Output details

“If I didn’t have RA I wouldn’t give them house room”: the relationship between RA, footwear and clothing choices.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects 0.5 to 1 per cent of the adult population worldwide and at least 700,000 in the UK. Women are three times more likely to be affected than men and onset is common in mid-life. As well as experiences of pain and restriction to mobility and dexterity, rheumatic diseases can have significant impact on self-image, sexuality and personal relationships: hand and foot deformities, weight gain, changes in gait, and psycho-emotional effects can occur.

Informed by perspectives from fashion and the sociology of health and illness, Candy initiated the ‘Wardrobe and Wellbeing’ project to study the impact of rheumatic diseases on women’s body image, self-presentation and clothing choices, in order to identify design approaches to address these challenges. Through partnership with UCLan School of Public Health and Clinical Sciences and a Lancashire NHS Trust she visited women in their homes and accessed their wardrobes to explore how RA affected feelings about their bodies, perceptions of change in appearance and reasons for this. Imagery of clothing was collected as illustrative, sensory supplements to verbal transcripts.

In this innovative collaborative research, data is interpreted to convey the emotional, tactile and aesthetic significance of clothing style and its interrelationship with shoes, physical mobility and social inclusion. The data highlights polarity between clinical attitudes and the experiences of wearers. This peer-reviewed journal article is an influential intervention within the dominant culture of disease pathology and disseminates important issues of emotional affect to a wide clinical audience. Researchers based in UK and Australia have cited this article in a range of international medical research journals: Foot and Ankle Research; Musculoskeletal Care; Clinical Rehabilitation; Health Psychology; Acute and Critical Care; Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Candy is Advisory Board member for ‘If the Shoe Fits: Footwear, Identity and Transition’ ESRC project, University of Sheffield 2010-2013.