Paralympic cripvertising: On the gendered self-representations of Paralympic athletes on social media

Abstract

Paralympic athletes are increasingly using social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to self-represent and engage audiences in disability counter narratives that resist dominant disability stereotypes. This is particularly the case at the intersection of gender and sexuality where social media is being harnessed to visibly reclaim gendered and sexualised disabled identities in new and diverse ways. In this article, we advance scholarship on female Paralympic athletes’ self-representational practices through an intersectional visual media analysis of the most popular female British Paralympic athlete Instagram pages. We capture a particular trend in Paralympic athletes’ self-representational practices, termed cripvertising, that intersects with gendered heteronormative scripts centred on neoliberal ableism, kinship normativity and consumption (‘branding’) capabilities. We discuss the contradictions and complexities of Paralympians self-representations and their role in relation to the subversive, pedagogical and emancipatory potential for shaping new disability media narratives, disabled (online) normativity and representational politics.