Woman With Down Syndrome Ordering a Margarita
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About
Woman With Down Syndrome Ordering a Margarita refers to a reaction image from a campaign for World Down Syndrome Day in 2024, showing a woman wearing two high ponytails smiling as she orders a margarita. The image stems from a disability awareness campaign called "Assume That I Can," which promotes more freedoms and positive associations for people with Down syndrome. In February 2024, one X / Twitter user's decision to use the image as a reaction meme with the caption, "Just ordered a margarita," led to discussions and debates about whether using the image is ableist, with one camp seeing such memes and reactions images as patronizing or disrespectful and the other seeing such opinions as indicative of the kind of ideas the "Assume That I Can" campaign is trying to dispel.
Origin
On March 15th, 2024, the TikTok[1] page for the National Down Syndrome Society (@ndssorg) posted a video commemorating World Down Syndrome Day. The video depicted actor Madison Tevlin being denied an alcoholic drink, being coddled by her parents and being underestimated physically and mentally by her coach and teachers. She then launches into a campaign encouraging people to, "Assume that I can, so maybe I will," saying that people with Down syndrome should be given more freedoms and opportunities.
The video gathered over 28 million views and 6 million likes in three days (seen below).
@ndssorg Our negative assumptions about people with Down syndrome can lead us to treat them in such a way that these assumptions becomes reality. In sociology, this is called ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. 👎 Let’s try to reverse the perspective. By having positive assumptions about people with Down syndrome, we can give them more opportunities at school, in the workplace, in sports and in social life. And maybe these assumptions will eventually become a fulfilling reality. 🙌 #AssumeThatICan Join us this #WorldDownSyndromeDay in our efforts to #EndTheStereotypes by sharing this video! Head to the link in our bio for other ways that you can get involved in #WDSD24 ♬ original sound – National Down Syndrome Society
Spread
On March 15th, 2024, X[2] user @zaccccchg posted a screengrab of Madison Tevlin trying to order a margarita from the aforementioned video, writing, "Just ordered a margarita." The post gathered over 100,000 likes in a day (seen below, left).
The post gathered some backlash from other X[3] users, as seen in a post by @ScaredBisexual who wrote, "My take on this being a meme is ppl clearly aren’t doing it to treat her as an adult and stop infantilization. It’s clearly making fun of her disability and you have to jump through hoops to argue otherwise" (seen below, right).
This critical take on using the image of Madison Tevlin as a meme became the subject of debate, as seen in a March 16th, 2024, post by X user @Komaniecki_R,[4] which gathered over 120,000 likes in two days (seen below, left). On March 17th, X[5] user @computer_gay shared another post criticizing the use of the image as a reaction meme, writing, "people uncharitably interpreting every reaction image as an inherent mockery of the subject is so limiting and joyless," gathering over 6,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).
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