Why '˜wobbly' actress Francesca is celebrating difference and disability

Martinez tells the story of coming to terms with her identity as a ‘wobbly lady’, as she likes to call herself - finally making peace with her identity in a world that basically demands we become riddled with insecurity and obsessed by appearance and acquisition in order to keep the consumerist-capitalist orthodoxy alive.

Indeed, if we stopped believing we needed to change but instead decided to be truly accepting of ourselves as we really are, would we need therapists to deal with our gargantuan neuroses, wardrobes of over-priced shoes, frantic exercise classes, botox, and industrial quantities of make-up? If we were content would we be such zealous consumers? And just what is ‘normal’ anyway? Aren’t we all unique, with our own quirks, characteristics and foibles?

“We face constant pressure in our culture to be normal,” says Francesca, whose 2015 memoir charts her odyssey towards self-acceptance. “I think whoever you are and whatever label you have there are really corrosive and toxic pressures on us to conform and to be a certain way. It’s not healthy and it creates a lot of suffering.

“Our culture really breeds self-loathing and really makes people incredibly insecure. It makes us all feel that we’re not good enough. It’s built on aspiration and consumerism and it really thrives on our insecurity. If we really started to like ourselves consumerism just wouldn’t work in the same way. I do think that self-love is an act of civil disobedience because it means you are not going to settle for being an insecure consumer.”

Growing up with a disability, Francesca had a particularly difficult journey towards self-love which she has explored with great success both in her stand-up comedy and in her writing, both of which have garnered much praise.

“Obviously in my life I’ve been labelled as abnormal because I have cerebral palsy. When I was a child I felt very happy, very normal and I had no idea that I was different. When I went to high school I reached the difficult teenage years. I realised I was perceived as disabled for the first time. It was a real shock to me to find out that I was perceived differently. I came to question society’s values and labels.

“I was bullied and I was very isolated, I didn’t have any friends. I was very lonely and I felt very out of place. When I left secondary school I was a shadow of the girl I was when I went in.

“Grange Hill put me into a very positive and fun environment and it did really help but I still felt damaged by my high school experience and I really, really wished that I was normal.”

But overtime, as she began to reject society’s labels and attitudes to disability, Francesca began to realise that she wasn’t abnormal at all, she was simply Francesca, born as she was supposed to be.

“I decided to write a book because I wanted to share that journey of coming to accept my disability and I wanted to help other people do the same. I learned to stop comparing myself to other people and to be content with simply being myself. I wasn’t faulty and broken - I was me. That realisation really changed my life.”

Initially Francesca performed What the **** Is Normal? as a stand-up show which she toured all over the world to rave reviews before sitting down to write her story of journeying towards self-acceptance in book form.

“What was really striking when I was performing the show was that people who were young, able-bodied and beautiful would come up to me afterwards and tell me how much they felt abnormal and inadequate and slowly I realised our culture really breeds self-loathing and makes us all feel that we’re not good enough.”

Francesca continues: “We only get one life and I think it’s so sad that so many people spend their time not liking themselves, feeling inadequate and being compelled to compare themselves to people who are described as beautiful according to certain standards. It’s all so disempowering.”

Martinez hopes that her book imparts a liberating message and looks forward to discussing this with her Belfast audience.

“Everyone has the power to say ‘I’m not going to buy into that toxic value system. I’m not going to feel that I’m not enough. I’m going to have my own sense of self-worth and I’m going to enjoy the life that I’ve been given.’ You don’t have to lose weight or get a face-lift to feel better, you just have to accept yourself as you are and that is liberation.”

Francesca Martinez, What the **** Is Normal?, Crescent Arts Centre, tonight (June 8), as part of the Belfast Book Festival. Visit www.belfastbookfestival.com.