Para-athletes: "Inspirational porn" and stereotypes, the struggle to secure sponsors
As the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games get underway, not all participating athletes have secured sponsors, despite the crucial importance of such support for fully and confidently pursuing their athletic careers.
Yann Beldame, University of Montpellier; Hélène Joncheray, Paris Cité University; Rémi Richard, University of Montpellier and Valentine Duquesne, Paris Cité University
For Paralympic athletes, access to sponsors isn’t solely dependent on athletic performance… far from it. Disability and the story behind it often take precedence over athletic performance itself. The problem? Not all disabilities and Paralympic sports are viewed as inspiring by people without disabilities; as a result, some Paralympic athletes find themselves overlooked by sponsors.
This is the finding of a survey conducted among 15 Paralympic athletes who were shortlisted for the recent Tokyo Games, and 42 members of their support staff (team managers, coaches, physical therapists, physical and mental trainers, doctors, athletic assistants, guides, and family members).
A distorted view of para-athletes due to biases
The interviews conducted for the study reveal that access to sponsors is not solely—or even primarily—linked to athletic performance; it depends heavily on the disability itself, and especially on the type of recognition associated with it.
Two categories of para-athletes are thus more likely to secure sponsorship, as one of the athletes interviewed put it:
“Generally speaking, they’re amputees who seem perfectly able-bodied. […] And even if it’s a prosthesis, there’s a bit of technology involved—it’s sleek, bionic. People can relate to those,” he says. “And then there’s the one who’s athletic, but who elicits a bit of pity—a double amputee, a little guy. In that case, it’s more about sponsorship in the sense that we have to help him because he’s so brave.”
This description actually reflects a distorted view of athletes with disabilities, shaped by two major biases identified as early as 1989 by sociologists Claude Grignon and Jean-Claude Passeron (who had identified them at the time in the context of studies on the working class): populism and miserabilism.
The first approach tends to romanticize the disabled body and the life stories of Paralympic athletes, while treating them as a kind of superhero. The second, however, consists of viewing “all differences as deficiencies, all forms of otherness as a lesser form of being.”
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At the intersection of these two biases lies “inspiration porn”:this refers to the tendency of non-disabled people to draw inspiration from people with disabilities, based on their every move and action, which are viewed as exceptional given the disability itself—which is assumed to be tragic. https://www.youtube.com/embed/SxrS7-I_sMQ?wmode=transparent&start=0 Talk by Australian actress, journalist, and disability rights activist Stella Young on inspiration porn and the objectification of disability, TEDxSydney 2014.
“Inspirational porn” thus combines a sense of victimhood—which assumes that the lives of athletes with disabilities are necessarily harder and more miserable than those of able-bodied athletes—with populism, which transforms ordinary people and events into heroes and extraordinary deeds.
A rejected bias: pessimism
In elite para-sports, this tendency toward sensationalism is evident, for example, in photos published in the media: according to a 2011 study conducted in five European countries, Paralympic athletes at the Sydney (2000), Athens (2004), and Beijing (2008) Games were photographed in much less active poses than non-disabled athletes, thereby reinforcing the pity-driven narrative that portrays people with disabilities as weak and inactive individuals.
While the sympathy and compassion associated with self-pity may encourage some sponsors to fund athletes, this bias is strongly criticized and rejected by the athletes and their staff: some regret that the media dramatizes their stories and overlooks their athletic achievements; others feel that para-athletes are often portrayed as inevitably unhappy; still others want above all to be seen as elite athletes.
Furthermore, playing up one’s misfortune can have a counterproductive effect on securing sponsorship and may even harm certain sports, such as boccia—a sport similar to pétanque but played in wheelchairs by mixed teams using leather balls. The reason? Interest generated by self-pity tends to decline as the degree of disability increases. In other words, a mild disability is preferable, in terms of interest and sponsorship, to a more severe and visible disability.
Added to this is the fact that boccia has no equivalent among able-bodied people, and is therefore less “inspiring” to them: since it doesn’t feature “inspiration porn,” the sport is thus considered less worthy of interest… and funding.
