Miss Ability lays down on the job

Back in January, I wrote about the Dutch show Miss Ability:

Miss Ability has been called the surprise hit of Dutch television in 2006, but the Times Online reported last week that the rights to the program in Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. have now been snapped up. Soon we, too, can look forward to a live beauty contest where disabled women compete in nightgowns and bathing suits, then present short video films on how they've "overcome" their physical conditions -- whatever impairments contestants have must be "visible to the eye" in order for them to compete. Viewers get to vote.

My opinion, expressed then:

This overcoming narrative -- particularly as part of a contest where the subjects must be "visibly disabled" -- is a paradoxical fiction. Each woman must look stereotypically physically disabled but prove she doesn't suffer the consequences her impairments or society create for that very visibility. Or that she doesn't mind. It goes without saying that the best woman in this contest will not discuss any mental illness or incontinence or lack of civil rights. She won't drool but she won't hide her limp either, because the audience needs to see that. Odds are she'll present as straight and white. She'll sing well and dream of world peace. Men find her pretty despite everything, and all is right with the world.

A recent commenter named Anonymous had this to say:

The winner of the dutch contest in 2006 was Roos Prommenschenckel. In fact she DID address the Parliament for the past year and in so doing a lot of good work for disabled people in Holland.

I could be wrong, but some of you do not seem to know anything about disabled people. Maybe that's because you seem to forget that this is in the Netherlands en NOT in America (which by the way also has these type of contests). I asure you it's not a freak show and we do not look down on these girls. Ok, so they do want to show they are beautifull (who doesn't?) but it's not all about that. More importantly it's about showing their strength and independance dispite their disability. Sure it would be nice if the girls could enter Holland Next Top Model (yes we also have this) too, but we all know why that's not realistic....

Well, and I answered with this:

While I'm not a fan of any "beauty contest," the difference with this particular Dutch contest is that it is live TV and random viewers get to vote rather than a panel of "experts." The venue change and the attitude of the company marketing the show make it clear this is not really about portraying strength and independence any more than any other beauty contest is about that. It's about appearance and walking (heh) a very fine line of socially acceptable femininity, with the disability expectations added in.

....Why isn't it realistic or appropriate to integrate everyone into the same beauty shows? What does it mean that people like you find it perfectly acceptable that there are separate contests with different criteria for disabled women? I'm not really advocating for integrated contests -- I think all these contest are problematic and exploitative of women. But I do think these special contests reveal further the sexism and ableism that is part of our cultural expectations of beauty and worthiness....

And I also looked up the winner. Just to see if she drools or limps or how she meets the contest requirement of having a disability "visible to the eye." This is Roos Prommenschenckel:

Obviously, she is a very beautiful woman. (Visual description: The photo shows Prommenschenckel from the shoulders up. She's a white woman with a creamy complexion, big beautiful smile and long wavy brown hair that goes past her shoulders. Her makeup is subtle and she's wearing a chunky beaded necklace that hangs below the thick white cervical collar around her neck. The cervical collar is the only indication she has any physical impairments or is not your average model.)

Here's another picture of her: (Visual description: Prommenschenckel is lying horizontally and the image shows her from the waist up. She's wearing a black gown with a tight camisole bodice and a skirt of tulle that forms a wall of fluffy blackness on the entire right side of the photo, hiding her hips, legs and feet. Her right hand rests on her stomach while her left reaches up as if to hold all that tulle back, or push her skirt back down. Her face is tilted just past horizontal so she gazes at the camera upside-down, a soft smile on her face. She's reclining on a lush teal velvet chaise, her hair cascading off the edge toward the floor. She's wearing a tiara in her hair, and an impressive collar of diamonds at her neck, as well as a matching bracelet.)





















It's a very seductive, submissive pose, and not just because she's lying prone. With her skirt flipped up and blocking all view of her from the waist down, well, her legs might be in any position. Anything might be going on down there, and that's an intentional tease, of course.

Here's the thing that comes along to complicate any strict feminist criticism of objectification in the images of Prommenschenckel lying prone: She has a condition known as spasmodic torticollis. Also called cervical dystonia, it's a painful neurological disorder that, it appears, she manages by using the cervical collar sometimes, and lying prone sometimes.

In her travels as Miss Ability, Prommenschenckel's been photographed in many less suggestive variations of the above sexy beauty queen boudoir pose.

Here, in this next photo, she reclines in the foreground in a manual wheelchair that tilts back, a pillow under her head while a crowd of people sitting nearby watch and listen to her. She's wearing a stylish denim jacket, slim-fitting gray shorts that end above the knee, and a weird flowery hat. She has a microphone in her hand and off to the left there's a handheld television camera with another microphone attached -- the man holding it is mostly out of the picture. A middle-aged woman stands next to her chair and a half dozen people sitting just next to her look on, the closest are a young blonde woman with her arms crossed and a guy sitting in a bizarre-looking scooter.

My Dutch language abilities are non-existent, but the online language translator says this is the "launch" gathering for something. While it is unusual to see someone in public lying prone (well, or wearing a tiara), this picture is neither seductive or objectifying. There are quite a few other photos of Prommenschenckel at the site promoting her functional role as disability spokesperson. And they show that the context of a beauty queen lying on her back matters a great deal. A critical analysis of her physical position cannot ignore that it's a physical accommodation for her impairment.

But then. There's also this pic of her at the Miss Ability finale, walking unaided on the stage catwalk before she is crowned:

It's confusing but not unexpected. The winner of Miss Ability, a contest where disability must be "visible to the eye" presents herself at the finale of the event in a flowy orange dress and strappy silver high heels, with only the cervical collar (here covered in orange fabric so that it looks like an unwieldy scarf) to mark her as disabled at all. Recall that the Dutch public votedfor the winner during this live entertainment TV show.

The lack of any obvious impairments is mitigated by a medical device signifying impairment. Of course, this is a still photo that wouldn't reveal, for example, a limp, and anyway visibility is not a good indicator of actual impairments -- that's one serious criticism of the ridiculous rules for a contest like this. But my point is that whatever her actual qualifications as a gimp, she looks like a swimsuit model who wears clumsy neckwear and occasionally lies down in public.

Disability-wise, I have as much visually in common with Miss Ability as, femininity-wise, Rosanne Barr does with Cindy Crawford. I don't know exactly who Miss Ability ends up representing , but unsurprisingly, it's not me. And it's no shock that a television viewing audience would choose a woman who can pass as not only "normal" but gorgeously "normal." And it's interesting that the winner not only meets the cultural standards of femininity and beauty, but often does so while lying down in what is a fairly submissive position. Necessary for her, I have no doubt, but how that's interpreted in a beauty pageant is a different thing altogether.

Is this groundbreaking or subversive to standards of femininity or ability? I don't think so.

Oh, and here's the group photo of all the contestants. What to make of that?

(Visual description: Nineteen pretty young white women are arranged in two seated and one standing row. The winner is in the center of the second row wearing the chunky necklace I described in the first image above. If any of these 19 women use a wheelchair or cane or even have an aversion to high heels, you cannot tell it from this picture. If there is a wheelchair present it has been completely hidden from view.)