James Parr

James Parr: I acquired my disability when I was 21. I remember when I woke up from surgery, everyone’s attitudes around me, the doctors’ and the nurses’, instantly changed.

I was just like constantly hearing people tell me that they felt sad for me and sorry for me, and I didn’t really connect with that.

I’m James. I’m a model, a disability advocate and Wiradjuri man. And an ambassador for International Day of People with Disability 2025.

Being an ambassador is really important to me to challenge and keep rewriting the narrative of what it’s like to have a disability.

My big question is why do you think the media avoids showing people with a disability as sexual or desirable? We’re all humans, we all have desire, and a part of desire is also to be sexual.

Isabella Choate: There is an ongoing issue where the general public seems to infantilise people with disability.

Maree Jenner: It’s the lack of representations. People think we live life with a deficit, where it’s exactly the opposite.

Ronan Soussa: I truly agree with you because like you just think of yourself as a regular person.

James: Going back into dating after acquiring a disability was like a whole different experience. And, in that, what I did find is a narrative there that they’re like going to be a helper or a caregiver.

I think having more people with disability in media and in mainstream spaces is probably the most important.

And when I first started modelling, actually it was my first runway, and I remember a kid, I think he was about five or six, and he was using a prosthetic, and to be able to watch him and his reaction when he saw me up on the screen, he probably had never seen someone like him before.

My hopes for the future is just have people with disability as characters or within media, just there as people, just showing us living life as someone else would.