In Laurie Clements Lambeth’s poem Symptoms, she compares the poetic speaker’s back, leg, and arm compression braces to a girdle and a corset. This comparison along with the speaker describing themselves as sporting a cane in a similar way one would describe carrying a purse are the presumed female presenting speaker trying to find a connection between their femininity and their disability. The speaker then goes on to say that if the clothes they were wearing were to fall, everyone would see their cellophane body. Their braces and their cane are their versions of the able bodied women fashion, but yet they must cover those up with societal fashion standards to hide their body because it is a disabled body which doesn’t fit the female image. Lambeth’s speaker can be seen as reclaiming their braces and cane as their own fashion and rejecting the fashion of able bodied women instead of longing for their fashion which strays away from the narrative of disabled people wishing they were able bodied or minded.
In Garland-Thomson’s piece on feminist theory and disability theory, she touches on the subjects of the disabled female body not being seen as something sexual or desirable and instead seen on something shameful or pitiful. Lambeth’s poem of the speaker having to cover up their braces and canes with fashion that was made with the intent for an able bodied woman to wear represents this because the need to cover up is directly related to the speaker feeling like they should be ashamed of their body instead of embracing it. This feeling of shame relates to Sheila Black’s poem,What You Mourn, and how this concept of self love and body acceptance is not meant for disabled bodies because disabled bodies are things that need to be fixed or covered up.
Kafer’s Imagined Future really goes in depth on how society sees disabled people as people who long for an able bodied or minded life when that is not the case for many disabled people especially since the rise of disability advocacy and studies. Able bodied and minded people think of disability developing in their lifetime either to them or a loved one as a tragedy, so Kafer states that this future without disability is their imagined future. It is a lovely, perfect future because disabled people are excluded from it. This ideology shows how disability is something to be ashamed of and if someone can “fix” their disability they should. A disabled person such as Lambeth’s speaker, in an able bodied mindset, should have no problem with hiding their disability because it makes this imagined future seem more possible when this imagined future is not something disabled people want in the first place.
Lambeth’s speaker refers to their cane as something they sport, not something that burdens them and wish to get rid of. Their braces are like corsets and girdles, but the rest of the world sees it as a cellophane. They describe clothes like skirts and sleeves with a negative inflict that they don’t use when describing their braces and canes because the majority of people seeing a disabled body as something that needs negative inflict are able bodied people. The speaker says that the dresses and the sheets of their bed are meant to bind them and it is an interesting comparison because their compression braces are binding them, but not in the way the clothes and sheets do. The clothes they are forced to wear is this societal binding to an image of a disabled person forced to act like they aren’t disabled while the compression braces are physically binding their muscles, but it does not hold them back like the able bodied clothes do.
Word Count: 633 I pledge
