This time, she’s in ‘CiF’, giving more credence to the idea that it deals mainly in #firstworldproblems:
Common social perceptions about people with disabilities mean that nondisabled people are perennially surprised by the fact that, gosh, we really are just like them.Are we? Gosh! I didn’t know that was what I was expected to feel!
One area where that plays out in really frustrating ways is when it comes to fashion for people with physical disabilities. Or, should I say, the lack thereof, because there are almost no designers focusing specifically on designing clothes for people using wheelchairs and other mobility devices, or people with disabilities that may affect limb length and body structure.So, hop to it, love! Here you are – niche marketing! With a little bit of luck and talent you could make a fortune, surely?
Oh, no, wait. She isn’t wondering why no-one has cornered the market yet, and urging them to do so. She’s just whinging and whining and assuming the reasons why no such niche market exists:
Being fashionable is even more of an uphill battle, because fashion doesn't include you and doesn't want to include you, even though your body should present an interesting challenge to designers. People interested in the craft and construction of clothing should be intrigued by non-normative bodies and the potential they offer, instead of turning up their noses at the very idea and suggesting that people with physical disabilities aren't even worthy to wear their products.Has any fashion designer actually said that? I can’t believe, if they had, she wouldn’t have provided a link.
Oh, and you know who else couture fashion doesn’t include, sweetie? About 75% of the rest of the population.
You aren’t special here, far from it!
I want to live in a world where wheelchair users roll the runway along with ambulatory models, where amputees strut alongside people with other kinds of physical disabilities, and where it's not a stunt, but a genuine integration into the fashion community. I'd like to see physical disabilities represented in couture because so many people are disabled, and because at least some of them want to be involved in fashion and couture, and are passionate about garments, and are forced to cobble together their own fashion because nothing out there fits them.Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want a pony.
Here we go again: I want everyone else to spend their time and money pleasing me!
ReplyDeleteAs Julia says, if you think there is the market, roll your sleeves up.
The idiot clearly can't hold a coherent argument
ReplyDeleteFirst she says: "we['disabled'] really are just like them['non-disabled]"
Then in the next sentence she immediately proves herself wrong by saying: "..there are almost no designers focusing specifically on designing clothes for people using wheelchairs and other mobility devices.."
If all her disabled chums are just like non-disabled people, why on earth do they want special treatment from fashion designers? Aren't they just like their non-disabled chums?
Rhetorical I know, and I can sorta see her basic point - she just can't put it across without frothing at the mouth, contradicting her poor self, and lots and lots of special pleading.
Julia,
ReplyDelete'...hop to it'.
LOL.
Bunny
ReplyDeleteAs Julia says this is a clearly first world issue, people who are disabled in other parts of the globe have to thinks about the concept of food, shelter and not starving to death. This bloody woman thinks that disability rights means people design clothes for wheel chair users.
When the economy really tanks, she can then join her disable sisters in thinking about the findamentals such as food, water and shelter.
There may well be no fashion items for the disabled, but the fashion industry is only interested in marketing to the size 8-12 woman. I mean they must be. There's absolutely no way that lycra leggings were ever intended to be worn by some of the land whales I've seen wearing them. Like shoving cottage cheese into a sack.
ReplyDeleteI clicked a few links to her own sites and see that she seems to render her name in lower case. I haven't the stomach to investigate further but suspect that this is deeply significant (at least in her what-passes-for-a-mind).
ReplyDeleteI've come across this a few times: it usually means that the writer feels she is regarded as insignificant as a person of gender by the hegemonic phallocentric military-industrial complex. Or something. (Not to mention that she has been marinating in self-pity since adolescence.)
Wot PJH said....
ReplyDeleteClothes for amputees? What? A pair of pant?
ReplyDeleteI think we need to recall the fact that fashion models at the top of the profession are known as "catwalk models".
ReplyDeleteWhile the casual offensiveness to wheelchair users is clear, nothing is said about the massive tragedy of how this terminology is perceived as exclusionary by people with feline allergy.
And yet the Government still won't fund workers to campaign about it. Truly Cameron's Britain is as bad as Nazi Germany.
Of course, no one-legged models have ever strutted the catwalk, then hypothetically (as they have never existed, obviously) married an ex-Beatle before becoming hated due to the divorce...
ReplyDeleteI assume Ms Smith has failed to notice these things are possible. And that the major problem for disabled potential models is exactly the same as for most other people - the body shape for modelling is for some reason so unusual as to be less common than many disabilities...
XX almost no designers focusing specifically on designing clothes for people using wheelchairs and other mobility devices, or people with disabilities that may affect limb length and body structure.XX
ReplyDeleteArmless T-Shirts, fingerless gloves, footless tights, what more do they want?
"...what more do they want?"
ReplyDeleteAttention.
"I want to live in a world where... (paste in current ishoo here)"
ReplyDeleteYep, there is no end to the wanting, is there? A wanting that comes in all shapes and sizes and can (no pun intended) be wheeled out to suit nay occasion.
In fact., you could say that the "wanting world where" is really fashionable.
Furor Teutonicus: ... what more do they want?
ReplyDeleteCulling.
Perhaps someone should have directed the author towards Aimee Mullins wiki page
ReplyDelete... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Mullins
"Here we go again: I want everyone else to spend their time and money pleasing me!"
ReplyDeleteYup, she's a professional whinger. I wonder if CiF paid her for this drivel?
"When the economy really tanks, she can then join her disable sisters in thinking about the findamentals such as food, water and shelter."
I get the feeling she'll be totally unprepared for that.
"Of course, no one-legged models have ever strutted the catwalk, then hypothetically (as they have never existed, obviously) married an ex-Beatle before becoming hated due to the divorce..."
Yes, but she's probably not the best example to use, being a total fruitca..
Oh, then again!
"Perhaps someone should have directed the author towards Aimee Mullins wiki page "
She doesn't want to do any hard work - no research please, I'm disabled!