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Redefining American concepts
of beauty
Local writer Tiffiny Carlson on looks,
love and dating
by Sherry Gray
Tiffiny Carlson represents
an old Minnesota stereotype: blond, tall, and athletic. She has all
the beauty components to attract interest from modeling agencies
and TV producers, except one: she uses a wheelchair. Because of that,
she represents another stereotype: woman with a disability.
But Carlson is out to
change stereotypes about Minnesotans, standards of beauty, and
people with disabilities. She has emerged as a fresh voice for
a new generation of Americans who are determined to confront mainstream
society’s outmoded images of persons
with disabilities and assert a more nuanced and complex view.
I met Carlson at a Minneapolis
coffee shop on a cold, sunny afternoon in early February. My first
impression was a blur of yellow—a
bright sweater and shining hair moving fast to the ramp entrance of
the coffee shop. Up close she radiated energy and passion, with the
energy of a prolific writer who told me she had, “hundreds of
ideas for things to write about,” and the passion of a woman
out to change the world. “People with disabilities are the
last minority; we have a long way to go to being treated equally.”
Carlson, 28, is a successful freelance writer living in Minneapolis,
known around the world for her writing on a variety of topics, including
articles for children, a blog on beauty tips, a column about dating,
essays about consumer products and travel accessibility, and profiles
of individuals living with spinal cord injuries.
Carlson herself lives with
spinal cord injury (SCI), the result of a diving accident in 1993.
She graduated from White Bear Lake High School in 1997 and went on
to major in communication studies at Augsburg College. There she
started writing online about her disability, and her work attracted
attention from Halftheplanet.com, which asked her to write for their
Web site. Before she graduated from Augsburg in 2001, her career
as a freelance writer had already begun. Since then she has supported
herself with her writing, contributing articles and columns to New
Mobility and Kids on Wheels magazines, for the Christopher and Dana
Reeve Foundation, and to many internet sites, including Lovebyrd.com,
AccessLife.com, Ican.com, Disabled.gr and Disaboom.com.
BeautyAbility.com is
Carlson’s own blog on beauty, fashion, sex, music, dating
and consumer products. She describes the blog as her favorite writing
project because, “I can say what I want to; I don’t
“. . .
you might even be thinking my injury should have taught
me
beauty-related materialistic things don’t matter in
the big picture, but
I’m no dummy. Looking good matters.”
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filter.” Readers
obviously enjoy reading her blogs too. A visit to the message
board reveals correspondents from around the world. Carlson says
her readers are mostly young men and women living with SCI, Spina
Bifida or Multiple Sclerosis. Readers to the Web site also can order
her self-published e-book Wheelchair Fashion 101.
In all her writing,
Carlson is straightforward in her objective to shake up old stereotypes
about people with disabilities. As she wrote recently on her blog, “you might even be thinking my injury should
have taught me beauty-related materialistic things don’t matter
in the big picture, but I’m no dummy. Looking good matters. When
we like how we look, we feel better about everything in life. It’s
a proven fact.”
Carlson’s fame is growing in large part due to her writing about
the dating and singles scene for people with disabilities. Besides
the dating forum and message board on her blog, she writes the “Tiff’s
Corner” column on lovebyrd.com, dispensing advice and stories
from her own dating adventures and those of her wide array of friends,
acquaintances and fans. She commented about her work last year: “Over
the years as a dating columnist, I’ve pretty much figured out
one solid thing: The problems people with disabilities face versus
the dating problems people without disabilities face are not that
different. We all experience loss, jealousy and betrayal no matter
how good-looking we are.”
Carlson has also taken
on sex, a taboo subject for many in our society when it concerns
a person with a disability. As Carlson wrote on her blog, “I don’t care how ‘blue’ your city or
state is, most people—no matter how liberal—are never fully-aware of
the disabled individual’s ‘Yes it’s existent!’ sexuality.” Several
of her articles on this topic have generated attention for their explicit
and honest depiction of the joys, struggles and possibilities for sexually
active adults with disabilities. Her deeply personal essay on Nerve.com
entitled “Getting Around: How I Discovered My Wheelchair wasn’t
a Chastity Belt” generated discussion around the internet on
sex and the single person with a disability. An article on sexual
issues for men living with SCI in ThisAbled. com presented sensitive
issues in a clear and straightforward manner, mixing practical advice
with commentary from men around the country.
Generating discussion
and encouraging readers to confront their unspoken biases about
themselves and others is Carlson’s
object. Through her writing she promotes a vision to the larger society
of persons with disabilities having the same complicated fears, problems
and desires as everyone else. She also wants readers with disabilities
to break out of the labels put on them by mainstream society. And
she
“When
we like how we look, we feel better about everything
in life.”
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does not
shy away from critiquing her own community, writing recently that “one
of the most ridiculous things I’ve come across is the way some
paras and quads polarize their para or quadness, and form little…gangs
where they exalt the characteristics of their injuries….So let’s
stop the gimp-on-gimp hate, OK?”
In the future Carlson
aspires to write “harder news stories” while
continuing to push the mainstream media—including magazines
like Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly—to publish more and
better stories for and about Americans with disabilities. But she
knows she has a long way to go to break these stereotypes, writing
with characteristic humor that “just when you think society as
a whole is beginning to see the person and not the disability, your
hopes get shot down like a fake rabbit in a carnival shooting range.” Yet
with writers like Carlson continuing the cause, the promise of progress
looks even more assured. ![]()
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Tiffiny Carlson
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