AZ Boy In Wheelchair Awed To See Someone Like Him In Target Ad

PEORIA, AZ — Sometimes, it takes a 2-year-old to steer us toward the hopeful signs that, as a society, we’re doing things that make everyone feel more valued and included.

Oliver Garza-Pena gets around in a wheelchair. He was born with caudal regression syndrome, which impairs the development of the lower half of his body.

He was in an Arizona Target store with his mother last week when he spied hopefulness.

Gazing back at him, smiling and laughing, was a boy on a Target display ad who also uses a wheelchair for mobility.

“Oliver sees kids every day, but he never gets to see kids like him,” said a posting on Ollie’s World, a Facebook blog set up by his family. The Garza-Pena family learned through a routine ultrasound at 18 weeks in pregnancy that Oliver has caudal regression syndrome, a rare disorder that affects about one in 2,500 live births.

“This was amazing! I am so happy that other kids that pass through here with their parents, will see this!” the blog continued. “There is a lot of focus on representing diversity, but representing people with disabilities is just as important!”

Demi Garza-Pena, who runs the Ollie’s World Facebook page, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that her son stared in awe at the Target ad, and she was unable to break his gaze.

"I could see the look on his face, he knew that boy was like him," she said.

To date, Garza-Pena's Feb. 4 Facebook post, tagged #RepresentationMatters, has gotten about 40,000 “likes” and “loves,” 1,200 comments and 28,000 shares. It even made its way to the mother of Colton Robinson, a 10-year-old boy in West Springfield, Massachusetts, with spina bifida, a condition similar to Oliver’s —and who is featured in the Target ad.

“I was overcome by emotion and started crying,” Ahsley Robinson, Colton’s mother, told “Good Morning America,” adding “the expression on Oliver’s face looking up to Colton was extremely touching.”

About 85.3 million Americans live with disabilities, according to the latest-available U.S. Census data, making them the largest minority group in America. That’s about 27 percent of the U.S. population. Of those, about 55.2 million Americans — nearly 18 percent of them — are living with severe disabilities. And among that group, about 24.2 million people need some assistance getting in or out of bed or a chair.

Organizations representing people living with disabilities have long called on companies in the United States and throughout North America to make their ads look more like the people who buy their merchandise and use their services.

Canada-based Calgary Society for Persons with Disabilities, among the companies participating in a “Visibility for Disability” campaign launched Dec. 3, 2019, on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, put together a focus group of people who were shown fake advertisements featuring people with disabilities.

Their reactions — from bewilderment and unease to comments such as “a bit of a stretch” and “it just rubs me the wrong way” — may explain why some companies are reluctant to feature people with disabilities in their ads.

Others have been bolder, rolling out more-inclusive ads that show models with prosthetic limbs, Down syndrome, albinism or who use wheelchairs and crutches to get around.

Mattel introduced a wheelchair-bound Barbie doll in 2019, telling CNN in a statement that “as a brand, we can elevate the conversation around physical disabilities by including them into our fashion doll line to further showcase a multi-dimensional view of beauty and fashion.”

Curt Decker, the executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, told CNN the Barbie dolls send a powerful message to kids living with disabilities that there’s “nothing wrong” with them.

Aerie, a Chicago model in her mid-30s featured in the American Eagle Outfitters ad and who contracted polio as a child growing up in India, told USA Today that if such ads had been prominent when she was growing up, “I'd feel like I was more valued and have a better sense of myself.”

By appearing in the ads, she said she hoped “to create that sense of belonging for younger generations, so they know they can aspire to be (anything), no matter who they are.”

Luca Bakemeier, the manager of the Peoria Target store where young Oliver found hopefulness, encourages other businesses to also feature more people with disabilities in ads.

“It's what we live for, what we love to see that kind of backing and see that support not only for Ollie but just the things Target's been doing," Bakemeier told news station KXNV.