When I have to go through something incredibly embarrassing,
I always say to myself: however it goes, it will make a cracking story. Today I
got an email from the team at Channel 4’s “The Undateables”. At first I thought
maybe they were short on “dateables”- the people they bring in for the “undateables”.
Reading further on I realised they wanted me to use my blog to recruit “undateable”
people for their show.
This was an embarrassment, not to me, but to the society in
which I live in 2017. Just because many of my readers may have disabilities, it
does not mean they are inherently undateable. I thought we had moved away from segregating
groups of people, onscreen and off. Sadly this seems to be the whole premise of
the show. The ‘Un’ falls off the title in the opening sequence but why is it there
in the first place in reference to disability?
<----spot the difference?---->
I have so many qualities that make me undateable and none of them are to do with my disability. I am proudly unapologetic for these things because although there are many people who would find me undateable there are also a lot who can’t help but fancy the cycling bibshorts off me. Yay for me.
“People living with
challenging conditions are often considered 'undateable' - this series meets a
few and follows their attempts to find love” – this is Channel 4’s description of the show. Certainly, cheap and insulting labels like ‘undateables’
and other presumptions mean that a lot of us do have it hard when we first start
to date. For instance, we have to spend the time we could be working on our
sexting game on having serious chats about disabled people’s misrepresentation
in the media.
Not all media though, I don’t want to make assumptions about
every member of a group. Take “The Theory of Everything”. This is how you title
a film about a person with a physical disability. Not “Motor Neurone Disease
(MND) Gets You No Dates” because although that may be true for some people with
MND, it wasn’t for Stephen. He got hitched more times after he got the wheels
than before; those dulcet, robotic tones taking them to the universe and back. And
that’s just the real one. Imagine how much action Eddie Redmayne with MND would
get (lots).
 |
| Eddie Redmayne vs Stephen Hawking |
As a teenage girl who had barely seen the world except
through a TV screen, I did think I was undateable. As soon as I had this
horrifying realisation I went out to test it. I realised that the only person
preoccupied by my disability was me and once I got over that, so did any
potential partners.
Despite what Channel 4’s title might suggest, I got a date.
Full disclosure: it was really a sleepover with a boy who was my age, during
which I got caught in my A-cup bra by
his dad and then had to sit with his entire family at a nice restaurant wishing
I was still an asexual tween. The things determined teenage girls put
themselves through because of media pressure, disabled or not, is astounding.
Media pressure isn’t a good thing whether you’re young or old
and what has worked for me is not relying on reality TV to educate people about
how fun it is to date me but just to go out and show them. There is also self-acceptance,
understanding other people, masochism in the form of road cycling and never watching
reality TV unless it’s GBBO or about selecting NASA recruits, along with having
confidence in my enthusiastic social skills…oh and staying in the GB tower at
the 2016 Rio Paralympics…relationships abounding!
It made me realise that my most challenging condition, where
dating was concerned, was being a professional athlete and even that can’t stop
you dating. Flying off to training camps and competitions all year and devoting
most of every day to heaving and sweating over my beloved trike and then
quickly swearing off any other type of strenuous exercise, it was obvious I was
betrothed to British Cycling. They really did get all my passion and commitment from age 20 to 23. Currently we
are on break but I reckon we have an on and off relationship. We could always
go on a couples holiday to Tokyo and work on our issues.
There is a hilariously robotic animation which my team-mates
and I love of the ‘Perils of Dating a Cyclist’. In it, a girl discusses why she
broke up with a cyclist because, amongst other things he wore a heart rate
monitor during sex so he didn’t exert himself too much. It’s funny because some
people do take it that far…
On turning down the show, I asked if anyone on the
production team had a physical disability and could I interview them for this
article. None do. However, to give them credit they do “work closely with various charities and
organisations with expertise in the areas of disability or specific conditions
for advice and guidance”. But in my experience of doctors and scientists and
charity workers, they rarely know the ins and outs of their clients’ social
lives.
A medical dictionary is not an instruction manual for love. Educational
documentaries on rare disorders are one thing, and understanding the individual
and how you fit into their lives is another. This show could be so much better
if it just stopped pointing the finger at disabled people and expanded its
range of undateables to include, well, everyone.
I think it would be great to see Kate Middleton just after she married the Duke of Cambridge saying how impossible it was to date him and how Prince Phillip took a bit of getting used to but that she just loved him and that was all there was to it. Or Sarah Hoy reliving her struggles as partner to an Olympic cyclist whilst being a lawyer but loving him anyway (*fictional quote* ‘yes he did wear his heart rate monitor in bed…’). Or just picking well-off celebrities and their doting partners, laughing with pleasure over this adored, eccentric habit or the other. Melania and Donald Trump? You have got to agree there are many more things that make a personal undateable than a wheelchair or autism… you could be an astrophysicist… oh wait Stephen Hawking’s got me again. Presumptions don’t get you anywhere.
I, being the gossip I am, do know many people with very visible
physical disabilities and very active dating lives or with beautiful spouses
and families and I will not be the perpetrator of a modernised freakshow
that instructs viewers otherwise.
If you feel the urge to watch some quality reality TV, don’t
turn on “the Undateables”. Do watch the “Perils of Dating a Cyclist” on youtube
or “The Theory of Everything” and then read “The Rosie Project” or “Travelling
to Infinity: My Life with Stephen”.
My piece was published in the Sunday Herald today with an intro by Peter Swindon here: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15525976.Channel_4_s_The_Undateables_asked_Scots_Paralympian_to_recruit_disabled_people_for_the_reality_tv_show/ .
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