Return of the Ableist Narrative: Why do We Keep Having to Demand Food Accessibility

A little over a year ago a tweet went viral.

Image Description: tweet with a picture of peeled oranges in plastic containers on a grocery store (whole foods) shelf. Tweet reads “If only nature could find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them”

This tweet had everything it needed to go viral. It featured a picture of a product that was perceived to have no real use and to be extremely wasteful. It was paired with catchy sarcastic commentary. It’s no wonder that not only did the tweet go viral. It sparked many articles condemning the environmental impact of plastic and what was perceived as a particularly egregious example of unnecessary wastefulness.

It was presented as a final step to far in consumerism and laziness.

The thing is as many disabled people pointed out at the time, prepared foods increase accessibility. Peeled oranges and other prepped foods give disabled people access to fresh food that they might otherwise simply not be able to have.

I wrote a blog post from that perspective at the time. It is to date the most viewed thing I have ever written.

The result of these conflicting viewpoints was a particularly horrifying debate that pitted environmental activists against disability rights activists. Particular highlights included: the suggestion that disabled people simply did not deserve access to easily accessible fresh food.

The suggestion that disabled people simply did not deserve access to easily accessible fresh food.

“Well you didn’t have it before now so you can keep living without it”

This, of course, ignores the reality of systemic oppression and actively promotes the idea that disabled people should not fight for or expect improvements to access and inclusion.

It also ignores how disabled people are held up as bogeymen in discourses around health particularly around discussions of dieting and exercise. People are told to eat well and exercise to avoid the spectre of disability but disabled people are routinely denied access to healthy food and exercise and then shamed for our perceived unhealthiness.

Paternalistic suggestions that instead of having prepared produce readily stocked that disabled people should simply ask staff the prep food for them.

Several well-intentioned grocery store employees expressed that they would always be happy to assist disabled patrons with preparing food and then extended this intention universally to all of their co-workers.

This ignores the fact that employees are often busy and may not be available. It also ignores the gatekeeping that disabled people routinely face when asking for accommodation. It neglects to consider that disabled people who ask for help are often met with scepticism, particularly if they are not disabled in a way that the nondisabled person understands. These scenarios often lead to inappropriate probing questions that require disabled people to prove that they are “disabled enough” to require the accommodation that they are requesting. It is not uncommon for these untrained gatekeepers to arbitrarily deny needed assistance because a disabled person doesn’t fit their stereotyped expectations.

A steady stream of people who simply did not believe disabled people when they described their difficulties in preparing produce (particularly peeling oranges), so they made suggestions that they thought we hadn’t previously considered.

This one tended to get individualized and the question “have you tried [insert completely inaccessible alternative way to peel an orange]”

This was such a popular  response to disabled people that in response to my original blog post one made this YouTube video

Not only is this a completely inaccurate interpretation of my body and how it works (or doesn’t as the case may be) making the video just horribly offensive, it also ignores the fact that I’m just one disabled person. I have just one kind of disabled body.

Even if he had managed to find a workaround for me. I was far from the only person saying that they wanted access to prepared produce. Their needs and limitations differ from my own.

This tactic is a way to attempt to silence individuals without acknowledging or dealing with the reality that those individuals are part of a larger community whose needs cannot be met with a one size fits all solution.

The original backlash around the tweet and the discussion that it created lasted a few weeks but unfortunately that discussion did not translate into widespread consideration around food accessibility. This is all too clear because we keep having to have this conversation over and over again.

Back in January Gizmodo published an article decrying the evils of selling peeled and halved avocados. It contained all the shaming language around wastefulness. A criticism that fell flat after a brief look at the author’s twitter feed which included a since deleted tweet celebrating the existence of a disposable plastic fork that came with a removable toothpick. His Gizmodo article was less an expression of real concern for the environment and more a shaming of a product that he had no use for. He has no problem with packaged food if it is something he doesn’t consider to be too lazy as this tweet about Werther’s Caramel Popcorn attests.

https://twitter.com/aliszewski/status/821371711568445441

More recent food shaming of prepped foods has come with less of an environmental argument and seem to be more expressions of “I a nondisabled person cannot personally see a use for this”. The problem is that even this is effective. It utilizes coded language of laziness that is far too often really just a dog-whistle reference to people who are poor or disabled.

One heartening aspect of the resurgence of these food shaming narratives is that more often than not I become aware of them because someone else is using my old post about oranges to actively rebut it. This speaks to how far narratives challenging ableist narratives can go but also highlights how easy those narratives are to find and how little effort some people put in to considering perspectives that differ from their own. Part of this is just a desire for easy shock value clickbait virality. The author of the Gizmodo article never responded to disabled activists attempts to draw his attention to the accessibility perspective.

It is this desire for virality that influenced the most recent incarnation of this narrative. This is particularly clear because it is just someone who has directly plagiarized the original tweet about peeled oranges.

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/841323862461677568

It is exactly the same as the original tweet. The same image and text except that it is shared by a different user.

The fact that this uncritical rebirth of this old narrative is frustrating enough but it is made more frustrating by the fact that it is just someone trying to capitalize on the old popularity of the original tweet. This person did not see those oranges in store. They can’t have. The original backlash resulted in Whole Foods removing the product from shelves. It’s not a genuine or original reaction.

It’s capitalizing on anger over a product that is no longer available so it doesn’t even make a statement about the continued wastefulness of plastic. It’s just an ableist narrative that won’t die and relies on the continued ignoring of disabled people and our needs and serves as a reminder of what options can be taken away from us when people uncritically decide that things that aren’t useful to them shouldn’t be available to anyone.

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