Her favorite? The very first one, bought from Alleles, in part because of the sentimental value and also the regal autumn gold and maroon colors because fall is her favorite season. Mama Cax has always loved fashion, but that love blossomed when she started dressing up her prosthetic leg, choosing different colors and covers for it. The erasure can have an impact on your mental health. This lack of representation has implications: When you go so long without seeing yourself it is easy to interpret that lack of representation to mean you’re ugly and unworthy, that you deserve to be invisible or even worse, are grotesque. I knew that there's people out there like me, but we are never included in any conversations.” Representation Mattersĭisabled people and disabled models are still left out of most campaign ads and runway shows. It was definitely confusing because I knew my worth in the world. It excluded me from something that I was very passionate about. “There wasn't anyone who looked like me in any magazines or mainstream media, TV, or anything. “We contacted all sorts of agencies in San Francisco and L.A., and every one of them told us that there's no market for a model with a disability.” Growing up, Jillian remembers never seeing disabled models in fashion or entertainment. Chelsea’s mother, Lisa, recalls being rejected when they first started looking for modeling agencies for Chelsea. The recent push for inclusion aside, the fashion industry has all but shut out disabled models and consumers save for a few special occasions. Campaigns such as Aerie’s most recent, featuring disabled models, disrupt existing visions of beauty and make space to both celebrate and market to a wider array of bodies.įor Jillian, Chelsea, and Mama Cax, the more their stars rise, the more they are in front of judgmental eyes as they reach a wider audience and an industry that doesn’t quite know what to do with the disabled celebrity. This makes the rise of models with disabilities revolutionary, calling into question an acceptable form of discrimination in the industry. Modeling is predicated on a traditional sense of ability: Models have bodies that are considered to be aspirational, and they strut down the runway as though they are giving an ode to able-bodied walking. So what do you do when your job is to have people look at you? Chelsea Werner, a gymnast and model with Down syndrome Jillian Mercado, a model with spastic muscular dystrophy and Mama Cax, a blogger, model, amputee, and disability advocate, all know this experience firsthand. When you are a person with a disability, feeling like people are looking at you or judging you is one of the most fraught experiences.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |