What It’s Like to Be a Disabled Model in the Fashion Industry
I am 26 years old and I have cerebral palsy. I am also a writer, journalist, activist, and I travel around the world speaking about disability and representation. But my humanity can sometimes take a back seat to the eyes of strangers who are often either agitated by my mere presence or feel entitled to answers about my disability as if it is my only trait. I experience this every time I enter public spaces. The eyes on me are unforgiving; some people even going as far as making snide remarks when I pass by. In stores, I sometimes feel like I am at a press conference. People feel they have the right to either assume that I was in some mysterious car accident (I wasn’t) or to walk up to me and ask questions about my body.
No one likes to be judged unfairly. It is dehumanizing and traumatizing. Feeling like people are looking at you or judging you is one of the most fraught experiences when you are a person with a disability. 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. 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. This makes the rise of models with disabilities revolutionary, calling into question an acceptable form of discrimination in the industry. 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.
For 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.
While the fashion industry has been reluctant to include a full range of diverse bodies, what any smart business is responsive to is demand. In 2013, when Bethann Hardison, Iman, and Naomi Campbell demanded more inclusion of black models as a part of the Diversity Coalition, they named names. Calvin Klein was one of the designers named, and five years later, the brand has added black models to their fall 2018 ad campaign. This is a small step, but a step nonetheless in the right direction. Additionally, with campaigns like #BlackModelsMatter that launched in 2015 (the phrase was seen on model Ashley Chew’s tote bag in 2015), this year the industry has seen its most racially diverse Fashion Week in history with the spring 2018 shows.
The recent push for inclusion aside, the fashion industry has all but shut out disabled models and consumers save for a few special occasions. Chelsea’s mother, Lisa, recalls being rejected when they first started looking for modeling agencies for Chelsea. “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. “There wasn’t anyone who looked like me in any magazines or mainstream media, TV, or anything. It excluded me from something that I was very passionate about. It was definitely confusing because I knew my worth in the world. I knew that there’s [so many] people out there like me, but we are never included in any conversations.”
Disabled people and disabled models are still left out of most campaign ads and runway shows. 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. The erasure can have an impact on your mental health.
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