MARISA ZEPPIERI: “YOU LOOK FABULOUS”
“You look fabulous!” It’s a phrase we hear over and over again in life – one that can be considered innocuous and complimentary. But for someone living with a chronic or invisible illness, this dreaded phrase can be seem like a double-edged sword. “There is such a fine line in our society of what someone who is sick or diagnosed with an illness should ‘look like,” shares Marisa Zeppieri, someone who has been living with multiple chronic illnesses since she was an infant. “If you look too sick, you get stares and questions about being contagious. You can be ridiculed for not ‘doing something with yourself’ or measuring up to what people think you should look like. And on the other side of the coin, if you look good, people question the validity of your illness and its severity. There is no happy medium between the two.”Continue reading
