Invisible
How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
This vital exploration of the ways society overlooks—and fails—young women with disabilities and chronic illnesses is an “essential read for . . . those wondering how to be a better support system” (Library Journal).
Michele Lent Hirsch knew she couldn’t be the only woman who has dealt with serious health issues at a young age, as well as the resulting effects on her career, her relationships, and her sense of self. What she found while researching Invisible was a surprisingly large and overlooked population—and now, with long COVID emerging, one that continues to grow.
Though young women with serious illness tend to be seen as outliers, young female patients are in fact the primary demographic for many illnesses. They are also one of the most ignored groups in our medical system—a system where young women, especially women of color and trans women, are invisible. And because of expectations about gender and age, young women with health issues must often deal with bias in their careers and personal lives.
Lent Hirsch weaves her own experiences together with stories from other women, perspectives from sociologists on structural inequality and inequity, and insights from neuroscientists on misogyny in health research. She shows how health issues and disabilities amplify what women in general already confront: warped beauty standards, workplace sexism, worries about romantic partners, and mistrust of their own bodies. By shining a light on this hidden demographic, Lent Hirsch explores the challenges that all women face.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hirsch, plagued by a variety of medical issues Lyme disease, thyroid cancer, and mast-cell-activation syndrome, among other problems starting in her early 20s, decided to seek out other young women going through the same experience of facing life-changing medical problems. Her project unearthed significant differences in how women reacted to being diagnosed with serious health conditions, the subject of her informative debut book. Interspersing her own story with those of the women she interviewed and with the results of research studies, she recounts stories of discrimination and misunderstanding, particularly since, she writes, many of her interviewees suffer from conditions that aren't always outwardly visible and doctors tend to underestimate women's symptoms. Some women choose to keep their struggle secret, while others fight tenaciously to avoid being defined by illness, or they publicly "challenge the popular rhetoric" around their disease. Hirsch found that, as she does, her interviewees feel "off time out of sync with what they were taught it means to be young." Through her discussions with other women who also have conditions that are not easily categorized, she realized that "disability is largely about the world's failure to make space for you." It is an untapped, niche area for advice that Hirsch covers with relatability, grace, and empathy.