ABSTRACT
As some of the previous chapters have shown, midgetism is very much prominent within forms of entertainment which provide unique forms of employment to people with dwarfism. This chapter demonstrates that to gain disability equality, it is not enough to just give disabled people a job but to ensure that the job does not reinforce other forms of inequality, in this case, midgetism. This chapter unpacks the problematic attitudes that exist in terms of disability equality in relation to employment and specifically midget entertainment. The first part explores the employment discrimination experienced by people with dwarfism. The author draws on their own experiences, as well as others, to show how midgetism impacts people with dwarfism attaining normative employment. The second part focuses on how midget entertainers, promoters and spectators defend midget entertainment by constructing it as a non-normative positivism. To highlight how midget entertainment is used by midget entertainers and average-sized people seen as an acceptable form of employment, the third part examines the struggle to ban the degrading ‘sport’ known as midget tossing.
