Why Vogue Brazil’s Paralympic photoshoot fail is on all of us

(Instagram/voguebrasil)

Ever since the Olympic closing ceremony last week, I’ve been in withdrawal. The fierce competition, 24-hour programming, the highs and the lows, the drama – I miss it all. The only thing keeping me going is the fact the Paralympians will take center stage in Rio in just a few weeks. But, apparently not everyone feels as excited as I do for the next installment of Games.

According to reports out of Brazil, Paralympic sales are at an all-time low. In attempts to boost attention, Vogue Brazil teamed up with the Paralympic committee for a photoshoot to promote the Games and draw attention to the athletes.

Sounds like a great idea, right? What better way to bring some press to these amazing athletes than to do a glamorous shoot for the most prestigious fashion magazines in the world? But, instead of using the actual athletes, the spread featured able bodied Brazilian actors who were Photoshopped to appear as though they had a disability.

Yes, you read that right. The limbs of soap stars Cléo Pires and Paulo Vilhena were digitally altered to mimic the real bodies of Brazilian Paralympians Renato Leite and Bruninha Alexandre.

I’m sorry, what?!

You have beautiful, accomplished and available athletes to shoot (yes, Renito and Bruninha were on hand for the photoshoot) but you choose instead to go with imposters? What is the messaging supposed to be, here?

Like many, my head was exploding just trying to rationalize this. Not surprisingly, the Twitterverse immediately erupted with passionate outcry for this insulting misstep. Vogue Brazil’s response: some weak justification that they didn’t actually put this shoot together, they just featured it, and that this was an attempt to support the Paralympic games by bringing in famous faces.

“We knew it would be a punch in the gut, but we were there for a good cause,” says the magazine’s art director.

To add insult to injury, the caption that accompanies the spread is, “We are all Paralympians.”

Actually, we aren’t.

We can support the Paralympics, we can root for the athletes and we can definitely admire them, but we are not all Paralympians. We don’t know the dedication it takes to get to the highest level of athletic achievement, we don’t know the struggle these people have gone through in their lives to live with a disability and we don’t know how they may have been treated at a young age for being different than the other kids. We are NOT Paralympians and these famous soap stars are certainly no different.

The statement in itself takes away all the merit and prestige that is earned by actually being a Paralympian.

As I sat back and tried to digest this news I realized this wasn’t the first time I’ve felt grave disappointment in the media for how they ignore and marginalize minorities. In fact, Hollywood has been perpetuating this idea for far too long.

Take Ridley Scott’s 2014 biblical blockbuster “Exodus: Gods and Kings” in which Christian Bale was among the nearly all-white cast playing Egyptian and African roles. In defense of his decision Scott claimed, “I can’t mount a film of this budget … and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.”

While Scott is notoriously not-well-liked, the truth is he said what many other casting agents and directors are thinking: minorities do not draw the audience and therefore are not worthy of the roles.

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Matt Damon recently received backlash for being cast in a new movie about warriors who defend the Great Wall of China. Asian actress Constance Wu slammed the casting decision calling it “hero-bias” saying, “Remember it’s not about blaming individuals. Rather, it’s about repeatedly pointing out the racist notion that white people are superior to [people of color] and that POC need salvation from our own color via white strength.”

Wu’s bottom line, by casting Damon as the hero instead of an Asian actor, we’re perpetuating the idea that white men are the only one’s worthy of saving the world.

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The same perspective can be applied to the Paralympic photoshop fail. By choosing to feature these soap stars instead of the legitimate athletes leaves the impression that able-bodies are the only ones worthy of our attention and praise.

This needs to stop. But pointing fingers isn’t necessarily the answer.

Thousands of people paid money to travel across the world to see the Olympians compete but the Paralympic seats are only 12 per cent sold. This is all of our faults. It might be too late to hop a flight to Rio to see the Paralympians in action, but it’s not too late to tune in. Watch, live-tweet, show your support and give attention to those who rightfully deserve it.

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