Introduction
Rebekah Taussig’s book Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body explores the author’s experience navigating the world with a paralysis disability. Thus, the book’s second chapter “An Ordinary Unimaginable Love Story” focuses on the theme of love and discusses common perceptions associated with love in modern society. In addition to directly explaining the author’s experience, the chapter also emphasizes how people’s ignorance and lack of representation in modern media affect romantic life for disabled people.
Chapter Summary
Firstly, the chapter starts with the author’s recollection of a discussion they witnessed on Reddit, which asked the users if they would date a woman in a wheelchair. While the Reddit discussion is not connected to the author’s experience finding love, Taussig uses it to assemble a collective image of modern men’s perception of romantic relationships with a woman in a wheelchair. The image points out that, in many cases, men have trouble understanding the technical aspects behind romantic relationships with a paralyzed woman.
The actual story of the author’s love life, discussed in the chapter, explains that it took Taussig one failed marriage and several bad dates to find her true love. The author notes that she often found herself “relentlessly prioritizing everyone else’s comfort” over her own. She regretted not fitting into society’s perceptions of beauty and grace, popularized in the media (Taussig 28). Thus, the idea of love being the primary goal in an individual’s life implied pressure on the author’s self-image. Ultimately, she found happiness in relationships with a man with an equally comprehensive view of the world as hers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while the chapter focuses on defining the challenges in finding love for disabled people, it emphasizes the importance of the connection between partners. Thus, the chapter shows that ignorance separates ordinary people from disabled people, but love ignores these boundaries.
Work Cited
Taussig, Rebekah. Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body. HarperOne, 2020.