Choosing to be visible

Leonor doesn’t always wear her lanyard. She wears it when she travels or when she’s in the UK. She can choose to make her disability visible, and does so mostly when it is recognized and has practical use.

In airports, people do generally recognize it. This makes it easier to ask for help, and reassures her while traveling. It also has a psychological component for her. ‘It’s like: I’m not making this up, even though you can just order it online. I was at Schiphol, and I went up to the help desk, and told them I had chronic pain. They were there in ten minutes with someone to help me through the airport. I don’t know if they saw the lanyard, but it made me feel more confident in asking for help.’

Being visible isn’t always a choice, and sometimes can also be a bit scary. Leonor tells a story about her professor, who didn’t allow laptops in class, only notebooks. Leonor avoids lifting heavy stuff, and therefore just takes her laptop to school. When she asked the professor to use her laptop, he announced to the whole class that people who used laptops have something wrong with their health, so it was okay for them. ‘Then you just have people staring at you like: what’s wrong with you, Frankenstein?’

In the Netherlands, the lanyard isn’t widely used. Leonor has never really noticed any reactions to it here, as opposed to the UK, where it is much more widely used. If she could, Leonor would prefer to have her disability always visible to people. ‘But in a way that doesn’t invite endless questions.’