Inspiration Porn: Ableism in Marketing

18% of the UK population disabled. Alienating disabled people using inspiration porn is not only an ethical issue but also excludes a significant part of the market that goes underrepresented. The term ‘inspiration porn’ was coined by Stella Young in 2012, referring to the objectification of disabled people for the benefit of an able-bodied and neurotypical audience. It sensationalises disabled bodies, often depicted as young disabled children doing simple every-day activities captioned with Scott Hamilton’s quote “the only disability in life is a bad attitude”.  

This assumes disabilities automatically equal a tragedy or obstacle to overcome, ignoring the issues such as disabled poverty and worker’s rights. It assumes the disability is the issues, and not the environment in which the disabled individual is subjected to.

As a marketing student, I’ve seen how we favour touching stories of how a positive attitude can get anyone through any hardship.    

In marketing the representation of disabilities is only through the lenses abled people are comfortable with. This often leads to the tokenism of disabled people playing out the narratives of inspiration porn. This is shown clearly in advertisements such as Diesel’s advert in 2014 featuring a disabled model. The company has explicitly announced after the advert’s release that she was specifically chosen because of the marketing value of her physical appearance.  

Perhaps more subtly is Levi’s Philippines Christmas advertisment in 2018. Although arguably one of the less discriminative examples, this advertisment was clearly written with the intent of a feel-good Christmas story rather than accurately showing disabilities to any extent. The advert romanticises the thoughtful acts of the father for his blind son and although even I must admit the story is sweet and a step in the right direction it follows a saviour narrative.  

This privillege-opression dynamic often reinforces the abled bodied saviour narrative: a mindset that encourages abled people to assume incompetence. By continuing this narrative into marketing campaigns, we continue to turn carers into martyrs. On the surface this is obviously harmful for the disabled community but also to able-bodied consumers who are left feeling relieved or guilty for their privilege and stuck in a meritocracy.   

If this media is so harmful to both disabled and non-disabled people, why do we use it? The answer to this question isn’t simple. It is used to motivate abled consumers or create a sense of pity and relief. Inspiration porn within marketing will never be for the benefit of disabled representation but instead a constant cycle of feeding into the preexisting stigma.    

The Malteser ads featuring disabled actors such as Storme Tolis in 2016, shows a break of this narrative. Despite a lot of controversy, the company was working with the charity Scope and tried to use its marketing to help normalise conversations about disabilities. It shocked their abled consumers, despite the dialogue being similar to their ads featuring non-disabled actors.  

However, this campaign was perhaps a one-off in the marketing world. Other companies continued to use the inspiration porn narratives as their only representation of disabilites, ignoring the voices of disabled activists and consumers in favour of staying within the limitations of abled consumer comfort.  

Marketing and wider media have started to work towards more positive and accurate representation for disabled people, but it is not enough. Our use of tokenism only reinforces the social stigma and closes the essential conversations we should be having about our own ableism. It has alienated a significant part of potential consumer market. Representation, as shown by mental health activism, is the first step to dismantling this stigma.