As a full-time academic researcher, especially one whose work is grounded in Critical Disability Studies, with an emphasis on “critical”, I have been trained to interrogate the use of language. Therefore when I’m asked to do a presentation on a specific topic the first thing I always do is interrogate the topic or title I am given to present on. Leaving aside the question of whether anyone, including Paralympians, can be anything outside of “real-life” the thing that struck me about the title of the presentation I was asked to give was the inherent positive and unquestioned assumption that Paralympians can indeed be role models. That is not to say that they can’t be, but the actual situation in “real-life” is quite complex, messy and dependent upon numerous factors. I would, therefore like to start by altering the title of my presentation to “can Paralympians be role models and if so for whom?” In this way I can critically assess the situation starting from a neutral perspective and let the evidence lead me to a conclusion one way or the other.

What is a Role Model?

Perhaps it would be best to begin by defining exactly what we mean by the term role model. At its simplest a role model is a person looked to or admired by others as an example to be imitated or copied, although it is important to remember that, depending upon your perspective, a role model can have a positive or a negative influence. For instance some people are prone to try and emulate the actions of mass murderers or serial killers, which I hope everyone can agree comes under the heading of a bad role model choice. In terms of deciding whether Paralympians can act as role models it is also important to distinguish between someone acting as a sporting role model i.e., inspiring someone to take up and succeed in a particular sport and the kind of role model that has a wider and deeper influence on someone’s overall lifestyle choices i.e. the values by which they live their everyday lives. For the purpose of this article I will focus on positive role models, although that is not to say that even they cannot be perceived negatively by some as I will highlight later on. Lockwood, Jordan and Zunda (2002) state that positive role models‍

boost motivation by providing a guide to achieving success; they personify plausible desired selves that people can realistically aspire to become and illustrate the means for achieving these desired selves (p. 855)

The key words in this quote are “plausible” and “realistic” and in sociopsychological terms these are closely related to the inter-linked theories of social comparison (Hawkins, Cory and Crowe 2011) and self-determination (Deci and Ryan 1985). Social Comparison Theory (SCT) posits that individuals evaluate their own abilities or opinions through comparison to other people’s abilities and opinions and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is the extent to which an individual perceives they have the freedom to be self-motivated. Hawkins et al. (2011) claim that the ability of an individual to self-determine i.e. the extent to which an individual has the freedom to be self-motivated (and, therefore, attempt to emulate a particular role model), is underpinned by three key constructs - Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. Autonomy is being the perceived origin or source of one’s own behaviour i.e. are you free to try and emulate a particular role model or do external forces, for instance available finance or a lack of available opportunities in the local area, prevent this. Competence is feeling effective in one’s on-going interactions with the social environment and experiencing opportunities to exercise and express one’s capacities. In terms of role model emulation this is dependent upon the emulator perceiving that their own potential capabilities will allow them to achieve similar achievements to the person they wish to emulate. If a role model is perceived to possess capabilities way beyond the potential emulator, then this will have a demotivating impact. Finally relatedness is the need to feel connected to others in the domain of physical activity, which relates to the success of the role model being deemed relevant to the potential emulator. For instance, whether you have a shared interest in a particular activity or a shared strong affiliation to a particular cultural heritage. Although these factors are important issues in all role model – potential emulator relationships they are particularly important when assessing the potential for a person with a disability to be a role model, which is something I will return to in due course.

Disability and the Wider Society

In deciding whether Paralympians can be role models, and if so for whom, it is important to understand how people with disabilities and Paralympians are treated, perceived and portrayed within wider society, as this will have an impact upon the three factors of self-determination outlined above.

Perception and Treatment of People with Disabilities in the Wider Society

According to Wolbring (2012) “ableism describes prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviours toward persons with a disability. Definitions of able- ism hinge on ones understanding of normal ability and the rights and benefits afforded to persons deemed ‘normal’” (p. 78). Seibers (2008) calls ableism the “ideology of ability”, which at its most extreme “defines the baseline by which humanness is determined, setting a measure of body and mind that gives or denies human status to individual persons” (p. 8). Ableism, therefore, devalues people with disabilities and results in segregation, social isolation and social policies that limit opportunities for full societal participation based upon bodily norms and ones perceived ability to comply with those norms. Ableism is grounded in what is called the medical model of disability whereby an individual with a disability is seen as ill and their illness or impairment as a problem of the individual with the disability that needs to be “cured” in order to bring them in line with accepted norms of appearance and ability. These perceptions of disability are based upon a fear of difference and a perceived need to be “normal” and they influence the way people interact with individuals with disabilities and impact the way people with disabilities view their own roles within society, including their involvement in sport. This view is important in understanding some of the difficulties Paralympians might have in being perceived as role models. More recently, there has been a push to promote a social rather than medical perspective on disability. The social model of disability posits that people with disabilities are less restricted by their own impairments than by the barriers, both environmental and attitudinal, put on them mainly by the nondisabled majority within society. These barriers not only impact upon the ability of people with disabilities to get involved in sport at an entry level, but also, for those whose impairments qualify them to take part and have the ability to reach that level, they impact upon their ability to progress to becoming Paralympians.

