Disabilities are NOT Funny
Growing up, my best friend Tracey and I had another friend whose little sister had Down Syndrome, so while the rest of our classmates heartily enjoyed using the word retarded to describe everything and everyone in sight, we were chastised every time it accidentally escaped our lips. And so like every child who’s told over and over again that she’s not allowed to do something she really wants to, we grew up getting a lot of pleasure from secretly saying the word behind our friend’s back.
Now that we’re a little more mature and our vocabularies are a little less limited, we don’t need that word anymore, but Tracey still loves to entertain me by sending me links to things like Down Syndrome Dolls, which soooooooooo creepily look like this:
And Downi Creations, which (even more creepily?) look like this:
When I saw how cheap the first ones are, I was like, “OMG, I could totally afford to fill my entire house with those things and then invite unassuming friends over! It’s totally worse than being a cat lady!” My co-worker Nathan said, “Don’t you think that’s bad karma?” I said, “Listen, I’ve been making fun of disabled people all my life, and I’ve done pretty well so far.”
Please note that my birthday is October 9th and that a girl doesn’t soon forget a present such as this.
yeah, if you want to come visit me in south carolina, we could totally drive to the place where these dolls are made. it’s right outside of greenville, and you know how much fun greenville can be. we could buy creepy dolls and then go looking for prostitutes.
Did we have a threesome with Michael Roberts and I just don’t remember it? Because otherwise, I can’t imagine how Greenville could be fun.
But yes, I would come for the dolls. And then we could take a road trip to Japan to test drive some of those slip-on enema practice pants.
Meh, all children are hideous and creepy
Yes, but there’s a special level of hideous and creepy reserved for disabled children, and they don’t deserve to have dolls to make them happy at all, let alone dolls that actually look like them.
OMG, do they have Trisomy-13 dolls too?
No, but only because it costs too much to manufacture the extra fingers.
You’re going to Hell, you know.
This reminds me of a documentary about dwarfs I saw a while ago called Little People.
Yeah, because dwarfs are people, too, you know.
The fact that this was made back in 1984 gives me high hopes that it’s not politically correct at all, since, you know, dwarfs weren’t actually accepted as people until the late 90s.