CAMRI Policy Brief: Appearance, Discrimination and the Media - Portraying Facial Disfigurement Fairly in the News

The portrayal of disfigurement in the UK media must change. This policy brief is based on recent research that found a general negative and sensationalised attitude towards disfigurement in the media. Disfigurement is a condition that can affect anyone at any time in life regardless their social or demographic background due to accidents or health conditions or be congenital. In the UK, one in 111 people have facial disfigurements. In order to improve the ways in which media portray disfigurement, this policy brief argues that media should move away from sensationalised coverage on disfigurement and focus instead on the lived experiences of individuals with this condition. It recommends strengthening diversity-oriented editorial practices and training as well as media literacy education. In addition, it addresses the lack of guidelines on the portrayal of disfigurement and urges regulatory bodies to be more efficient in handling complaints

Preventive action of organosilicon treatments against disfigurement of wood under laboratory and outdoor conditions

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Disfigurement: A visibly different approach to equality?

The Equality Act 2010 (“the Act”) provides that someone with a severe disfigurement should be treated as meeting the definition of disability1. However, a lack of clear statutory guidance and case law on the meaning of ‘disfigurement’ mean that the parameters of this section of the Act remain uncertain. These parameters are under particular tension from the related concepts of appearance and disability, which partially overlap with disfigurement. Through an analysis of the relationship between these three concepts, this paper will argue that ‘disfigurement’ should be read as encompassing a broader range of appearance-altering conditions than has, to date, been recognised. It will be argued that protection should extend beyond conditions such as scarring to include other visible differences. The first part of this paper sets out what we know about the meaning of disfigurement, and how interpretive approaches can ascribe a clearer meaning to the relevant statutory provision. The second part considers how disfigurement differs from the concepts of appearance and disability, and how the relationship between these terms can be defined through an analysis of models of disability and relevant case law. It identifies several respects in which the current statutory provision seems to fall short of the implicit logic which drove its inclusion in the Act. Finally, the third part evaluates the extent to which a new definition of disfigurement could alleviate some of the identified weaknesses in the current law

Competing narratives in framing disability in the UK media: a comparative analysis of journalistic representations of facial disfigurement versus practices of self-representations online

By using discourse analysis, this paper compares and contrasts the journalistic coverage of the story of a beauty blogger with facial disfigurement with her blog. On the one hand, we will show the extent to which a self-representational account may align with the journalistic coverage, reinforcing rather than contesting mainstream representations of disability. On the other, we will demonstrate how a person with a disfigurement can use blogging to reclaim her own identity and challenge the medical objectification of her body perpetuated by mainstream media. This research found that rather than being mutually exclusive, journalism and blogging can play a complementary role in shaping the society’s understanding of the complexities and contradictions surrounding disfigurement