Disabled bodies are beautiful

On Aariana Rose Philip at the Met Gala and the power of representation

Hello,

Sometimes you didn’t know you needed something until you got it.

For me, this week, the thing I needed was to see Aariana Rose Philip at the Met Gala.

Look at her. Isn’t she stunning?

Much is said about disability representation - why it’s important, whether it’s getting better, what we can do about it. Much less is said about the type of representation we get which, let’s be honest, is dominated by white, straight, conventionally attractive people whose bodies still work in more-or-less expected ways. It’s not that these people don’t deserve representation or that they aren’t doing good work for the whole community; it’s just that this is rather limited, when the community is incredibly diverse.

And then there’s Aariana.

Black, trans, a powerchair user whose body twists and moves and sits in ways society has always deemed unacceptable.

There she is. Confident. Smiling. Not hiding her differences but luxuriating in them.

What a moment. For me - a queer disabled woman in another altogether ‘unacceptable’ body. And for all of us.

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And there’s something else, too: she’s on fashion’s biggest runway.

Her body isn’t being celebrated for its pain or its struggle or its resilience, the only things disabled bodies are supposed to be praised for. It’s being celebrated for its undeniable beauty.

Not in spite of her disability. Not because of it. Just with it - it’s a part of her, and part of what makes her beautiful.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. Not for a powerchair user. Not for someone who sits differently in their chair. Not for someone whose arms are coiled up in the air.

Not for a body I instinctively recognise as like mine.

It turns out that maybe I needed to see that.

We’re all a work-in-progress, and for all I’ve written about how self-acceptance and embracing my queerness and being surrounded by community have reshaped my relationship to my body and made it finally feel like mine, for all the genuine love I have for it, it remains difficult, sometimes, to see its beauty.

But when I saw the photos of Aariana on the Met Gala carpet, a quiet little voice appeared in my head. “She’s so beautiful,’ it whispered, “maybe I can be, too.”

In fact, I think maybe all disabled bodies are.

And that’s the power of representation.

With love,
Lucy