By BA Haller© Media dis&dat
It's wonderful to see such a joyful representation of disability, and to show a couple who actually chooses disability to be a part of their family. Hopefully, Katherine Heigl's growing status as an A-list Hollywood actress will help her become a spokesperson for adoption of children with disabilities. (Her daughter, Naleigh, is described as having special needs but her specific disability hasn't been disclosed.)
The cover of People is a good start in better representation of disability. Katherine Heigl and husband singer Josh Kelley obviously want to celebrate their child, and her disability is incidental.
A NY Daily News article Sept. 22 reports that many couples are choosing to adopt children with disabilities these days. And the People magazine article has a sidebar called "Special Needs Adoptions."
Given the huge circulation of People (3.6 million in 2008), the story can certainly help with positive imagery of the joy of adopting a child with a disability. The Oct. 5 People issue is on newsstands now.
Here's recent gushing by Josh Kelley about his new daughter:
"We adopted a baby from Korea, me and my girl, and she's awesome, dude! This girl is the bomb!" the singer, who's married to Katherine Heigl, gushed at a concert Sept. 18 in Oxford, Ohio.
The couple posted a photo of their adopted daughter from Korea last week. They named her Nancy Leigh – after Heigl's mother Nancy and sister Margaret Leigh – but call her by her nickname Naleigh.
At his show at Miami University, Kelley introduced a song he had just written about Naleigh, singing the lines, "Just to see you in mommy's arms is all I need."
"It's like I have Gerber all over my knee," Kelley told the audience, "and it doesn't even matter, I love it."
