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I understand that it’s because misogyny is normalised and we just expect girls women to be ‘vain’ (and by ‘vain’ I mean willing to spend time and money in service of dangerous and often painful ‘beauty’ treatments), and we have normalised cosmetic procedures for women/girls as ‘self-care’.

It is galling to see condemnation and hand-wringing over where we as a society have gone wrong and how we’re failing boys because harmful beauty standards have started to affect teenage boys and men as males (as opposed to affecting them because of their race or sexuality which obvs isn’t new), when girls and women have been dealing with the same shit for decades, and nobody gives a shit.

Botox injections, waist trainers, fillers, ‘fox eye lifts’, chemical peels, unregulated laxative teas and shakes snd lollipops shilled by Kardashians, influencers promoting unregulated tanning pills, cosmetic tattooing, breast implants, BBLs and restrictive diets are just as (if not more) dangerous than what looksmaxxers are doing. Despite that, we’re told that those things are a normal part of ‘looking after ourselves’ and ‘feeling good’ about our bodies.

"see these clothes? it shows who i really am! this makeup, too! i need plastic surgery so that my face can look like my aesthetic!"

in reality, the disabled people who are at most risk for facing ableism are people with cognitive disabilities—dementia sufferers, level 3 autistics, people with down syndrome, etc. they are not able to live fully independently. they will require constant, daily care to have a mere acceptable quality of life. they often have comorbid disorders such as epilepsy that require extensive medical care.

in a perfect world, women wouldn't have to abort disabled fetuses. they would be given endless resources—time, help, money. society would have recreational centers built to keep the cognitively disabled safe, respite care with highly trained nurses, specialty hospitals with doctors knowledgeable in cognitive disabilities and how they interact with comorbid conditions, care centers with no possibility of abuse, etc etc etc.

but we don't live in a perfect world. in the US, having a disabled child means subjecting them to a life of suffering and solitude, and then fearing that they'll be abused after you die. why in the hell would you willingly make that choice? why would you deprive someone else of making a choice? is it not the kinder thing to do, the most loving decision as a parent, to say "i love you too much to allow you to be born in these conditions"?

like i genuinely don't think people realize how difficult it is to take care of a disabled person, due to how hostile society is for them.

the answer isn't to shame and blame pregnant women for getting abortions. if you want to fix the problem, then maybe you should advocate for the disabled who have already been born. but that would require work, and it's much easier to just blame women. after all, it's not like you have to take care of the disabled child, right?