She applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Cripping Girlhood, and reported the following:
Cripping Girlhood explores the recent proliferation of representations of disabled girlhood in U.S. media culture. I follow where the disabled girl appears, from TikTok to HBO documentaries to viral news stories, to think about what these representations tell us about disability, girlhood, and 21st century disability politics. Pushing back against one-dimensional interpretations of disabled girlhood as inherently tragic or inspirational, Cripping Girlhood uncovers the complicated and sometimes paradoxical ways that the figure of the disabled girl is put to work in contemporary media culture. The book is also very interested in how disabled girls narrativize the feeling and experience of being a disabled girl in an increasingly mediated world. I look to TikTok and YouTube, for example, to track how disabled girls use the platforms as tools of self-representation. Page 99 is a great example of this line of inquiry, although it cuts off before the analysis because there is an image on the page, so readers might not get an accurate picture of the entire book:Visit Anastasia Todd's website.[Then we see] Charisse’s face, smilingly softly and gazing to the right. She is wearing a tulle veil that cascades around her face and a rhinestone tiara that sits atop her head. The video then shifts to a clip of Charisse and her husband’s first dance. Then, quickly, to an image of an ultrasound. The scenes that follow are of Charisse in the hospital, a newborn baby perched on her chest. A slide then reads, “10 years ago I never would have imagined facing a fear could lead to so many beautiful outcomes.” The video ends with a still image of Charisse standing in the middle of the frame. She is wearing a coral dress and her leg brace is prominently displayed on her left leg. To the viewer, it looks as though she is walking away; a straight path forward is illuminated. Her image is flanked by the axiom “Different is beautiful.” Above and below her image reads, “Throughout my childhood others made me believe that being different was a horrible thing. But as I got older I realized you have to be different to make a difference in this world.” She frames her journey as epiphanic; through overcoming fear and accepting difference, Charisse ultimately concludes that it was her non-normative embodiment, all along, that has afforded her the insight to, as she articulates, “make a difference in this world.” #BeBeautifullyDifferent is the essence of Charisse’s self-brand as a girl crip-fluencer. It is both a command and an affirmation and it evokes post-,Charisse Living with Cerebral Palsy is one of the two “crip-fluencers”—my term for disability social media influencers—that the chapter (“From Disabled Girlhood 2.0 to the ‘Crip-fluencer’”) does a deep dive on. I chart her social media evolution, from building community and generating intimacy in relative obscurity on YouTube to partnering with corporate brands. I show how she has created a self-brand out of disability, monetizing her everyday life and identity into flows of content available for consumption. This chapter is interested in exploring the tension between self-narrativization and commodification of disabled identity. My fusion of crip and influencer is my attempt to resist simple dichotomies and instead dwell in the tension that exists between social media—YouTube specifically—as a vehicle for developing disabled subjectivity, community, and activism and as a vehicle that answers to the neoliberal capitalist demand for and monetization of disability visibility.
--Marshal Zeringue
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