A flippant use of alliteration to name a recent blog post brought about a series of blog posts.
Todays post is about STARES! We are curious creatures, and we love to be nosey! When does curiosity stop, and rudeness kick in? As an overweight woman I have had to put up with my fair share of staring and the verbal abuse that usually follows, but now as a disabled overweight woman the stares have intensified. I won’t even mention the abuse.
I hope from this blog I can raise awareness and help bring some normalisation to seeing disabled people living their best lives.
Why do we stare? Out of curiosity? Relief? – the “thank God I’m not in a wheelchair” attitude and therefor seeing a wheelchair as a bad thing. Lack of representation? If we only ever surround ourselves with clones, we will never know any difference. Fear? How do I interact with a disabled person, what should I say? What if I end up in a wheelchair? The excuses for staring are simply that, excuses.
From a personal perspective, accepting that my disability was now so bad that I had to use a wheelchair was frightening. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t be like everyone else, I couldn’t walk about pain free and found the slightest uneven surface caused me pain for hours. I already encountered verbal abuse from complete strangers regarding my weight and I was concerned that this would just continue once I started using a wheelchair. I had further disabled myself by denying that I was disabled in the first place.
Once I had accepted that the time had come to expand my world and get my own set of wheels, I felt liberated and was excited to get out there and enjoy myself.
I wasn’t prepared for the level of staring I would encounter. Children I can understand as the representation of wheelchair users is non-existent. Adults and even other disabled people on the other hand was quite shocking! It really upset me that all those staring had already decided what my disability was, and they had the best solution for me and would offer their unsolicited advice freely.
I have some unsolicited advice for you all, look beyond the wheelchair and engage with the person within, you never know who you are dealing with and what they are going through. I do things and wear outlandish clothing to give people something to stare at. I wear Christmas leggings all year round, these end up being great ice breakers and get good natured conversations started. I have also discovered the art of decorating my chair.
Fairy lights, wheel lights, tinsel. Adding hub caps to my wheels to make them look like Pokeballs. I will wear ridiculously high heeled shoes or outrageous patterned trainers or go as far to wear no shoes at all! If people are going to stare at me, I will give them a reason to stare!
If you do find yourself staring at a wheelchair user, try to be kind. Compliment their hair, clothes, shoes, at least acknowledge them as a person. Don’t ask why they are in the chair. Just. Don’t. If they have a companion with them, don’t talk over the chair user, or ignore them. And never, ever lean on an occupied wheelchair, ever! This simple action invades personal space, can make someone feel even more vulnerable. The chair is a method of getting around, the persons legs as it were. How would you like it if an acquaintance or worse a stranger stands close to you and holds onto your waist or thigh while having a conversation with person stood next to you?
If you have been a “starer” in the past and want to change your behaviour, I would love it if you became an ally or an advocate for the disabled community. We are all just one slip or accident away from being disabled after all. Accessibility should be at the front of everyone’s thoughts.
I would suggest you check out some pretty fine wheelchair users online, make connections, start sharing their content and find out what more can be done in a wheelchair these days.
My suggestions would be Ruth Madeley (Doctor Who), Gaby (@gaby_cosplay on Instagram) there are no disabled Disney princesses, so she cosplays as them for the representation, Eliza Rain (@disabled_eliza on Instagram) dyes their hair in rainbow colours and wears bright clothing so that people stare in the good way.
Nick Wilson, the disabled adventurer on linked in. A veteran and accessibility advocate, and a fearless adventurer. Isaac Harvey MBE, another chair user I follow on LI, content creator.
My youngest daughter, who has been helping with the social media accounts these last few weeks wanted me to add this as the last paragraph of this blog post. When I read the bullet-points she had suggested, they made me laugh out loud. I will post them here, exactly as she emailed them to me.
- Take aways!
- Disabled people r cool
- Bow down to us u mortals!
- (I am joking) the takeaway is that you should look beyond the wheelchair. Don’t ignore it, but remember there’s a person in it too, a person with ideals, a personality, a job, a life, hobbies, interests etc. and they just want to be treated like a human just like anybody else.
In context, my daughter is an active 19-year-old university musical theatre student, trying to navigate life with arthritis. Some days she can run, jump, and dance like the best of them, other days she can hardly put one foot in front of the other. She has already had to face her fair share of stares and comments.
So, from me, if you take anything away from this blog post is this, you never know what someone is going through, just be kind in all situations.
