[But also a health plurk] I think it might be worth having a conversation about what it means to "look sick"

It's coming off a lot now, and when I was doing chemo I heard it from basically everyone who came out to lunch with me

"He didn't even look sick"

Does anyone really know what "sick" looks like

I get "but you look so healthy" a lot, and I'm like

"....thanks?"

is it a uniform you put on when you go outside that you can take off later on?

People think "oh no cancer" and they think of the sad people in headwraps that get shown in charity photos

the emaciated ones and the frail ones

yeah, def not the people on drugs that make them gain weight

But just as we've learned to understand that many disabilities are invisible, illness can be too

I had wholeassed breast surgery and went down a cup and a half and everyone who commented on it was like "I don't see a difference"

we don't really notice the finer details about people in everyday interactions

plus, there's all these things to help people look how they want to look, do they imagine that people stop using them when they're sick or hurt?

^ that's something that one of my friends with chronic illness points out a lot

"I look healthy because I wear a lot of makeup"

y, exactly. makeup wigs, etc.

I mean realtalk I probably shouldn't even be on plurk today because it seems like everyone wants to share their takes about a stranger's cancer and that's probably not a conversation I should be around but like

sick people don't need to disappear just because they don't feel well

they don't have to stop working or being activists or reaching out to help other people

(and also that Screenrant article can just fuck right the hell off I'm sure y'all know the one)

oh yes, I saw that. It came out AN HOUR after the announcement

wtf

I think part of this is like there are a lot of people who are shocked. That's a fair reaction. But instead of keeping it to their own surprise because Boseman was very private, they create a I didn't know, and it's because of something about the person who's ill. Like, almost putting the blame for the fact it took them by surprised on someone else.

Rather than just accepting that sometimes you don't know things about people.

oh that's interesting

so like "i didn't know and it kind of hurts that he didn't tell me/us" kind of thing?

I think that's part of it, at least. Which isn't something anyone's entitled to know, but the surprise hurts and people like to find reasons to rationalize how they were hurts.

And to make it not their own fault.

yeah the "you don't look sick" surprise, when directed at me at least, always felt like a "oh you didn't tell me" sort of thing because finding out someone you know is sick always brings out this deep helpless feeling, which is probably compounded when it's sudden and a celebrity that you've grown to love (in an intangible way)

but at the same time "you don't look sick" grated on me endlessly because yes i did that on purpose so we wouldn't have this conversation

and then it's like... I think of how much I don't want to be asked about it in my normal mundane life where 0.3 people care about me Magnified to a celebrity status where it could become the topic of conversation dozens of times a day during a press tour?

I think a lot of it is that people want to reassure themselves that if xyz person looks okay then they're not going to die. It's a predictability thing. We think we know who can die, when the reality is it's anyone.

So when someone we admired in some way just dies out of nowhere, it can hurt a lot more because we wanted to be prepared.

this is a good plurk