man it's been a hot minute since i rambled about the social roles of fashion who wants to hear a morgan rant

TAKING THAT AS A YES so i'm gonna talk rq about how i bought pretty accessories for my accessibility aids and why that was a vital purchase to make for my long term survival.

Fashion is a tool of soft social power. The way we dress, the accessories we have can signal status, class position, & base humanity to the people around us. There are fashion historians for a reason.

In my personal context, I often have to use fashion as a weapon, or else it's one that gets turned against me. Dressing up or down to fit the context of others expectations can influence whether I get support that I need or not.

Visiting the benefits office is always a pretty humiliating experience, no matter what landmass i'm on. Here, the benefits office is placed on a busy road. Across the road and along it at a distance away from the social undesirables are fancy eateries.

Every time I go to the benefits office I feel the stares of the comparatively well off burning into my back in the time it takes me to get from the car to the doors. It sucks a lot and makes me want to die, but anyway. You have to dress for the benefits office.

There are expectations, failing to meet them in either direction can be deadly. If I'm going to apply for a payment while I have zero income, I have to look like shit. If I look too put together, the odds of getting help dramatically shoot down. Performative poverty is required.

These are unwritten rules that I had to learn through extremely painful trial and error.
Now, once you've *got* a benefit, the fashion rules can change, depending on why you have to go in.

If you're just going in for three minutes to drop off a medical certificate - putting in more work and wearing nicer clothes will help me stand out and get help sooner, vital on bad days where I can't stand for too long but it's just one trip so i didn't bring the walker.

the fact that my bad days are the ones where it's hardest for me to give a single shit about how my meat looks to other people make this a lot crueler, but the alternative is waiting half an hour with shaking legs until I'll need to rest for two days to recover.

These are biases that I don't know if most people are aware that they have, but that spring out all the time - it's practically a competitive sport on this hellsite to mock people wearing ill fitting or worn clothes, for instance.

a lot of accessibility and mobility aids are only available with grey plastic handles and silver brushed steel. They look like medical devices, which they are, but they're ugly. They don't have to be ugly, but they are. Thankfully, this is increasingly changing.

how my accessibility and mobility aids *look* are vital. Their appearance dramatically, like, incredibly dramatically, impacts how other people look at me on the rare occasions I go out in public. Because by going outside with them I'm already in breach of social conventions.

Cause like, here's the thing: societies that i've lived in generally doesn't like to actually perceive disabled people, but have a strict set of conventions for what the disabled people they see are allowed to look like.

i have multiple strikes against me.
- i'm young
- my disabilities are invisible, right up until the moment they're not. this one is like five strikes in one.
- i'm tall
- i have a figure which is regarded as 'desireable woman' by a lot of people, even if they don't admit it

if my mobility aids look like strictly medical devices, i am interrogated regularly, and with extreme hostility. abled people fall over themselves to come over and tell me that i'm throwing my life away and just need to try harder. people stare, and the stares are cruel.

it's very frightening, and makes me never want to go outside. i'm agoraphobic for many reasons, and this is a big part of it. however, dressing up and having stylish mobility aids drastically alters how i'm perceived. people believe i actually need them, if they're fancy.

it's like an unconscious switch if flipped that becomes "they wouldn't spend money on getting pretty ones unless they ACTUALLY needed them." I still get interrogated, but it's about what my conditions are, rather than whether i need the mobility aids at all.

which, when you're a person who has had your mobility aids taken away from you because of an abled persons perceptions of whether you "actually" need them or not, that is a critical difference.

So, I got my wheelchair. It's black and silver. It looks like a piece of medical equipment - because it is one. Which is why I immediately ordered stickers for it, a blanket, spikes for the handles, why I went with a set of gloves that were a little less breathable, but cute.

I have ordered an outfit specifically to wear in my chair, the first new clothes I've brought myself in ages, because once you're in a wheelchair people stop noticing you unless they have a problem with you, or you stand out. This is like, a known, documented, dangerous thing.

Groups of people will just, talk over your head, people will walk into you, pass things over your head, you become furniture. If they don't like, try to abduct you, or just start pushing your chair, which is why my first purchase was spiked handle covers.

pretty mobility aids are vital in situations where i need to exist in public and attempt to participate as a member of society. I still need to dress down for things like benefit and doctors appointments (unless I'm trying to get a referral, then dressing up is better), however.

if i look good, and stand out, it directly increases the odds that people will consider me worth helping if i have trouble.
if i'm wearing a tattered sweatshirt and baggy pants, people pay less attention than if i'm wearing something pretty.

bc if someone *does* try to abduct me, which given all of my experiences has p high odds of happening at some point, i need to look like someone worth saving, and the way to signal that is with fashion.
which is fucked up! but there we go.

the more marginalized you are the more this compounds, too. there's a lot of nuance to the social politics of fashion and nailing the balance between looking good enough to pay attention too and view as a full human or being mocked in turn for trying too hard.

this is homework for abled people who have read this thread: next time you go outside, try to perceive the disabled people existing around you. don't stare at us, just notice that we exist. then think about your first impressions of them and dissect what they were based on.