Part 3 of 4
I’m a relatively attractive woman according to current cultural standards. Perhaps more weight than is socially acceptable, but overall, I’ve regularly received compliments on my physical appearance. And so, with this new body of mine, I provide a sort of cognitive dissonance to the nondisabled mind. As Ehlers (2015)1 expands:
“Indeed, perhaps the dissonance between the visual reproduction of norms of feminine beauty, on the one hand, and the absolute impossibility of fulfilling these norms (due to the absent breasts), on the other, make the image so startling—potentially attracting and repelling the viewer in one and the same moment.” (p. 337)
Most often, individuals going through cancer treatment are de-sexualized and infantilized. I know I had internalized this stereotype to the point where I had to counter my own internalized ableism actively, as my experience did not match it. When I wasn’t in acute recovery periods, I was absolutely having sex. Carefully, but still. Some treatments impact libido more severely than others, so I doubt my experience is universal. However, it was enough of a revelation to jolt me out of my ableist beliefs regarding breast cancer patients.
Ehlers (2015) captures this dichotomy between conventional beauty and “challenging the viewer to see beauty in unexpected places” (p. 340). Being somewhat more conventionally attractive allows me to turn on my chosen audiences in ways that can confuse them. How could they be attracted to a woman covered in scars, moving about in a power chair, constantly in pain?
At the same time, “these images expose the power relations implicit within designations of the beautiful: dominant beauty aesthetics regulate and regularize what can appear in the aesthetic field, and it is precisely our concept of beauty that subjugates images such as these, rendering the representation and witnessing of certain lives impossible in the broader aesthetic field” (p. 341)
Another observation I’ve made is that while I may confuse the nondisabled crowd in what to make of my body, among my crip community, I’ve noticed an increase in attractiveness to my scarred body. I believe there is an inherent identification with other crip and scarred bodies, demonstrating a deeply felt connection to the beauty of bodily dissonance.
Among my disabled peers, I’ve never felt sexier.
- Ehlers, Nadine. “The SCAR Project: Disability Aesthetics of Dis-Ease.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 9, no. 3 (2015): 331–47. https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.2015.26. ↩︎
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