CBC Radio – “how to love the skin you’re in”

Adult model, performer and disability advocate GoAskAlex is opening up to CBC Radio’s Now or Never hosts Ify Chiwetelu and TrevorDineen about her life in the public eye as an ostomate in a new episode, “Afraid to Show it off? Here’s How to Love the Skin You’re In”.

“In 2019 I underwent a life-changing surgery – I had a total abdominal colectomy, which
means that my entire colon was removed. I had to have this done because I have
ulcerative colitis, which is a form of inflammatory bowel disease, and it led to having an
ileostomy, which is a permanent medical device on my abdomen,” explains Alex.
“It’s difficult when so much of your career is in front of a camera and you’re so used to
looking at modeling photos of yourself and editing your own videos and seeing your own
body from every possible angle, which is already a difficult thing to have to do, to be
scrutinizing your body all the time. But then to see your body drastically change, whether
that’s weight gain or a disability… seeing your body change and feeling like you don’t
have any control over that is a difficult thing.
“Waking up from surgery and having an ileostomy was terrifying and also a huge relief,
because I’d been in pain for so long, so there was an aspect of it that was really a relief
and it was really freeing to finally feel like ‘Okay, I’m cured from this disease’, in a way…
on the other side of that, there was this insecurity about my new body and this fear of how
I’d be perceived, fear that no one would ever find me attractive again – professionally or in
my personal life, to find a partner, to be romantic, to be sexual… and there wasn’t really
any support for that.
“When you have these surgeries done, they give you a book of pamphlets on what it’s
going to be like to have an ostomy, and different medical devices, and there are some
things they don’t talk to you about… one of them being sexuality. It’s an assumption that
disabled people are not having sex, or that we wouldn’t want to have sex, or that nobody
would want to have sex with us because our bodies are not sexual, and they’re gross or
wrong or damaged… and that’s just simply not true.
“I didn’t feel like I was represented or that I had body-positive role models growing up, and
as a woman with a disability I want young people to have those role models. I want to help
create a world where people… have a better relationship to their bodies and can accept
themselves as they are. So even though I can fully admit that it’s still a process for me, I
think that the act of doing these things and setting this example is also part of what is
healing me along that journey.
“A lot of people recommend saying affirmations in the mirror: ‘I love myself, I am strong, I
am intelligent, I am beautiful’… but I think for me, an affirmation of ‘I accept myself’ has
been far more impactful on my life.”
Find the full Now or Never interview via CBC.ca/radio/nowornever.