Today's media portrayal of those with disabilities is rather skewed in my opinion. I happen to notice this in the movie The Fault in our Stars, a novel written by John Green. A blind boy, a women with cancer, and another boy with cancer and a prosthetic leg.
Even those with disabilities that do not affect their physical appearance are treated differently.
The people that do the same things that we do in our everyday lives are almost singled out and treated like they are just their disability.
Doesn't sound like fun.
Nancy Mairs, a women with Multiple Sclerosis, explains that having a disability "doesn't devour [you] wholly" (Mairs). Anyone with a disability does not become their disability, but the media continue to treat people that are not normal or natural like there is something wrong with them. They live and breathe as we do, so why treat them like they don't?
Having a disability is normal, and it is unfortunate that in this world there is only one normal. The media does a great deal of isolating those that are both different physically, and mentally. The only way to change that is to shape the media in our likeness.
The distortion of the views that people have towards Black women are very prominent when Beneatha chooses to cut her hair off. The narrator describes it as "close-cropped and unstraightened"(Hansberry 80), meaning her hair was short and somewhat curly. Ruth, completely baffled, makes it seem as if it is not normal to have hair like Beneatha's; She made it seem as if Beneatha is not socially acceptable to have hair as she does. Saying "You expect this boy to go out with you with your head all nappy" (Hansberry 80)? Nappy literally meaning "Afro-textured hair", but, why does nappy have to be a bad thing? George goes say that Beneatha looks "eccentric"(Hansberry 80), saying that she and her hair look abnormal and uncommon, but in a shameful way.
Africans naturally have curly, kiny, and ziggly types of hair. So to go from having naturally curly hair, to the hair that sprouts from your roots..."naturally" to be "eccentric" is quite a theory. "How can something that's natural be eccentric"(80)?
(like, there's an entire scale and everything) 
Of course during the 50s and the 60s, Black women were known to have pressed/straightened hair. I know that as both time and society have evolved, Black hair and its societal standards will evolve too, as they have.
Here's where it gets interesting...
At the start of slavery, to possess Euro-centric features was acceptable, and Black women began to abandon their cornrows, and their fro's to transition into a new do' that wasn't curly, or that did not resemble their original heritage. Which began the assimilation into White or European culture- Which is also exactly what Beneatha is challenging in this altercation between George and Ruth.
As I was doing the reading for A Raisin in the Sun, I've come to terms with the type of character Ruth is so far.
She's kinda hopeless, a bit of a worrier, and is always prepared for the worst case scenario...
She's almost- Rude, to an extent to where there is nothing to be happy about in the life she lives. All of her decisions, all of her emotions seem to be dictated by the monetary issues in her home. Her husband, Walter, notices as they converse over his breakfast.
He even makes the wide generalization that it is all colored women that behave this way... Which is a pretty large assumption, seeing that you'd have to know all Black women in order for what he said to be valid.
Beneatha, she doesn't believe in God;Which is fine. I guess I was really just a little uneasy to her mother's reaction because she slapped her. Then tried to justify her response by saying "What you did was childish-- So you got treated like a child"(Hansberry 52).
I think I can go as far as to say that's pretty much belittling her opinion, but I know things were different during this time.
- Something to think about...
Which ironically it kind of did.
"I think he half-expected her to walk into one of his parties...Then he began asking people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found." (Fitzgerald 79).
In this passage, Gatsby goes the immeasurable lengths just to rekindle his love with the married Daisy Fay Buchanan.
Seeing that Gatsby threw all of his extravagant gatherings as a gesture of his love to lure Daisy back to him. Spending mass amounts of money on parties he'd hope she'd walk into was a bit of a stretch in my opinion. In the novel, he throws two parties, the one he invites Nick to, to where he coincidentally runs into Ms. Baker, and the second one, to almost celebrate the newly found union between Daisy and Gatsby. Daisy, stringing him along, doesn't seem to care about his grand gestures, while her own husband engages in an affair with his mistress. What Gatsby was doing was half-sweet, and obsessive. He even "bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay" (Fitzgerald78), but, clearly love is blindness when it comes to Gatsby concluding the story with his own death and the mere fact that Daisy never musters up the courage to leave her husband for the man she truly loved.
Such a tragedy it seems because it all were for nothing. Gatsby's actions exceed any ideal of love that any other man could match.
