The first time I became aware of my hearing aids marking me out as “different”, I was about 12 years old. I was in a shop, and I had asked for help finding something. In an exaggerated whisper to a colleague – loud enough for me to hear, which is almost impressive – the shop assistant said: “Careful, he’s deaf!” – having apparently panicked at seeing my hearing aids and seen fit to warn others, as if I were contagious and might make them all deaf.
I had the same feeling of difference upon hearing that Virgin Active had airbrushed a model’s cochlear implant out of its online advertising. Cochlear implants are surgically implanted devices that can provide a sense of sound to a deaf individual. The brand has since apologised to model and ballet dancer Simone Botha Welgemoed, saying: “We got it wrong and we realise that.” But the gaffe taps into the idea that deafness is a weakness – reminiscent of Fidel Castro, who deliberately had his hearing aids airbrushed out of official propaganda photos.
Brands have diversified in recent years to include more deaf models and actors, but many are yet to portray deafness in all its complexity. Deaf people continue to feature as familiar stock pieces in advertising and elsewhere, portrayed as the kindly, doddering grandpa, or a character who mishears things, serving only as the punchline of a joke.
Of course, this in part is some people’s experience of deafness. But there are still few deaf characters, in any media, whose deafness is incidental – not all of us fit the Hollywood tropes of passive victim or talented virtuoso. Having Welgemoed appear unedited in Virgin Active’s original campaign (an updated version does use the unedited pictures) would have been a powerful statement for the deaf community, many of whom hope that signing, wearing hearing aids or having cochlear implants will eventually become unremarkable.
