Skiing Microcosm

With its overpriced lodge food, expensive hotels, and increased commercialization, skiing is a notoriously elitist sport, a luxurious activity that can be enjoyed only by a wealthy few. However, the normalcy ideology of human ability, which draws a division between normal people and disabled people and therefore is integral in maintaining the social caste system in daily life, further restricts how many can interact with the sport. By examining the skiing community, one can understand how this ideology functions: there are normal skiers and disabled skiers, who range from poor skiers to people who cannot ski for a variety of reasons. Further complicating this caste system are the professional skiers, the ones who appear to have superhuman skiing abilities. Interactions between and perceptions of these distinct social classes are responsible for both overt and implicit

Accordingly, the skiing community is an excellent microcosm for contemporary society. It exhibits discriminatory practices fueled by a lack of empathy towards lower-class or different skiers, a theme which is increasingly common in other aspects of society, most notably with race and gender relations. Therefore, the normalcy ideology could be a useful vehicle for analyzing class systems in different societies, providing scholars and politicians with another tool to understand discrimination and inter-class relations. Moreover, these intrinsic flaws and divisions generated by the normalcy ideology have extremely harrowing implications for all of society, ranging from diminished empathy to depleted innovation and the possibility of intellectual and technical stagnation. In conclusion, the normalcy ideology will continue to incubate and rationalize the detrimental qualities of discrimination and prejudice as a result of its inherent caste