Disabled Promposals

Disabled promposal videos and pictures are gaining more attention across the United States.

Jennifer Park, Columnist

As prom season has passed, disabled promposals are going viral, gaining support as well as pity and exploitation. Many people are reacting to this as insulting or inspiring, but I myself believe that people with disabilities deserve the same opportunity that a non-handicapped person is capable of having without it being done as a form of pity or used as inspiration. Some of the videos and pictures posted are quite insulting as people are just trying to gain attention.

Although many posts on social media have messages that seem to uplift society, it is just another insult to the disabled community. Disabled promposals have spread throughout media and some of the photos don’t have consent of the people shown. Disabled Identity says the purpose of many of the photos is to generate online traffic and to possibly make money by encouraging users to like, share, or comment to gain and then sell the post after it gets viral. For instance, a Facebook post says, “He asked her to prom even in her condition! Like and share = Respect” that has been shared over 50,000 times. Saying it as if her disability was a burden gave me an impression that it was immensely degrading to disabled people.

People are becoming more open to embracing themselves, and most pictures and posts represent that. But despite this, many of these photos can be taken as a form of insult due to captions and descriptions. People glorify people who are simply willing to interact with disabled people to seem special or heroic when all it is is connecting with a more unique individual. This is unutterably greedy and selfish for many reasons since they want the attention for an “act of kindness.”

Blogger Mike Mort stated, “The problem is not that these prom stories themselves exist but rather how they are told and the intent behind them being shared.” And I believe that is completely true.