5 Reasons I'll Never Wear These Fibromyalgia Awareness Shirts

Until I finally blocked them as “offensive,” Facebook targeted ads at me for fibromyalgia awareness T-shirts: the kind that include phrasing such as, “I don’t look sick? You don’t look stupid!” or “I don’t have the energy to pretend I like you today.” While I have great affection for snark, I think these awareness shirts go too far. Here’s why I’ll never wear them….

• What is Fibromyalgia?
• What Are Common Fibromyalgia Symptoms?

What I Don’t Like About Them

1. They’re defensive.

They are starting a type of conversation on the defense. While defense is the typical response to an attack, it’s also a response to guilt. I’m not guilty of fibromyalgia. I just happen to have it.

2. They’re aggressive, even mean.

If I’m to wear a shirt for awareness, which is representing everyone who has my condition, I do not want to represent us all as mean, aggressive people. That’s negative, inaccurate and stigma-feeding.

3. You get back what you put out.

I don’t want to get back what these are putting out.

4. You get what you expect from people.

I don’t want to get what these shirts are expecting of others.

5. Specific to the shirt that reads, “You don’t look stupid”:

As our society progresses into one of more inclusion, we are learning the painful histories of certain words and working to eliminate them from our rhetoric. “Stupid” is a harmful word that has been used to describe people with certain disabilities. I am here to advocate for all people with disabilities, not just people who have the same one as me.

What I Do Like

1. I like Snoopy.

2. I like to teach that we do “pretend” to be better than we feel, and we do feel worse than we look. Check out this article I wrote on passing.