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'#DisabledAndCute' hashtag celebrating body positivity and disability goes viral

A woman's "cute" selfies have started a social media movement for body positivity and disability.

Keah Brown, a 25-year-old journalist and disability advocate who has cerebral palsy, tweeted some pictures of herself last week.

"I want to shoutout my Disabled [sic] brothers, sisters, & non-binary folks!" Brown tweeted, encouraging her followers to join in and "share [their] favourite pictures, too".

And, boy, did they join in.

Using the hashtag "#disabledandcute" Twitter users with disabilities have shared their sassiest pictures with the Internet, as well as their frustrations with society's perceptions of disability.

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"There is a common misconception that disabled people are not attractive," Brown told Cosmopolitan, after the hashtag went viral. "We are often seen as undesirable and broken."

Keah Brown is a well-known disability advocate in online circles. Her witty personal essays have been published in Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter and on ESPN.

In an interview with Amy Poehler's Smart Girls last year, Brown expressed her frustration with portrayals of disability in Hollywood.

"There's this tendency to showcase all these disabilities as a white guy in a wheelchair," she said. "That's not anywhere near what all disability is, there's not enough representation of people of colour with disabilities period. And then when they do cast [for these parts] these actors often aren't disabled."

Fairfax Media