Actress Mared Jarman, who has a degenerative eye disease, has written and starred in a BBC comedy drama, How This Blind Girl. The series follows Ceri, a blind twenty-something, as she navigates the already fraught world of dating. Mared’s aim with the show is to break taboos surrounding disabled people and sex. “People don’t want to think of disabled people as sexual beings with sexual desires, wants and needs,” she said. “The reality is that disabled people are just as sexual as anyone else.”
Many disabled characters in the media are depicted either as sexless or fetishized. According to Mared, “When I go up for roles that are ‘sighted’ a huge percentage of them have nude scenes and are sexual, there’s a sex scene… but I can’t remember a single disabled role I’ve gone up for where there’s a nude scene, a kissing scene, a sex scene, anything.” She said that either disabled people are desexualized or completely sexualized and fetishized.
Accepting a recent Bafta Cymru Breakthrough award for her work on the show, Mared said: “For every little blind girl, blind boy, disabled person who has been told that they can’t do anything and have a quality of life, this is for us because that’s wrong’.” Claiming her identity as a disabled person has been an ongoing journey. She described her disability as “a two-sided beast” that has taught her things about people and the world.
Mared wants her industry to change the way it deals with disability and thinks open casting for roles would be a great place to start. “It doesn’t have to affect the storyline, disabled people are a part of our lives, we make up a huge percentage of the population,” she said. “We need to stop ignoring that disability is just a part of life.
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