Page 50 - ABILITY Magazine - Avril Lavigne Issue

Cooper: Do you think that’s criticism or ignorance?
Nobody ever criticizes that, but they will criticize the role of a little person in an average-sized role. If some- body were to be in blackface, playing African-Ameri- can, people would be up in arms about it. When I brought up the subject, I got a lot of flak because peo- ple thought I was saying it’s akin to the struggle of African Americans for respect. And in some sense, I do feel it is akin to that. It’s interesting what people will leap to defend and leap to criticize.
Woodburn: Both.
Cooper: It’s ironic that they are questioning a little per- son playing a doctor and that you were thinking of going into medicine.
Woodburn: I was accepted into the pre-med program at Penn State around 1984. There’s such an upswing of little people in the public eye right now... All the reali- ty shows that have come on since Little People, Big World, which goes to show that we can be as obnoxious as anybody else.
(laughter)
I think attitudes towards disability need to be spotlight- ed. People need to be shown that this is not a way to interact with people with disability. And it’s clear that there’s still tremendous prejudice out there, because two-thirds of our population is unemployed. And yet we make up 20 percent, if not more, of the people of this country. To say nothing of other countries.
Martirosyan: True.
Woodburn: Other countries, maybe without the same medical care, might find that the population is larger. Countries that are at war are gonna have a larger popu- lation of people with a disability. In China, there are actual height requirements for some jobs. So parents will put their children through torturous limb-lengthen- ing surgeries, because their society literally looks down on people of smaller stature.
Cooper: We’ve been working with China on changing attitudes. They’ve been studying what we’ve been doing with ABILITY Magazine—and they’re pretty candid in talking with us about their goal of an unlimited, barrier-free concept.
Woodburn: I don’t find my struggle to be related to my size in any way. I find it to be related to my syndrome, in that society sees me in a certain way because I have a dwarfism, and whatever physical things come along with my package have given me the struggles that I’ve had. But it’s never been about me being four feet tall. That’s not the issue at hand. It’s not about, I can’t reach #*@%. There’s always something that somebody can’t reach. Anybody who shops at Costco knows they’re not gettin’ anything off the top shelf without help. So it’s about perspective.
Cooper: I’m still trying to reach happiness. It’s way up there. I need help with that.
(laughter)
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