Does this Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat?

by Dean Kramer
July, 2006

I almost always use a manual wheelchair when I go out. I can still walk, but my gait is awful and my balance poor. When walking I risk a fall even with two canes or a walker. Furthermore, I move extremely slowly and with great effort. It takes too much of my energy to walk.

Self-propelling in a manual wheelchair gives me an opportunity to maintain some physical fitness. I have an identity as a wheeler. I can express impatience by swerving my wheels side to side in place. I move the chair, fidgeting in my own idiosyncratic ways. None of these things would be possible with a scooter. With a scooter you can go forward and backward, but a chair gives you latitude as to how you move. In my manual wheelchair I feel more graceful and have more attention for others than I do on foot. I feel more vital than I do using a scooter.

I know very few fellow wheelers in real life, but I have images of trim, attractive peers garnered from sites such as Wheelchair Junkie and New Mobility, and product catalogs such as Sportaid and Rolli Moden. I had thought I was accepting and well adjusted to the necessity of my own chair. Perhaps I even took some pride in my ability with it thinking I was becoming rather sporty, even athletic. Those feelings of satisfaction, contentment, and well being crashed into a whole ‘nother reality on a recent vacation.

Twink and I left Cripple Creek last week to go on a cruise with my mom. A cruise ship can be the ideal vacation spot if you use a manual wheelchair. There are staterooms for disabled people, almost all areas of the ship are accessible and, should you get stuck, the staff is cheerfully willing to help.

However, on boarding the ship, disembarking for shore excursions, and every night in the dining room, there are professional photographers recording your enjoyment of every event. The pictures are posted daily and you can buy any that you like—souvenir reminders of the swell time you had on your cruise. That’s where reality caught up with my self-image

The first things I noticed were that I was no longer 18 years old, I could stand to lose 10 pounds, and, with poor eyesight and numb hands, I’d have done better to skip the self-tanning lotion. The other surprise was that in every photograph I was (Dum-De-Dum-Dum) in a wheelchair! In the pictures where I looked sad and uncomfortable, I seemed sad and uncomfortable to be in a wheelchair. In the pictures where I was smiling, I seemed to be smiling despite having to use a wheelchair. In some pictures I was sitting squarely and seemed to be trying to sit bravely straight in my wheelchair. In more candid pictures, though internally I’d seen myself sitting at a jaunty, casual angle, I seemed to be slumping dejectedly in my wheelchair.

There was one unfortunate shot taken on the docks. As I disembarked a member of the excursion staff, dressed in ersatz pirate, flung an arm around the back of my chair and stuck a stuffed parrot on my shoulder. Snap, went the camera’s shutter. Had I not been wearing sunglasses the rictus of my smile would have been revealed as bug-eyed dismay.

On dress-up night I tried posing with Twink in front of a trompe d’oeil backdrop of a moonlit beach with the cruise ship anchored offshore. Snap, went the camera’s shutter. The next day’s picture posting showed Twink stiffly embracing the Disabled Creature from the Black Lagoon, both in formal attire.

I didn’t look like a young chick with attitude. I didn’t look like a dignified career woman on vacation. I certainly didn’t look like a wheelchair athlete. I looked like an overweight, orange-splotched, middle-aged person, with an uncomfortable facial expression, whether smiling or not. The overall impression was of someone who was, perhaps, more than a few ants short of a picnic.

There was one picture in which I looked happy and relaxed. The wheelchair didn’t show at all. I still looked slightly overweight and middle-aged but, without the wheelchair, I looked like a normal person having a good time. And suddenly the penny dropped and I saw that the wheelchair’s greatest influence on my appearance was in my own mind’s eye.

There’s a Buddhist joke about meditation wherein a beginner is advised, “Don’t think about monkeys.” As a consequence, he can think of nothing but monkeys. I was spending so much time projecting, “Look at me, not at my chair!” and “Look how cool I am in my chair!” that all I could see was the chair and everything about me seemed related to that chair.

I don’t know what other people see when I’m out and about in my manual wheelchair and, at any rate, what others think of me is none of my business. I will work on losing some weight, and I have definitely put aside the sunless tanning lotion. But most important for my own growth is to look more closely at my ideas about appearance and disability for, despite my best intentions, I seem to have internalized some unsavory attitudes. Working on those will be a challenge but the reward of confidence in my own appearance is worth whatever effort it takes.

And, lest I expect that a change in my attitude will result in delightful future photographs, I must also remember another truth. Before I became disabled and a wheelchair user, even when I was 18 years old, when I weighed thirty pounds less than I do now, back in the days when I kept a natural year-round tan, I almost never took a good picture.