Teen Vogue Shines a Light on Disabled Models

It's no secret that the fashion industry, like the mass media, favors a certain kind of model. To me, this archetype looks a lot like a tall, blond, thin and conventionally attractive woman. While models of color and plus-sized models have slowly but surely been making their way into the industry via inclusive lines like Fenty, disabled models remain largely left out of the fashion narrative.

In the September issue of Teen Vogue, the magazine profiled three models with disabilities including Chelsea Werner, a gymnast and model with Down syndrome, Mama Cax, a disability advocate, blogger and amputee and Jillian Mercado, a model with spastic muscular dystrophy.

The story covered everything from why representation matters to the struggles the models faced to find work in such an exclusionary industry. The article mentioned that not only is inclusivity the right thing for companies to do, it also cited the positive implications that can come from people seeing themselves represented-- like Aerie's revenue increase after launching their inclusive and photoshop-free campaign.

"This lack of representation has implications: When you go so long without seeing yourself it is easy to interpret that lack of representation to mean you’re ugly and unworthy, that you deserve to be invisible or even worse, are grotesque," said Keah Brown, the 26-year-old author of the article who has muscular dystrophy.