My Wheelchair Glamour Shoot

As a disabled woman, society has always told me I’m not sexy. I decided to prove them all wrong.

Photos by Craig Hanson

On the day of the shoot, I am ready. I’ve been watching what I eat and exercising for the first time since I was 16. I’ve been spending so many hours on Pinterest that I found a bodysuit so perfect for me that we share the same name. By the time I get to the studio space in Manhattan, I have already survived a frantic morning searching for my wallet, and a Starbucks so crowded I had to leave without my order. I am minus a cake pop, but ready to execute my vision. By afternoon, I’m in a sparkling pink sequin dress. As I transfer into the white wooden chair I’ll be posing in, I cut my new, barely healed tattoo on the foot tread of my wheelchair. It draws blood that will not stop pouring down my leg. I curse at my chair and cringe thinking about the touchup I’ll have to endure and the extra work the photographer will have to do to edit out the gash. That fucking chair. Does it have to make everything difficult? I hate that chair, but I know it needs to be in some of…