A dangerous bias: populism
A possible way out of pessimism: drawing parallels with the concept of the cyborg athlete, equipped with mobility technologies (wheelchairs, prosthetics).
A study published in 2011 estimated, in fact, that the further a Paralympic athlete’s body deviates from this ideal, the more likely it is that a tragic—rather than heroic—image will develop around that athlete, and that the athlete will become the subject of pity.
According to a study by INSEP and the University of Montpellier, Paralympic athletes—who are often perceived as cyborgs—are, in fact, largely spared from sensationalist media portrayals… but the hype surrounding their superhuman abilities leaves them more vulnerable to populist portrayals of their sport.
The 2011 study on media coverage of para-athletes, mentioned earlier, also revealed that, in published photos, athletes in wheelchairs and/or with prosthetics were overrepresented, while athletes with disabilities requiring less technological assistance were underrepresented.
Beyond the narratives of cyborg athletes, another populist view of Paralympic athletes is to regard them as “super-disabled”: athletes who make heroic and high-performance use of their disabled bodies.
The theme of resilience through sports is often highlighted in this context, centered on a narrative that recounts and celebrates the extraordinary and heroic qualities of a Paralympic athlete—as well as their remarkable achievements despite their disability.
A dangerous misconception: it suggests that individual effort alone can achieve anything, thereby glossing over the injustices and inequalities in opportunity between able-bodied and disabled athletes.
It also perpetuates the idea that only extraordinary people can succeed in para-sports. This view is far from realistic and amounts to “inspiration porn”: people without disabilities struggle to assess the true abilities of para-athletes and often project low expectations onto them, thereby eliciting unwarranted praise.
Para-athletes: Both Victims and Agents of Bias
The survey reveals, however, that athletes themselves—through the image they project to the media, to companies, or in their social media posts—do not necessarily seek to oppose populism or “inspiration porn”… since these strategies help them attract sponsors.
“Actually, they don’t really care about my results; it’s really the sacrifices I make every day that seem to interest them the most,” says one Paralympic swimmer, for example.
Athletes thus find themselves confronted with “inspiration porn” and are forced to accept it, since this narrative is what sponsors want to sell. Pushing one’s limits and the heroic aspect of life despite a disability are the themes sponsors expect and prefer to fund… and which para-athletes consequently portray.
For these athletes, the question is this: do sponsors give them money because they admire their athletic achievements despite their disabilities, or does the funding reward the efforts they put in every day in their quest for medals?
Ultimately, the study highlights two key findings: first, social norms prevent less high-profile para-athletes from securing sponsorships; second, they force them to emphasize their disability rather than their athletic achievements.
A shift in perspective is needed
To change this distorted view, shaped by pessimism, populism, and “inspiration porn,” the athletes interviewed have some ideas. Starting with eliminating the distinction between able-bodied sports and para-sports. “The goal is to reach the same level… well, to become a sport. Not a disability sport, not para-sport […], but to become a sport like any other,” explains, for example, a member of a national wheelchair rugby team. “To be on the same level as others, so we can benefit from the same things.” He also advocates for disability to become the norm.
According to researchers at INSEP and the University of Montpellier, developing a “policy of embracing diversity” would make it possible to recognize not only those parasports that inspire people without disabilities, but all parasports based solely on the sporting experience.
While we await such a shift in perspective, the sociologists’ publication is already paving the way for new studies. In particular, to examine the gendered dimension of representations of Paralympic athletes and its significance in the allocation of sponsorships. It would be interesting, for example, to direct new research toward an intersectional perspective, in order to analyze how gender and disability intersect in the process by which Paralympic athletes gain access to sponsors.
Yann Beldame, Anthropologist, University of Montpellier; Hélène Joncheray, Sports Sociologist, HDR, Paris Cité University; Rémi Richard, Associate Professor of Sociology of Sport and Disability, University of Montpellier and Valentine Duquesne, PhD in Sports Sociology, Paris Cité University
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