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Selma Blair Walks The Red Carpet With A Cane After MS Diagnosis

Selma Blair showed just how strong she is appearing on the Vanity Fair party red carpet during the Oscars on Sunday.

It’s the first red carpet appearance for the actress since she revealed that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis back in October.

“She needs a cane to help walk, but she came to prove that no matter how tough this disease, she is a fighter,” wrote Jessica Radloff, the West Coast editor for Glamour who tweeted out a video of Blair on the carpet. 

The “Legally Blonde” and “Cruel Intentions” star announced that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in October 2018.

“I am disabled,” Blair wrote in an Instagram post at the time, noting that she first found out she had the disease in August.

“I fall sometimes. I drop things. My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken GPS. But we are doing it.”

She added that she’d likely had the “incurable disease for 15 years at least,” but that she was relieved to finally know what she had.

“I have MS and I am ok,” Blair added.

Self-Care For Women Is More Work Than Buying Products

What Women Want Now is a program by HuffPost and her sister sites dedicated to creating content about the issues and stories that matter most to women – you can read more here.

Emily Bilek is on a mission to have her patients ― and herself ― view self-care as something greater than the “treat yo’ self” mentality on social media.

Bilek, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Depression Center, said the Instagram version of self-care and what it actually means to take care of yourself are two very different things.

“Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with treating yourself, and it has an important place in the priorities I set for my own time and money. However, conflating self-care and ‘treating yourself’ is misguided and potentially harmful,” Bilek, 34, said. “When self-care becomes a competitive and performative ritual on social media, it defeats its purpose.”

Bilek, who is also responsible for helping others come up with strategies to protect their mental health, personally chooses self-care in the form of enforcing healthy lifestyle habits. (And then breaking or adjusting as necessary.)

“Good self-care is typically more difficult and less glamorous than treating yourself,” she said. “It means doing things like having good sleep hygiene, getting a little more exercise, staying hydrated, taking medication as prescribed, eating at regular intervals, creating healthy boundaries and taking a break from social media.”

Ultimately, Bilek has to remind herself and the people she treats that self-care is hard work that’s only going to be rewarding in the end. No clever status, flattering photo filter or hashtag is going to enhance it.

“Self-care isn’t glamorous. It’s the everyday work you do for yourself to make you a little bit happier and healthy,” she said. “If I had a self-care Instagram account, it probably wouldn’t be very popular ― there are only so many creative ways to take pictures of a water bottle or broccoli ― but self-care isn’t for other people, it’s just for you.”