As a woman with disability, living in an able-bodied world often means having to comply to a lot of expectations and norms set by the society. My younger self understood beauty under very fixed criterions, as if there were some kinds of rules in order to fit into the category of beauty. The way I saw it, it was tall, fair, thin, non-disabled, etc = beautiful. Truth be told, for many years I did try to comply to that. Be like everyone else. Failure to which gave me this huge inferiority complex for myself.
The onset of teenage came with lots of acne, Weight issues and so much more. For the longest time I would describe myself as anything but beautiful and if anyone did call me that I’d think of it as a pity compliment. Accepting compliments became almost impossible for me. As much as I wanted to be like the rest of girls of my class somewhere deep down, I knew that it would never really happen no matter how hard I tried. ‘Pretty’, ‘Hot’, ‘Beautiful’ were words I just couldn’t associate myself with no matter what anyone said. Mobility aids were supposed to be the opposite of beautiful after all.
To make myself fit into these standards of beauty, I created unrealistic goals for myself. This was led with unreal beauty hacks, crazy diets and what not. I’d sometimes also wish for Anne Hathaway Princess Diaries magic makeover that would turn my life around. That didn’t happen of course, so the only solution I could think of was to isolate myself, to just try and accept myself as an ugly person and often accept less than what I truly deserve.
#HotDisabledSummer for me, means reclaiming definitions of beauty as per my norms, that means getting rid of all the ‘if and only if’ conditions surrounded around definition of beauty,. For me, it means taking charge of my own autonomy as to what I want to consider beautiful. It means owning up to myself for the way that I am. For me, this means being confident in my true self. Most importantly, for me this losing the shame around my mobility aid that supposedly got in the way of me being beautiful. It means I am not beautiful ‘despite’ my disability, It means I am beautiful EXACTLY the way I am. With or without my disability.
