New Show ‘Push Girls’ Breaks Wheelchair Boundaries, Draws Critics [VIDEO]

Based around the lives of four beautiful women, the new show “Push Girls” has aimed to chronicle the activities of these delightful ladies on a daily basis. The most interesting part however is that all four of these women are paralyzed from the neck or waist down.

Premiering on the Sundance Channel this past Monday, “Push Girls” hoped to shatter the stereotypes and negative notions surrounding the lives of people with a paralytic disability.

“Plenty of people have no idea what it’s like to spend the day in the life of someone with a disability, let alone a spinal cord injury,” said Tiphany Adams, 29, who was paralyzed in an awful car accident in 2000.

“How do we get in and out of a car? How do we go to the bathroom. How do we go grocery shopping? How do we get in the shower? How do we get dressed? I thought it was a brilliant idea for the world to see that,” she said.

Show creator Gay Rosenthal simply said “I wanted to do a show about people in wheelchairs. Then going out to find them, the girls came first”.

When asked about the ‘educating’ of the audience in regards to the normalities of everyday life for these women, Rosenthal says that you will see it in the very first episode.

“We don’t like to call it educational. We call it the little “L.” [As in learning]” says Rosenthal.

“The show is all about what’s going on in their lives. Everyone has their goals that they want to accomplish. Auti [Angel, a professional dancer] is trying to have a baby in her forties, and that is so relatable. Angela was married to Dustin [Nguyen, who starred on TV’s “21 Jump Street”] for 10 years. He was with her before the accident and now they’re separated for the first time ever.”

Adding, “We have an episode where they’re all skiing. The show is a balance between what’s going on in their lives and how they get by.”

When asked if there have been any critics that have claimed that the show is exploiting these young woman, Rosenthal had this to say:

Actually the opposite. I feel I’ve been recognized for doing it right. In the beginning, before “Little People,” some critics said it was going to be a gawk fest and it was exploitative. But I said, “just watch it.” The characters are the story. Sure, there’s a gawk factor, but that’s just because the shows present people who are different. The shows need to be entertaining, and they need complexity. But they can do all those things at the same time.

“Push Girls” premiered this past Monday on the Sundance Channel with rerun follow ups on a daily basis.

Do you feel that the new show “Push Girls” is a good way to show people what it’s like for a paralyzed person to live day to day?

Or do you feel that the show is exploiting these young women?