The Guardian Article –
Last week The Guardian published an article by Leo Benedictus featuring 3 people with restricted growth and their life experiences.
Hats off to that newspaper for giving the community a voice in national platform in a national paper.
Re-reading the article I’m still in agreement with what Gillian Martin says. I am still as appalled by Jimmy Carr’s comments about an average height person being in a relationship with a person of restricted growth as the “acceptable face of paedophilia” and I too would worry, no, know that people have come away thinking being short and having a relationship with someone short is strange too.
The words sitcom and restricted growth in the same sentence for describing Ricky Gervais new show has me worrying too.
Like Martin states, all you see is the stereotype or being the buttend of jokes about people with restricted growth, in the media and entertainment industries. I fear this will be the case for the news series. Compounded even more so from watching ‘Are You Having A Laugh’ last night and Stephen Merchant’s trite justification that the actors don’t mind being written parts that accentuate such stereotypes as happened in Extras. Of course they don’t, they are actors, they are not the one’s on the receiving end when some idiot who has watched the show thinks it’s funny to shout it at you or copy their actions in the street, but that’s another rant and another blog post to write later.
This all said, I do hope I’m proved wrong. That the sitcom will focus on it from a small person laughing at themselves and the situations we find ourselves in, rather than a small person being placed in awkward situations for the entertainment of your ‘normies’ (average heighters between you and me), thus perpetuating the myth from fact.
We RG people wait with baited breath…
Read the article on The Guardian website – Little Britain – what is life like as a small person?
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