Barriers to Participation in Society

These environmental and attitudinal barriers have major implications for the lives of people with disabilities. The environment in which we all live is designed by and for those people who most closely align with the societally accepted and maintained norms of ability and bodily appearance. Therefore, anyone who deviates from these norms or whose abilities differ from the norms often struggles to operate with the same ease as everyone else. According to Brittain (2016) this hostile social environment causes numerous issues for people with disabilities that range from difficulties in physical access to public buildings and transport, problems accessing educational and work opportunities, both in terms of physically accessing the workplace and persuading, mostly nondisabled employers to hire them. This in turn often leads to major financial issues for people with disabilities with half of people currently living in poverty in the United Kingdom being either disabled or living with someone with a disability (Tinson et al., 2016). As a result of this financial hardship, just getting by day to day in terms of feeding and housing themselves can often be a struggle, let alone taking up a sporting activity that for some may require expensive equipment such as sporting wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs that often have to be custom made and cost thousands of pounds. This is just a small insight into the issues that these environmental and attitudinal barriers can cause for people with disabilities that time and space preclude me from mentioning further here. However, the fact that some are able to overcome these barriers and achieve their goals is an important point that I will return to in due course.

Problems with Media Portrayals of Paralympians

The way the media portray people with disabilities and disability sport can have a major impact on how other groups and individuals within society view them also. The combination of how they are portrayed by the media and how much coverage they receive can have a huge bearing upon how the rest of society views them. There has been major growth in the amount of coverage the Paralympic Games has received over the last decade or so, although it should be pointed out that the volume of coverage varies widely from nation to nation. In addition, with limited exceptions, the Paralympic Games is often the only coverage, that athletes with disability receive in the mainstream media. Even where there is coverage the way that athletes with disability are portrayed in that coverage is often criticised for its focus upon the ‘inspirational’ way in which they overcome their impairment to achieve their success rather than focusing upon their athletic ability. This kind of portrayal, termed ‘inspiration porn’ by the late disabled activist Stella Young (Young 2012) enables non-disabled society to maintain the sociocultural barriers of the ability-disability divide, whilst at the same time enforcing a norm of drawing inspiration from those who manage to achieve despite their disability. This is done by maintaining an emphasis upon their impairment and, therefore, difference from the norm, rather than highlighting the societally imposed environmental and attitudinal barriers that are the main cause of their problems. As an extreme example of this thought process in action, Lancaster (2016) cites Chuck Aoki, member of the American wheelchair rugby team at the last two Paralympic Games, as saying “Somebody might say, ‘Oh you’re such an inspiration for going to the grocery store’ ”, with the implication being that because of his disability this is something he is incapable of doing. Another extreme kind of media coverage that portrays a related perspective of people with disabilities by non-disabled society occurred prior to the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, when Portuguese journalist, Joaquim Vieira, called the Paralympic Games a “grotesque spectacle” and “a circus act” (Huffington Post Brazil, 2016), which appears to mirror many people’s inter- pretation of recent comments by President Trump in the US, who described the Games as “tough to watch” (Murdock, 2018). This view was further highlighted by American author Ken Jennings who tweeted there is “nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair” (Jennings 2014), which, according to Ryan (2018) “embodies a stubbornly negative cultural attitude towards disability – one that too often equates wheelchairs as prisons and disabled people as abnormal, ugly and sexless”. What these examples highlight are an extreme example of the application of societal norms around physical perfection and also what constitutes “elite” sport, whereby disability is equated with ugliness and deformity and sport for people with disabilities is seen more as a form of rehabilitation than something done for its own sake and to a high level.

How do these Issues Impact upon the Potential for Paralympians to be Role Models?

So what has all this got to do with the potential for Paralympians to become role models? In order to answer this I would like to return to Hawkin et al’s (2011) three key constructs of self-determination, namely autonomy, competence and relatedness. For the purpose of this article I will focus upon the potential for Paralympians to be sporting role models, but will also touch upon their potential to be lifestyle role models more briefly towards the end. I will also look at the possibilities for Paralympians to be role models to two categories of potential emulators – other people with disabilities and non-disabled people.

