Rachelle lays elegantly across a bed. Her hair is perfectly curled. Her lacy lingerie hugs her body. Her catheter, still source of insecurity for Rachelle, is bravely on display. She is undoubtedly sexy.
People living with disabilities aren’t often seen as sexually desirable. It’s an assumption Rachelle Friedman Chapman knows is flat out wrong. Her proof is these sexy photos of herself.
See also: I’m in a wheelchair, I’m queer and I’m still a real man
Rachelle recently posted images from a boudoir photoshoot shot by Revolution Studios to her social media pages, where they quickly drew attention.
Image: Rachelle Friedman Chapman/Revolution Studios
In 2010, Rachelle was paralyzed from the chest down after a friend playfully pushed her into a pool at her bachelorette party. Her story went viral, leading Rachelle to become an activist for disability rights, an accomplished author and overall advocate for positivity in the face of life-altering events.
But, since her injury, Rachelle has dealt with insecurities. On top of the messages all women deal with when it comes to their appearance, Rachelle faced added criticism because of her disability status. After her injury, she says she was constantly told how “lucky” she was her fiance didn’t leave her. After all, people would say, she obviously couldn’t please him sexually.
It’s one of the biggest myths about disability — that people living with disabilities are not sexually viable. Rachelle was tired of it, so she challenged it. To mark her 5 year anniversary of her injury, she decided to do a boudoir-style photoshoot — not to celebrate her disability, but to celebrate herself.
“I feel beautiful now. I feel sexy…” Rachelle tells Mashable. “When people think of a quadriplegic, they don’t think they can be young, sexy and intimate.”
For Rachelle, those assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth — and her photoshoot dispels those misconceptions. Though this myth-busting was her intent, she also did the shoot to claim the self-confidence she deserves.
“It was for me. It was almost like a coming out for me, like ‘This is who I am, this is what I look like,’” Rachelle says. “But, at the same time, I did want to get a conversation going. It’s taboo in general to talk about sex, but especially when it comes to disability. No one talks about it.
“I just wanted to put an image out there to say I can have a disability and still be sexy.”
Image: Rachelle Friedman Chapman/Revolution Studios
While you may not see her wheelchair in the photos, you will see another marker of Rachelle’s disability — her catheter. She names it one of her biggest insecurities. Yet, it’s stark visibility in the photos is a sign of her self-acceptance.
“I think it was important to put out there what might be considered unsexy…” she says, speaking of the catheter. “I want people to understand that you can still have something about you that is not perfect, but you can still be sexy.”
The response to the photos has mostly been positive, though some detractors claim that Rachelle is sexualizing herself by posing in lingerie. She could not disagree more. Her intentions, she says, are clear.
“No one has an image of someone like me,” she says, speaking of how she appears in the photoshoot. “It doesn’t exist out there.
“I’m not trying to objectify myself. What I’m trying to show people is that this is something that exists. There are people in wheelchairs. There are people with other disabilities. And they are still sexual.”
And though Rachelle did this shoot for herself and to spark a conversation, she also did it for the girl she doesn’t even know. She calls her “The Girl At The Bar.” The girl who is single, in a wheelchair and still sexy.
“Let’s be real: No one thinks someone in our situation can be intimate at all,” she says, comparing her situation to the experience of The Girl At The Bar. “[The Girl At The Bar] isn’t seen as a viable partner because, at the end of the day, intimacy is a part of a relationship. It’s really important that people understand that we can still do that. We still have sexual desires. Though I may feel things differently, I can still give back [sexually]. And so can The Girl At The Bar.”
Image: Rachelle Friedman Chapman/Revolution Studios
To continue the conversation, Rachelle has started #WhatMakesMeSexy. The hashtag is meant to inspire people to “stop knocking themselves down” by sharing what makes them desirable to others and themselves.
As for Rachelle, she wants to make sure you know she is sexy — disability included.
“Though I don’t define myself by my sexuality, it’s a part of me,” she says. “It’s a part of all of us. When you become disabled, you think that you’ve lost that. And, eventually, you realize that you haven’t.”
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