Vem är normal?
My project is about attitudes towards disabled people, about our fear for those who are different, about acceptance, ideals and normality.My inspiration has been prosthesis, and mostly people that are born without limbs. Through my research I have come across a lot of questions. Such as, why is a prosthesis so important and for whom? Why is it so important to be normal? What is normal and for who? People that are born different se upon themselves as normal, until they realize that others don?t. Many of them want to learn how to deal with life without prosthesis. And therefore they reject these. Sometimes the prosthesis is aids that are highly necessary. But they are also a way to blend in. When someone get severely ill or are born with a defect the society want to rehabilitate this person at any price. The goal is not to make the disability to something that you accept but something you should cure. This is of course necessary in some cases and I believe that we do this with the best of intentions. But sometimes we do this because we don?t believe in being different and the strive to be the ?ideal-human being? is an obsession for us. The ?ideal- human being? that nobody ever can be and especially not those with a disability. What is normal has change from different epochs and are different in different cultures. We learn what is normal and not normal, what are acceptable and about values so we can survive in our society. It is a social construction and it is safe. This safety can be a problem when it comes to be able to understand and accept that there are people that look, think and acts in a different way. It can be a seed for prejudices.During this project I realized that this is not only about visible disability. It is about hidden disability and that concern all of us.I believe that we all have some kind of disability. It is a matter of definition. We have to learn how to live with, accept and appreciate what is ugly, odd, unpleasant and unique. It is about values and to reassess.