A big part of what is worrying me is the instagramming thing. The reality is I am happy looking like crap if I think no-one is going to see / judge me. So in the winter I wear some borderline offensive and definitely flammable outfits to walk the dog & then meet my old stuck-with-me-now-so -don't-care-what-I-look-like friends, down the pub without a second thought. But while I am a long way from vain - the idea of everyone I've ever met seeing regular photo's of me in my fleeced up glory gives me palpitations. Seeing me wearing my 'daytime jammies' is a privilege (potentially I am misusing that word) reserved for the people I love.
Letting you all see photos of what I wear when I'm not at work or a party worries me.
Partly this is because there is a certain level of agreed etiquette around how we present ourselves to the world that gives a shorthand about how clean and respectable we are, how well we'll fit in. And changing our clothes is a part of that - it's a shorthand for being clean.
My parents were pretty broke when we were growing up, we wore hand me downs and clothes from charity shops alongside the new clothes they sacrificed things for themselves to get us. "Clean is as good as new" was a bit of a motto in our house. My parents are wonderful so I know that good parenting and providing loads of new clothes is not the same thing at all. There is a huge difference between neglect and poverty - but ask families living on a budget if they feel judged by how they dress their kids and you'll realise how little that difference is appreciated.
I hate that families living on the breadline feel that their value as parents is measured by how they present their children rather than by how happy their children are. I'm furious about it in fact. But oddly it doesn't stop me from feeling vulnerable to your judgement for wearing the same clothes to walk the dog and hang around my house yesterday as I did today. It doesn't stop me from being terrified that you'll all think less of the work that I do because sometimes I do that work in my scruffs.
I hope you don't. But if you do then please ask yourself whether you want to support families of disabled children to be able to afford to present themselves and their children in the way they'd choose to. Ask yourself if it's ok that 65% of the families Contact a Family spoke to last year are going without new clothes as a result of the very real financial implications of raising a disabled child.
And if you agree that this is not ok - then maybe donate whatever you'd spend on a new t-shirt to Contact a Family - it's easy to do so here
And here is what a wore today (don't judge me)
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