My Opinion on Disabilities vs Media

     Something I found to be really interesting in this weeks class discussion was the point when Mairs said that media was portraying people with disabilities as a minority.  I strongly disagree with this claim.  Although it's true I have no disability, I still feel like I'm able to give my self enough insight to make a claim here.  I could understand Mair's claim (to depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself") if the media was deliberately showing the disabled as a lesser population, but that wasn't the case.  Mair's was saying that the way the disabled were not shown in traditional media was almost outcasting them.  In my opinion, advertising should be relatable to the audience of the product.  Let's take an energy workout powder for example.  If I were to google image search "energy workout powder advertisement", the majority of all ads that show up have males in the picture.  That's the target audience of these powders, males who work out.  Like that, when Mairs said that the media doesn't show disabled, I felt like that wasn't* logical because the disabled are not a majority of their audience. With another quick google search, I found out that about 56.7 million people - 19% of the population in America - had a disability in 2010, according to a broad definition of disability.  This number isn't near the majority, but it most certainly isn't a small number.  Said that I still feel like advertisements are made to make people spend money, and the most effective ads are the ones that know their audiences.  That's why, in my opinion, it isn't fair to say that the media makes the disabled look the way Mairs says.

*edited