This entire novel is a doomed love triangle that ends in the death's of Tom's mistress, Myrtle, and Daisy's lover, Gatsby. The people in the crossfire, Nick and Jordan, help them cheat on each other which shows just how dysfunctional their friendships are, and where their loyalties lie. How heartbreaking it was, showing not the least bit of remorse for what Daisy had done(killing a person and a relationship), and then she fled to avoid dealing with the cleanup.
She went back to him, and he went back to black.
Confronting racism can be one of the toughest things to encounter. Whether it be a sickening comment, or the way you see or view a hateful symbol. Especially when it's tucked away in the closet but always peeking through the cracks of the door. Racism is not something people can try to hide now, now that time is evolving and social and societal acceptances begin to shift and change.
In the Bluest Eye, Black women and Black men are faced with inequality living amongst their White neighbors. The amount of pressure society yields on its children forces eyes to look down and smiles to smear. How bad does it have to get for our Black children to desire physical features of those that are white? Uncomfortable enough in their own skin that they would desire to be someone else; Someone that was them, but did not look like them.
In The Bluest Eye, Pecola admires Shirley Temple on the side of her cup. Desiring to be like her, aspiring to ingest her culture as she drinks her white milk. "We knew she was fond of the Shirley Temple cup and took every opportunity to drink milk out of it" (Morrison 23), Morrison wrote describing Pecola's interest In the cup. Washing down White culture, and washing away Black culture, she figured if she looked like her, then her woes would disappear. 
I used to press an iron to my hair to disguise what was underneath...
Or I could even take it back to two years ago, when I didn't even know I had curly hair... Or the closest I ever was to witnessing it, was when the hairs on my neck stuck out of my shower cap, and they curled up due to the humidity after a shower. Or even after I got out off the pool, the waves would turn up, and the length would crinkle.
Mother always told me the creamy crack was the way to go... Straight hair was just "easier to manage" as she would say.
And yanno', I never really understood what she thought about curly hair until I went natural.
Straight hair was easier to manage; and I will always hands down agree.
Ever since I cut off my straight hair to let my curls roam free, I'd be standing over the sink in my bathroom for 45 minutes, trying to achieve that bomb twist-out I pinned on Pinterest, and the bantu knots i'd watch on Youtube.
I'd always had a perm as a child, and for a black women to freely wear a fro was quite uncommon. It even made me feel as if they should tame their hair and conform to the flat iron as my mother had taught. I'll always respect the women with the coils and the ziggles that sprout from their gardens. They had the courage I didn't learn until last December. "Wherever it erupts, this funk" (Morrison 83), i'll let it fly and lay as it pleases. For the funk, makes me, and as I allow it.
Curly hair has always been portrayed as something that needs to be tamed and handled, and the media doesn't help to make people think otherwise. I won't suppress my curls to the steam of a pressing comb, or the sizzle of a flat iron.
i'll slick my baby hairs, following that bomb twist-out, and i'll watch the curls bounce in the mirror with a grand smile pasted across my face, as you should be happy with yours.
I wish "we were still in love with ourselves" (Morrison 74), because, if it were up to society; self-loathing would become quite the trend. Not in love with ourselves in terms of conceit, but being so in love with ourselves that flaws become a foreign concept, and that you are at peace with reflection in the water. It has become so difficult for people to take compliments because they feel obligated to compliment you back, rather than just saying thank you...Or, if you ever run into that one person that just cannot take a compliment, and they continue to try to explain as to why your compliment is invalid.
Or maybe they actually just can't take the compliment because they just don't think they look they way you say they do. And that's even more painful.
I wish we were so in love with ourselves that our confidence could be naked and we would not be afraid to cover up. Being comfortable in our own skin is probably one of the most important things that can't be taught in school, but one teaches itself. Somebody could spout to you "love yourself" , and that "you're beautiful" all day long; but it'll always amount to nothing if you don't believe it.
I wish those few didn't have to ask "What did we lack?" (Morrison 74), because without question, they'd examine themselves and find nothing that caught them up. Beauty would come in a variety pack and everyone would've created their own definition.
Today's media portrayal of those with disabilities is rather skewed in my opinion. I happen to notice this in the movie The Fault in our Stars, a novel written by John Green. A blind boy, a women with cancer, and another boy with cancer and a prosthetic leg. 
