COLUMN ONE : Caught in a Delicate Balance : More advertisers are using disabled actors to sell their products. Disabled consumers applaud the chance to see people like themselves on-screen, but critics see potential for exploitation.

Halley Ewing would seem to be Madison Avenue’s idea of the perfect little girl.

She has a Colgate smile. Sky-blue eyes. A few friendly freckles. And when she runs, her carefully combed hair dances off her shoulders.

But that is not why the 8-year-old is starring in a national TV spot for Spray ‘N Wash’s Stain Stick. She was selected because she has Down’s syndrome--a genetic disorder that usually results in mental disability.

The ad, which began airing this month, features Halley doing things all children do. She plays with her friends. She draws a picture in class. She even helps with the laundry. “We use Stain Stick,” says her mom in the ad, “because the last place we need a challenge is in the laundry room.”

Increasingly, Madison Avenue is being challenged to present society as it really looks. That means featuring more disabled actors in advertising to attract a consumer population that includes about 43 million disabled Americans and about 100 million who are related to people with disabilities.

Levi Strauss ran the first such ad, a TV spot in 1984, showing a man popping a wheelie in a wheelchair. Nearly a decade later, dozens of major companies--from McDonald’s to Nordstrom--have followed suit.

This trend has forced the advertising industry to confront new, often delicate issues: How to find disabled actors? When to cast them? And--for advertisers, clients and the actors themselves--when does using disabled models cross the line into exploitation?

The Stain Stick commercial epitomizes the tricky nature of such matters. The ad has been lambasted by Advertising Age as “the most crassly contrived slice of life in advertising history.” However, the National Assn. for Down Syndrome and Halley’s mother praise it for promoting positive images.

A larger, more complex question also looms: Just how accepting is American society of commercials that feature the disabled?

“The spirit of the last 30 years--starting with the civil rights movement--has been for social change,” said Todd Gitlin, a UC Berkeley sociology professor. The triumphs of civil rights activists have encouraged others--including the disabled--to push for their rights, he said.

But the disabled face a much murkier form of prejudice--quiet exclusion. They are sometimes ignored to the point of becoming invisible. Indeed, casting disabled people in ads would not have been considered a generation ago. And while more marketers are considering it today, there still is a worry that such images will evoke fear--and scare off potential customers.

That notion, says one trends forecaster, is starting to die as Americans demand less flash and more reality in advertising. “Not every baby that is born is an Ivory Soap baby,” said Jane Fitzgibbon, director of the TrendSight division of the New York advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. “We are a society that increasingly wants to see reality--and not what Hollywood and the TV networks have set up as aspirational.”

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No one yet has hard numbers showing that advertising featuring the disabled helps or harms product sales. But there is one thing marketers know for sure: The disabled often like to buy from companies whose ads feature people like themselves.

“The way I look at it, all advertising is exploitative--no matter who appears in it,” said Anne Greaves, a 16-year-old Costa Mesa student who was born without legs and parts of her arms. “But if a company is willing to take a risk and use a handicapped person in their ads, I figure they’ll treat me better.”

Greaves, a junior at Mater Dei High School, is an avid horseback rider and swimmer, and when she is dressed in her Levi’s and Reeboks--and wearing her artificial legs--it is hard to tell that she is any different from her classmates.

She keeps a close eye on advertising. And when she sees a company using a disabled person in its ad, she is more likely to buy its products.

Some critics suggest that there are marketers that use disabled actors only to bolster corporate image, or even to shock viewers into watching their ads.

The casting of the disabled is infrequent enough that viewers are somewhat surprised when they see them, said Valerie Folkes, a USC marketing professor.

“You can be cynical and say that it’s just a ploy to attract attention to a low-involvement product,” Folkes said. “The fact is, children with disabilities tend to get more sympathy. You can see where it could be quite manipulative and cynical on the part of an advertiser.”

Some critics contend that ads using disabled people are ineffective at best--and grossly exploitative at worst. “It plays upon the (sympathetic) emotions of consumers and the vulnerabilities of the people in the ads,” said Walter A. Woods, a consumer psychologist and marketing consultant based in Carrollton, Ga. “I think it’s exploitative--period.”

Advertising Age reviewer Bob Garfield said the new Stain Stick ad is particularly offensive. “This spot isn’t about raising awareness,” he said. “This isn’t about inclusiveness. It’s about exploitation. It is: ‘My daughter is retarded. Buy Stain Stick.’ ”

But the National Assn. for Down Syndrome lauds the commercial, which has drawn special attention because it focuses on a disabled person, instead of showing the person among a group. “The more often that people with Down syndrome appear in ads, the fewer stares that other people with Down syndrome get when they go to the supermarket,” said Sheila Hebein, executive director of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based group.

Executives at DowBrands, which makes Stain Stick, say the ad is part of a larger campaign that shows how using the product can make life easier for busy people who do not have time to do laundry. “This is not being used to intentionally tug on the heartstrings,” said Tina Tranfaglia, brand manager for Spray ‘N Wash. “This is just a part of American life.”

