Is There A Little Ableist Voice In Your Self Talk?

“We absorb it from workplaces, families, friendship groups, the internet. By the time you notice it, it's already become the background noise of how you think about yourself.”

 

What this article covers:

• Internalised ableism is the voice that tells you that you shouldn’t need help, take up space, or use tools designed for people like you
• How internalised ableism shows up in beauty and self care routines for disabled and chronically ill people
• Lived experience from Holly Sultana and Anya Christoffersen
• Small ways to start noticing and questioning the inner voice of ableism

Internalised ableism doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t show up with a label or a warning. It sounds like regular self-talk. It sounds like “I should be able to manage this” and “other people have it so much worse.” That’s the thing about messages you’ve quietly absorbed your whole life. By the time you notice them, they’ve already made it in.

For a lot of disabled, neurodivergent and chronically ill people, this shows up in so many areas of daily life, including beauty routines and how beautiful you feel.

Holly Sultana, ByStorm Beauty Ambassador, who has a disability, describes it this way:

“Ableism doesn’t just exist out there. It gets in. We absorb it from workplaces, families, friendship groups, the internet. By the time you notice it, it’s already become the background noise of how you think about yourself.”

The day-to-day version is sneaky, she says, because you normalise it. You don’t usually clock it as ableism in the moment. It’s the joke in a group setting that isn’t funny, but you laugh anyway. The meme you scroll past without letting yourself react. The beauty standard that reinforces who gets to be seen and celebrated as stylish, and who’s meant to just get by quietly.

“It’s everywhere,” Holly says. “And that’s exactly why it gets in so easily.”

 

Anya Christoffersen, who has chronic illness, names a version that a lot of people with non-visible or fluctuating disabilities will recognise instantly:

“The most persistent version is the feeling that I’m not disabled enough to take up space. Like I haven’t earned the right to the word. And I know exactly where it comes from. The wheelchair. That symbol. The one on every disabled parking sign, every accessible bathroom door. If you don’t look like that, the message you’ve absorbed your whole life is that maybe you’re not really in the club.” [Not really disabled]

“The brutal part is that my body objectively does not work. I can barely do a lot of things. And I still sit there going, ‘but is it real enough?’ That’s how deep the conditioning runs.”

 

Where it lives in your beauty routine

For many disabled and chronically ill people, a makeup routine isn’t so straightforward. Grip difficulties, fatigue, fine motor challenges, chronic pain: these don’t disappear just because you want to do your mascara. And for a long time, the beauty industry’s answer was basically just: figure it out. So people did. They adapted, improvised, quietly stopped doing the things that were too hard (like getting your support person to open the lid for you). And instead of finding an [adaptive] solution, you blamed yourself, instead of the real issue: the design, and the packaging.

This is where internalised ableism and beauty collide in a way that very rarely gets talked about. The resistance to using a grip tool or an adaptive product isn’t at all practical. For a lot of people, it sounds like: if I use this, am I admitting something? Am I giving up?

Anya recognises this pattern in other parts of her life too.

“It shows up most when I’m trying to access support. There’s this resistance in me, this guilt, that sounds like: if I take this, am I taking it from someone who needs it more? Someone more visibly disabled. Someone the system was actually designed for. It’s irrational and I know it’s irrational. But it’s still there every time.”

 

But that’s not a personal failing. It's the internalisation of a system that has spent decades communicating, clearly and consistently, that some people’s needs count more than others.

Why the beauty industry hasn’t helped

The beauty industry, historically, has not been interested in this conversation. Disability has been (and still is) completely ignored in almost every beauty campaign. Products have been designed around a narrow idea of who the consumer is. And disabled people weren’t in that picture. Not as customers, not as designers, not as people whose routines were worth making easier.

ByStorm founder, Storm Menzies, felt this first-hand. Storm has mild cerebral palsy, but it was breaking her dominant hand that brought her face to face with what so many disabled people have always known: the tools were not built for people who don’t fit the mould perfectly. And the shame that came with struggling wasn’t a personal failing. It was a very reasonable response to being excluded by an entire industry.

So, she spent $100,000 of her life savings building something different. A world-first accessible beauty tool, co-designed with disabled people from the ground up, that makes existing makeup products easier to hold, open, and use. And she made it beautiful like a beauty tool, not a medical device. Because the disability community does care about aesthetics too. 

 

How to start noticing your internalised ableism

“Fighting the inner voice comes down to learning to clock it,” Holly says. “There’s a difference between regular self-doubt and a thought that is specifically, structurally ableist. They are not the same thing and they don’t get the same response.”

Her advice on what’s actually helped: knowing who you are. Finding role models with similar stories. Following disabled creators. “We absorb so much online without realising how much it shapes what we say to ourselves. When you watch people who openly love themselves and are proud of who they are, those voices start to become part of your own internal landscape. You can’t have a role model you’ve never seen. So go find them.”

Anya on where she’s at: “I try to catch myself and correct the thought. That’s about as sophisticated as my method is right now. I’m a work in progress on this one.”

You don’t have to manage alone

Independence isn’t about doing everything without support. It’s having access to the tools, accommodations, and community that let you show up on your own terms. A grip tool that makes makeup easier to hold and more precise to apply isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s just good design that invites ease rather than normalising struggle. 

Ready to try ByStorm for yourself?

If this piece resonated with you, you might also want to read our piece on why makeup is still missing from occupational therapy.

And if you’re ready to try a grip tool, you can shop the full range here (including our new colours!). 

 

A note on accessibility

If you need this content in a different format, have questions, feedback, or want to share your own experience, you can reach us at hello@bystormbeauty.com. We always want to hear from you!