Autonomy

Autonomy relates to the issue of whether the emulator is free to emulate a chosen role model or whether external forces or barriers prevent them from doing so. As highlighted above the opportunities for many people with disabilities to try and emulate a Paralympian are potentially restricted by the

many environmental and attitudinal barriers, some of which were highlighted above. These include issues of whether they can afford to participate in their chosen sport, whether transport and venues are accessible to them and whether coaches with the requisite knowledge and interest in coaching athletes with a disability are available to name but a few. Generally speaking non-disabled people face less of these kinds of barriers and have greater autonomy in their choices, particularly around accessibility and available options. However, this is not to say that barriers do not exist at all for them, particularly economic barriers, but that in general the barriers are fewer and less extreme than they are for people with disabilities.

Competence

Competence relates to whether the potential emulator of the Paralympian perceives their own capabilities to match those of the person they wish to emulate. This is generally done through self-comparison, but a large part of this self-comparison process is dependent upon the level of self-confidence and self-esteem present within the potential emulator. For people with disabilities this can be problematic. When constantly confronted with negative perceptions about their abilities to carry out tasks that most people take for granted, and also bombarded with images of “physical perfection” that most of the nondisabled general public could not live up to, it is little wonder that many people with disabilities suffer from low self-confidence and self-esteem (Hargreaves, 2000). Seymour (1989 cited in Hargreaves, 2000, p. 185) sums this up whenshe states:

the body in which I live is visible to others, it is the object of social attention. I learn about my body from the impressions I see my body make on other people. These interactions with others provide critical visual data for my self-knowledge.

This socially imposed feeling of worthlessness and low self-esteem brought on by the reaction of others to obvious physical difference can have very strong and long-term effects on people with disabilities. It can also cause them to under-estimate their own abilities when comparing themselves to a potential successful role model and lead them to the belief that they are incapable of such achievements. In contrast non-disabled individuals, when comparing themselves to a Paralympian, will most likely perceive themselves as physically superior as their bodily functions are perceived to be closer to the socially accepted norms for appearance and functional ability. However, they may lack any real understanding of just how good Paralympians are at their sports, possibly because ableism acts as a barrier to allowing them to objectively selfcompare, especially when disability sport is more often than not considered as a form of rehabilitation rather than real sport.

Relatedness

Relatedness refers to whether the potential emulator feels connected to the potential Paralympian role model. Given what I’ve already said it would seem likely that people with disabilities would be far more likely to feel a sense of relatedness to other people with disabilities in that they share the challenges of disability posed by the environmental and attitudinal barriers already outlined. However, in reality even people with disabilities are susceptible to ableism, which in this sense is referred to as internalised ableism and which causes them to act in an ableist way towards people with other types of impairment to themselves and as a result feel greater relatedness to people with similar impairments (or bodily norms) to their own. This is highlighted in the following quote from “Sam” in Purdue & Howe (2012: 912)

I think with disability you identify with people who are the same. If I see the Paralympics, I’m trying to identify with those athletes who are like me. It’s difficult, I’ve been an amputee for twenty odd years now, I find it difficult to relate to how people do things with two feet, so sometimes when I see someone do something I think ‘how do they do that’, but then I realise “oh yeah, they’ve got two feet, I’ve only got one”. I sort of relate to how would I do that, so I can’t imagine what it would be like to run on two false legs.

Baring this fact in mind it should also be noted that not all impairment groups are represented at the Paralympic Games and so for some they have no Paralympians that they can directly relate to as a possible role model. On a more general level, for many people with disabilities, there is also a lack of relatedness between their everyday lives and those of Paralympians as highlighted by the following quote from Colin in Braye, Gibbons, & Dixon (2013: 9)

I’m afraid that the focus on elite Paralympians promotes an image of disabled people which is so far from the typical experiences of a disabled person that it is damaging to the public understanding of disability.

There is a danger, therefore, that Paralympians become the yardstick by which all disabled people are measured and expectations of them within non- disabled society are set. By making Paralympians the “norm” by which all other people with disabilities are measured, this simply further isolates those who are unable or simply do not wish to take part in sport and reinforces ableist perspectives of their capabilities.

In terms of non-disabled people and their relatedness to Paralympians as potential sporting role models it would appear sensible to conclude, based upon the social norms that the majority are socialised into, that they would find it very difficult to relate to a person with a disability. This is particularly true taking into account the comment by Sam above and the difficulties of relating to someone who may have to do things in a slightly different way to you. This doesn’t make one way any better than the other – just different ways of achieving the same outcome.

So what can we conclude from these three factors? Well firstly, the same three constructs can be applied to the effectiveness of non-disabled role models and may go some way to explain why successive Olympic Games fail to achieve the sports participation legacy that hosts often aspire to prior to the Games, which is often based on people being inspired by the performances of the athletes. With regard to Paralympians, it is the very subject of inspiration that forms part of the problem, or rather the basis for that inspiration and the way it is used, as the following tweet from disabled activist Imani Barbarin (2018) highlights:

The most absurd thing is when an abled person points to you and your success with a disability and shames the person besides them. “Well, if THEY can do it, you have no excuses”. Like saying success as a disabled person is so absurd that anything is possible.

