Type one diabetes is greatly misunderstood, resulting in cruel jokes and harmful stereotypes. But can something like a Barbie doll really fix this? Is representation really that important?
P.S. to all of the diabetics out there, you are not alone.
I was five when I was diagnosed with type one diabetes, and spent the rest of my childhood watching children on TV navigate life freely, without having to worry about insulin injections or painful blood tests or their glucose levels dropping so dangerously low that they needed to be rushed to the hospital. Type one diabetes is a chronic, lifelong condition in which an individual’s immune system attacks the pancreas, damaging cells which produce insulin. To keep a type one diabetic alive, insulin must be administered, through injections or an insulin pump at regular intervals to make up for what their body lacks. The condition is unmistakably dangerous, but with proper treatment, a type one diabetic will live a normal life, like anyone else. So, why in my childhood did I feel alien in comparison to my peers? Why do people constantly make jokes about getting diabetes from sugary foods, or ask me, “How do you have diabetes if you’re so skinny?” And why did I never see anyone on television or in film who was like me?
The answer lies in a severe lack of diabetic representation and knowledge about the condition. I was twelve years old when I first saw a diabetic character on television: it was a side character in The Walking Dead, a girl named Tina who is shown to be suffering from hypoglycemia, which occurs when either too much insulin has been administered or a diabetic hasn’t eaten. The person suffering from it feels tired, clammy, dizzy, hungry, nauseous, until they eat something sugary to bring their blood glucose levels back to normal. Failure to do so, or if the person receives more insulin, can result in coma or death. Thus, you will understand my horror when a character gives Tina a shot of insulin, which miraculously cures her low blood sugar. In real life, this action would kill her. Tina is just one example of a poorly written diabetic character whose entire existence is to have her diabetes used as an exploitative plot point. The ‘Tinas’ of pop culture have done nothing for real diabetics but perpetuate dangerous ideas about the condition that do more harm than good.
The other trope used for diabetic characters is what I like to call the “diabetic martyr,” such as Shelby in the film Steel Magnolias. The point of her character is to suffer and die traumatically from her diabetes, highlighting how, when diabetes is (rarely) included in pop culture, it is used solely as a plot point, as diabetic characters are never allowed to exist outside of their condition. In other portrayals, diabetics are overweight and spend their time eating copious amounts of sugar. This “representation” is not representation at all. It is simply misinformation and stereotypes. It’s the same reason why kids across the world freaked out when Nick Jonas opened up about being diabetic in 2008, thinking he had a serious terminal illness and was going to die immediately. Misconceptions about T1D are idiotic and damaging. Giving a hypoglycemic person insulin will kill them; diabetes hasn’t been a death sentence since the 1920s, and the public’s opinion of diabetics as inherently obese is based on nothing but harmful stereotypes about type two diabetes, which is a separate condition entirely.
In fact, your ignorance can kill. Type one diabetics have higher rates of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide than their non-diabetic peers and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Having type one diabetes takes an immense toll on a person, and hearing “harmless” jokes about how your sugary guilty pleasure snack is going to “give you diabetes” does nothing but reduce such a painful condition to a disgusting punchline. I don’t blame a lot of people for making these jokes: some are genuinely unknowing as to the harm it causes people, because there is such a severe lack of knowledge about what diabetes is in the public consciousness.
My mum, who gave me my medication every day when I was too young to do it myself, was once asked, “How can you bear to inject your child?”, a question so rich with ignorance that today it still makes her shocked that someone said this to her. The alternative to not giving a diabetic medication is death. My mother kept me alive by injecting me with insulin every day, and although it was difficult for her to give me what were, quite frankly, painful injections, she did it out of love and responsibility. Asking how she could ever dare to keep her child alive was a hugely insensitive and ignorant thing to say, and if people had more awareness about diabetes and the sacrifices people make for it, I’m sure that person would have understood why my mum could “bear to inject” her child. It’s these little comments that hurt the most when people show just how uneducated they are about my condition.
In recent years, diabetic representation is slowly becoming better, both in film and TV and in things such as celebrities becoming more outspoken about living with type one diabetes. Lila Moss catwalks with her insulin pump visible, singer Role Model regularly opens up about how his diabetes affects him, and several background characters in the Pixar movie Turning Red are shown to be wearing blood sugar monitors. Mattel even released a Barbie Doll with an insulin pump and blood sugar monitor. Unfortunately, Mattel’s Instagram page’s announcement post for the doll was flooded with comments such as “Who asked for this?” “This is so pointless,” and “Does she come with a removable foot?”, a cruel joke about how hyperglycemia can sometimes affect diabetics’ limbs, resulting in amputations. As for “who asked for this,” five-year-old me would have been ecstatic to see a doll like her; it certainly would have made me much less ashamed and embarrassed about my condition. However, it’s clear there’s still a long way to go before type one diabetics are taken seriously and are no longer reduced to a cheap punchline. For people to ridicule a condition that typically develops in children through no fault of their own (just because their immune system decides to attack a vital organ), it’s just heartless ableism.
November is Diabetes Awareness Month. I hope that reading this inspires at least one person to be more educated, aware, and understanding of type one diabetes. No, you can’t get it from eating too many sugary foods. No, your unoriginal joke about getting diabetes from too much dessert isn’t funny. Yes, I appreciate the diabetic Barbie doll and the amazing things it is doing by making children feel more comfortable about their condition. And, yes, creating characters who show the reality of having diabetes is important, especially for the little kids out there who watch television and movies and feel alone, wondering why there is nobody like them onscreen.
