Flutterfly Invasion - International Day of Women

9th March 2012

International Day of Women - and me.

As a woman with a disability, I want to be sexy. I want somebody to look at my spazzing, contorted, gimpy body, and go “Wow, that’s hot.” I don’t want to be confined to devotees, who are specifically turned on by bodies like mine. I don’t want my “special” class of people who think I’m sexy. I want you to think I’m sexy.

Yeah, you, that Joe-schmo reading this, passing me on the street, watching me roll through campus with my head held high. I want YOU to think I’m sexy. I want you to put me on par with all those beautiful women in the magazines and the newspapers, those skinny, able, beautiful women. I want you to think I’m just as sexy as they are. I want equality of sexiness.

I don’t want you to only think of those stereotypical disabled women as beautiful and sexy. I want you to think I’M beautiful. Me and my fellow “gross” crip women. Those of whose bodies squirm and spaz, drool and slur, I want you to think we’re beautiful. I am tired of not fitting the stereotype. I’m sorry I’m not your rail-thin, long legged disabled girl, pushing herself around the world in a sleek and sporty manual wheelchair. Wait, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry that my disability is complicated, that I can’t sit up straight, and that my hands don’t work either. I’m not sorry that I boggle you, because I walk one minute and roll the next. I’m not sorry that I don’t fit into your pre-concieved notions of what a beautiful disabled woman looks like.

I’m not sorry that I don’t want to be that girl. I don’t want to be that girl who struts around with her makeup and her high heels and her big boobs. I don’t even want to be that girl who you might think is sexy, because the only thing different about her is that she’s sitting down. I want you to think I’m beautiful - not in spite of my disability, not even because of it - but with it and all the other things that make me, me. I want you to think I’m beautiful, and maybe, ask me on a date. Get to know me. And then you will realize - hopefully - that I am beautiful, inside and out.

I do beauty in my own way. If you don’t think I’m beautiful, fine, that’s your prerogative. But don’t cast me aside before you even really look at me. Put aside the images of beauty that creep inside your head, the ones the media shoves down your throat. Look at me objectively, and think for yourself. If, after all that, I’m not your thing, then that’s fine. But think about what you want in a woman, what you think is beautiful - and then give me a look. I just might surprise you.

Tagged: disability body image sexuality women gender