.

(Photos from ABC News)

Writing in Inside Higher Ed, Linda Kornasky urges professors with invisible disabilities to share their disability status with their students.

My experience with both options of negotiating my [invisible] disability — retaining privacy and coming out — has shown me that, although coming out is not a necessity for me to perform my job as a professor and has even brought about occasional awkward moments, coming out as a professor with a disability is more than worthwhile in so far as it fosters positive identity politics among my students with disabilities.

… By coming out — refusing the less ethical choice of passing — professors with invisible disabilities can educate students to become truly democratic citizens prepared to explore individual identity from all perspectives.

Linda Kornasky is associate professor of English at Angelo State University in west Texas.

From the New York Times, with video:

A new modern dance company that calls itself Gimp is confronting public stereotypes about disability. Many of its members have undeveloped or amputated limbs, or bodies that defy common expectations.

Dancer Catherine Long enjoys the way the dance production makes audiences reexamine what they think they know about disability. She was born without hip sockets, kneecaps or a left arm.

“When I put myself out there on stage, I’m inviting people to look at me and I’m controlling the looking,” she says, “Whereas when I’m in the street I’m not inviting people to look at me but they do anyway.

“So this puts me in a bit more of a controlled situation, where I might then be trying to encourage people to look at themselves, and look at the way they look at different bodies, and their own body.”

The company is performing this week in New York.

See also earlier post: Go ahead and stare

(Photo from New York Times video)

Writing in the [UK] Times, film director Ken Russell (Women in Love, Tommy) offers his admiration for a digital art installation by Simon Mckeown called Biodiverse: MotionDisabled.

Mckeown uses technology to create 3-D animations of performers who are living with conditions such as spina bifida, cerebral palsy, missing limbs, brittle bones and short stature. By converting the performers to robotic images, Mckeown allows audiences to examine their movements without “the impertinence of staring,” and to explore ideas of normality and difference.

… The result is brisk, captivating and oddly charming. These figures are now virtual 3-D avatars whose heroic superpowers are utilized in their daily tasks, such as writing with their feet, or pitching a phone from foot to shoulder like a football, or kickboxing using only a torso to balance.

(more…)

From the Scotsman:

Conservative Member of Parliament Nadine Dorries is pushing for a measure that would specifically prohibit abortions for club foot and cleft palate.

The UK’s Abortion Act says that an abortion may be carried out if the child “would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be serious handicapped,” but does not define what a “serious handicap” is.

About 40 babies were aborted in the UK between 1996 and 2006 because they had either club foot or cleft palate, mostly after 24 weeks, according to a recent report.

“I don’t classify either cleft palate or club foot as serious disabilities when they are easily correctable,” said Dorries. “I think most members of the public would say aborting babies for these reasons late in pregnancy is wrong.”

She said she did not back the idea of extending such a ban to other disabilities, such as Down syndrome.