The nearest I get to burlesque is doing the odd sexy wiggle while taking my clothes off before bed. The challenge is not to trip over while removing my trousers, of course.
I kind of hope someone has done the feather boa with wheelchair look at Pride. I've gone with a rainbow scarf, halfway there perhaps.
After some thought, I believe my superhero this-cured-me-from-ME is Ivanova. Because she is a goddess. I present proof.
Joking apart, this woman was obviously completely stitched up by the press, we have no idea what is actually going on in her life, and it is not remotely appropriate to start blaming her for this. The press are the ones doing the damage. Maybe she has mild to moderate ME, found that taking up her old hobby was manageable with her energy limits and really cheered her up, and wanted to do something to reduce the stigma of burlesque. I'm pretty sure that if I tried to talk to a journalist about how I've discovered quilting since I became ill, and have found it very therapeutic when I've been well enough to do it, they could present the story in a similar way, even though I'm still severely affected and have been known to have huge crashes from getting a bit too frisky in my attempts to do some cross stitch. Their disrespect for her physical and mental health was revolting, and we should not be mocking her.
I'm particularly unsurprised because I've been saying for years that sex workers (sex work covers a wide variety of jobs, including stripping) and people with disabilities are both highly stigmatised in ways that play out surprisingly similarly.
I wrote about it here, and feedback from the sex worker community was great. I doubt it's a coincidence that the two were attacked together here, in a way that encourages even other disabled folk to mock and scorn the woman in question. For instance, it's common to make suspicious remarks about the mental health of both sex workers and folks with ME. Don't fall for that, don't let them set us up against one another, and stop having a go at this woman. She does not exist as the butt of a joke.
(Superheroes, on the other hand, go for it.)
I thought stress was a common ME trigger, generally when combined with a physical trigger? I got ME following burn-out and flu, for instance, which is pretty standard, and I'd been under high levels of stress for years which probably contributed as well. Stress has various bad effects on your body which make you more susceptible to physical illness.
I'd also suggest remembering that this is a large forum, sex work is pretty common, and there will be former or current sex workers on this forum. A friend of mine with a connective tissue disorder, not quite sure of her level of disability but it's moderate at the minimum, does cam girl work. It's something you can do at home in your bedroom, it's not too physically exhausting, although she does pretty long shifts of it sometimes. If you're thinking of sex workers as "them" rather then "us", stop it.
