Close to Home: Perpetuating stigmas and stereotypes at the fair

On a beautiful spring day in 2000, my second daughter was delivered to me at Memorial Hospital. I had a normal delivery, and she was born healthy and kicking. My husband and I were utterly surprised when our nurse practitioner gave us the news that yes, she was healthy, but there were markers about her body that indicated a dwarfism.

We took our bundle of joy home, and while navigating a newborn along with a 3-year-old daughter, began to investigate what this dwarfism meant. After meeting with doctors at UC San Francisco, we found that our lovely one was a person who carried the genes for achondroplasia, a dwarfism that affects the growth hormone delivery to the long bones in her body, and that she would have features which identified her specific dwarfism, a larger head, shortened limbs and other health risks too scary for us to wrap our minds around.

By age 3, after spending many unnecessary hours at medical clinics with an otherwise healthy child, we finally threw up our hands at the medicalization of our daughter’s life and sought out a more healthy and social way to deal with her difference. We attended our first national Little People of America conference in San Francisco in 2003, and we have been attending all around the country almost every year since. It is the one time of the year where our daughter can truly feel part of a community. One of the best features of the conferences is that the kids, and the boys especially, love to play sports together. It’s the only time in their lives where the playing field is equal.

At home, we simply raised our daughter, alongside her average-size big sister, to love her life, to do her best and to deal with whatever came her way in this amazing place we live, Sonoma County. She did grow up without any health complications, for which we are ever grateful, considering we have been to Little People of America conferences and seen the medical treacheries that this dwarfism and other dwarfisms can bring — surgeries for any number of issues: hearing loss, bowed legs, spinal stenosis, etc. Our girl suffered none of these, but it did not shield her from the stares and jeers that accompanied any outing in the wider world.

When she was little, I could protect her. But still any time we are out of the house, she is vulnerable to being viewed as an oddity and is frequently the victim of staring and jeering. Now that she is a grown woman, simply walking down the street can garner cat calls and other terrible behaviors. During her childhood and teen years, going to the fair was anxiety provoking for all of us — large crowds, lots of kids, but we went to be a part of our community and enjoy the bounty of the county. The carnival made me especially sad because she could not ride the rides with her sister and her friends because of height requirements. Still, we loved the fair.

This year, however, it has come to our attention that the Sonoma County Fair is hosting a WWF-style wrestling show featuring little people (and this is the preferred nomenclature for those with dwarfisms). The first issue that comes along with this wrestling show is the name — people with dwarfism do not like the word “midget” — it is considered a slur, like the “n” word used to describe African Americans. As we have seen, that word and blackface performances in minstrel type shows have fallen by the wayside, relegated to bad history, one can hope. Yet, here we are, in 2023, supporting a form of exploitation that African Americans endured for centuries. There is no other reason to have a dwarf wrestling show except to showcase an oddity for entertainment.

(Now, regarding the perspective of the little people performing in the show: I get it, you want to play together, and that is fine. However, not at the fair, which is a public event and one whose mission is education.)

My daughter is now a beautiful grown woman, with a driver’s license and a college degree. She can go anywhere and do anything, yet she is still subject to discrimination and marginalization due to the uneducated views of the wider community. Regardless of her health and her luck in being brought up in a beautiful part of the world, with the unending support of family and friends, she is still vulnerable to being treated like a child, to being catcalled, to being pointed at and made fun of. As a mother, I worry for her safety all the time.

I grew up in rural Northern California and I know what backward thinking looks like, and I specifically moved to the Bay Area to find my own place in a more progressive community. I am shocked and saddened that in 2023 liberal Sonoma County, we are providing a platform for that type of backward thinking at our fair. Up until 1980, when the Americans with Disabilities Act came into being, people like my daughter were subject to all manner of discrimination and marginalization, including being institutionalized because they were different. Can we please stop supporting this type of backward thinking and bring entertainment to the fair that does not perpetuate stigma and stereotypes?

Michelle Glaubiger, the proud parent of a little person, is a resident of Santa Rosa.

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