For Paralympians to truly be accepted as role models people with disabilities need to firstly be perceived as full and equal members of society whose bodily function is simply part of the diversity of what it means to be human and sport for people with disabilities needs to be accepted as real sport rather than a form of rehabilitation. Currently disability sport struggles to be accepted in much the same way as women’s sport appears to struggle to be accepted, due in no small part to the societal norms that make Citius Altius Fortius or The Fastest, The Highest, The Strongest, the basis for the definition of what defines elite sport. Anything that falls short of these norms in absolute performance terms will also be deemed less worthy and less important. This is not to say that Paralympians cannot be sporting role models, but who they are role models for and how that occurs is not straight forward and is highly dependent upon societal perceptions of people with disabilities and attitudes towards them.

Finally, I’d like to conclude by very briefly touching upon the potential for Paralympians to be lifestyle role models. By this I am referring to the way we all approach life and the values by which we live it. The basic tenet of ableism forces people to view people with disabilities from a perspective of what it is perceived they are unable to do given their particular impairment. However, for the majority of Paralympians and other athletes with disabilities their thinking is completely the opposite. They do not think about what they cannot do, they simply focus upon what they can do and do it to the best of their ability (Murley 2018). From a personal perspective that’s the kind of role model we could all do with emulating. I think if we were all honest with ourselves we have all wasted time in our lives focussing too much upon what we believe we cannot do rather than making the best of what we can, so if Paralympians can achieve international success and overcome the immense barriers that society imposes upon them that, for me at least, appears to be a very valuable lesson that we could all do with learning and acting upon.

‍

References

Barbarin, I.: Tweet: The most absurd thing is when an Abled person points to you and your success with a disability and shames the person beside them. “Well if THEY can do it, you have no excuses”, (5 May), 2018. https://twitter.com/Imani_Barbarin/ status/992455169324539904

Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M.: Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Press, 1985.

Hawkins, B. L., Cory, A. L. & Crowe, B. M.: “Effects of Participation in a Paralympic Military Sports Camp on Injured Service Members”, Therapeutic Recreational Journal, XLV, 4, 2011, 309-325.

Huffington Post Brazil: Portuguese journalist shocks internet when criticizing Paralympic Games: “Grotesque spectacle, a circus act”, 2016. Retrieved from: https://www. huffpostbrasil.com/2016/09/12/paralimpiada-preconceito_n_11970120.html

Jennings, K.: Tweet: Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair (22 Sept) 2014. https://twitter.com/kenjennings/status/514125105426071553?lang=en

Lancaster, M.: Rio Paralympics 2016: Athletes find role-model status a tricky balance, 2016. Retrieved from http://www.sportingnews.com/other-sports/news/rio-paralympics-2016-athletes-role-models-inspiration/nu7zlg35brwq1infjmkcpju2h

Lockwood, P. Jordan, C.H. & Zunda, Z.: “Motivation by Positive or Negative Role Models: Regulatory Focus Determines Who Will Best Inspire Us”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 4, 2002, 854-864.

Murdock, S.: Donald Trump To Paralympians: You Are “Tough To Watch”: Actually, for a lot of people, it’s Trump who’s tough to watch, 2018. Retrieved from: https:// www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/donald-trump-to-paralympians-you-are-tough-to- watch_us_5ae4f0c9e4b02baed1babaef

Murley, J.: Sportscene, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ p061vwm5

Purdue, D.E.J. & Howe, P.D.: “Empower, inspire, achieve: (dis)empowerment and the Paralympic Games”, Disability and Society, 27, 7, 2012, 903-916.

Ryan, F.: Surprised to see a hot woman in a wheelchair? If so, examine your prejudices, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2018/ may/07/surprised-to-see-a-hot-woman-in-a-wheelchair-if-so-examine-your-prejudices

Tinson, A., Aldridge, H., Born, T.B. & Hughes, C.: Disability and poverty: Why disability must be at the centre of poverty reduction, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.npi. org.uk/files/3414/7087/2429/Disability_and_poverty_MAIN_REPORT_FINAL.pdf

Young, St.: “We’re not here for your inspiration”, ABC News. July 2, 2012. Accessed 30 January 2017. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-03/young-inspiration-porn/ 4107006.

‍

Brittain Ian, "Paralympians as real-life Role Models", in:K. Georgiadis (ed.), Challenges an Olympic Athlete faces as a Role Model, 58th International Session for Young Participants (Ancient Olympia,16-30/6/2018), International Olympic Academy, Athens, 2019, pp.123-133.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