Kay Ewing, who appears in the ad with her daughter, said she had been worried that it might look exploitative. “I was concerned she would be portrayed as someone to be pitied. But nothing in this commercial makes you think, ‘Oh, that poor child.’ ”

The Ewings had never appeared in a commercial--and had not even thought about it--until DowBrands found them through a New York casting firm, with the help of the National DownSyndrome Congress.

The ad agency, Henderson Advertising of Greenville, S.C., let Ewing rewrite parts of the commercial she did not like, including a line that mentioned Halley’s “special challenges.”

“I wanted her to be shown as a regular kid, because that’s what she is,” Ewing said.

Ad executives say the Stain Stick spot may open the way for more commercials featuring people like Halley. And ad agencies are increasingly asking casting agencies to help them find disabled people.

In fact, casting of the disabled has grown so much that one New York modeling agency, McDonald/Richards, has set up a division that represents 50 physically disabled models, most of whom are in wheelchairs or on crutches. A few are blind or deaf.

Back in 1988, Maureen Larkin tried to create a division for the disabled at the agency. But no clients were interested and the firm dropped the concept. Last year she tried again. This time clients--especially department stores--liked the idea. Larkin is now director of that division.

She continues to have problems, however, finding work for blind models. “Advertisers just aren’t accepting of that yet,” Larkin said. Many consumers fear blindness--and try to pretend it does not exist, ad executives say. Some advertisers also are reluctant to use blind actors--unless they are well known, such as musician Ray Charles--because blindness can be difficult to portray.

Perhaps no one is as attuned to the use of the disabled in advertising as Jacqueline Tellalian, a paraplegic entrepreneur who manages a dozen disabled models through her New York firm, Vesta Talent.

While Tellalian applauds the progress that some marketers have made, she sees room for improvement. “You never ever see a disabled person of color,” she said. “It seems that advertisers are concerned that they’d have too many minority issues going on at once.”

Also, she says, it is much easier to find print work--especially in catalogues--than television spots.

Tellalian represents Kitty Lunn, a former Broadway actress who slipped on an icy staircase and broke her back six years ago. Lunn, who is paralyzed from the hips down, earns much of her income from catalogues for department stores such as Macy’s and Dayton-Hudson. She is also chairwoman of the Performers With Disabilities Committee of the Actors Equity Assn., where she advocates hiring the disabled.

Lunn has encountered many of the stereotypes advertisers have about disabled actors.

She auditioned for an industrial film that a large software firm was making to show its employees how to conduct job interviews with disabled applicants. A casting director immediately turned her down. Why? Lunn, who had been in dozens of TV commercials before her injury, was told that she was “too attractive” to play the role of a disabled person.

“The image of women with disabilities is that they are unattractive and asexual,” Lunn said. “But a person in a wheelchair doesn’t have to wear orthopedic shoes and look like someone posing for a hospital ad.”

While Lunn has appeared in several dozen print ads, she has not been in a TV spot since her injury. She previously played a perky housewife in TV ads for everything from Skippy Peanut Butter to Lysol. But even with greater acceptance of the disabled, she said, “the world’s still not ready for a mom in a wheelchair.”

Last July her career took off when her manager linked her up with Macy’s. She has since appeared in a number of Macy’s print ads. And in just one year, Lunn said, the department store chain has greatly improved its use of disabled models.

Initially, she was always assigned to wear sweat shirts and sweat pants--as were most other disabled models. But for ads last Christmas, she was finally pictured in a dress.

At the same time, the ads now show her with groups of able-bodied people. And that is exactly what most disabled models want--to be shown as part of the mainstream.

Nordstrom, Target and Sears are also among the store chains that regularly use disabled models in print ads and catalogues.

Three years ago, a Target art director asked Robert Thacker, the chain’s marketing chief, why disabled models were not being used in the stores’ ads. “I didn’t have a good answer for him,” said Thacker, whose 9-year-old daughter was born without a left hand.

About every other week since, Target has featured disabled models in print ads. “I can’t say if you show someone in a wheelchair, your sales go up 30%,” said Thacker, “but I can say that our ads featuring disabled have performed equal to or better than our other ads.”

Perhaps no major American company has more widely used the disabled in TV ads than McDonald’s. “It is good business to do so,” said Susan Leick, the company’s creative director. She estimates about 10% of their customers are disabled.

In 1991, the fast-food king--which is also a large employer of the disabled--broadcast an ad featuring one of its own employees with Down’s syndrome.

Even so, McDonald’s has not escaped criticism. “We occasionally get letters from people who say they are uncomfortable seeing it,” Leick said. But McDonald’s is pressing ahead. “Our ad agencies have ongoing assignments to bring us concepts that feature the disabled,” Leick said.

That is all the disabled say they want: to be considered.

Lunn said she awaits the day when the use of disabled models in advertising is no longer news. “The biggest deal is when someone doesn’t make a big deal out of it,” she said. “We have a long, long way to go, but we’re getting there.”