Emily:
Hi, I’m Emily Ladau.

Kyle:
And I’m Kyle Khachadurian.

Emily:
You’re listening to another episode of The Accessible Stall.

Kyle:
Emily. Emily, what are we going to talk about today? I’m so excited.

Emily:
Okay. So I think I might be more excited than you for this one.

Kyle:
Why?

Emily:
We’re going to talk about accessible adaptive lingerie. I am so excited. I cannot wait because … Can I just tell you before we get into this conversation and introduce our guests, that I feel like I am on a lifelong quest to find the right bra.

Kyle:
I think we’ve had this conversation. I think, I obviously don’t know, but every time you talk about bras, I feel like it’s me talking about shoes.

Emily:
Oh my God, that’s so true.

Kyle:
Yeah, we’ve had this conversation more than once.

Emily:
Everybody has that one thing that they struggle with to put on, and for me it is a bra. So we’re going to talk about it, but we’re also going to talk about a lot more than that. I’m super excited. We have some really cool guests with us today. I cannot wait for them to introduce themselves. We are chatting with two fabulous team members from Liberare. I’m going to let you guys introduce yourselves because I think it’s way more fun to hear right from the people. So Emma and Gemma, tell us about yourselves.

Emma:
Well, first of all, Emily, Kyle, thank you so much for having us. We’re so, so excited to be here today. So thank you. I’m Emma, I’m the founder of Liberare and I’m here with Gemma, our visual brand director.

Gemma:
Hi everyone. My name’s Gemma.

Emily:
Tell us about yourself.

Emma:
Great. Okay, perfect.

Emily:
I want to know more about you.

Emma:
I founded … Well, I guess I’ll tell you a little bit about the story later. Me, I’m trying to figure out who I am. That’s a good question.

Gemma:
You never get asked this.

Kyle:
No pressure.

Emma:
No, we never get asked this.

Emily:
The thing about the Accessible Stall is that we really want you to have a little bit of an existential crisis before you get into the conver-

Kyle:
It’s very on brand for us. Yeah.

Emma:
Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, I am a … I’m 25, this is my first company, and I live in Paris. I am really excited about accessibility. I also like to paint and I love Paris, and French food, and cheese. I think that about sums me up. [inaudible 00:02:56].

Emily:
I mean, I have a question though. So would you call yourself … I say this, not having watched it. Are you like Emma in Paris? Is this Emily in Paris? Emma in Paris?

Emma:
You know what? I had an interview with Forbes and they said the same thing. I think I still need to watch the show because I don’t have a good [inaudible 00:03:16] on it. I know my outfits are not as fashionable, and I don’t think my love life is as intense, but as an American that’s a little confused, living in France, that seems spot on.

Emily:
So Gemma, tell us about you.

Gemma:
Yeah, of course. So I am the visual brand director at Liberare. I was born with a limb difference. I’ve been actually at the company for about a year now. Emma scouted me out last year. Actually been a year, I think, three days ago. So year anniversary. Then apart from doing that, I’m also a disability advocate. I’m a part-time disabled model as well. So yeah, got it all going on.
So I feel very grateful to be in this position. Four years ago I didn’t even show my arm out in public. So I’ve come on a real journey and I feel like, yeah, Liberare has helped with that a lot. So very grateful. Emma is in tears right now.

Kyle:
You just gave me the perfect segue into our next question, which is tell us about Liberare, like the backstory. I would love to hear more about your journey too, if you could tell us a little bit about that.

Gemma:
Yeah, of course. I mean, Emma, do you want to start with Liberare? I feel like you’ve nailed this story so much. I love to hear it.

Emma:
Okay, great. So the story for Liberare really starts when I was about 12 when my mom began to live with chronic pain and a few different autoimmune disorders. It left her with limited hand dexterity. So doing lots of things became difficult for the first time, including putting on a bra. One of the hardest things was just those hooking eyes in the back are so nasty and just hard to do. So when my mom and I looked for new bras that were going to be able to be fun and beautiful because she’s a cool woman in her 40s, but also really functional and easy to get on, and not going to cause her pain, we couldn’t find anything.
When I got to university, I met a few other women with the same chronic illnesses as my mom and other disabilities and learned that they had this exact same thing. I was always interested in fashion and wanted to just see in university just, “Hey, can I create something that’s going to be easier to put on, but also really pretty for my mom?” So it started out of university in a class. Then I was like, “You know what? This is the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s so fun, and hard, and challenging.” Ended up moving to Paris to launch it.
We launched in February of last year. I was able to hire an amazing team and we sold out. It’s just been really quite a journey. But it starts with a little 12-year-old Emma with clear braces, and cargo shorts, and crocs.

Emily:
This visual is giving me life.

Emma:
Yeah, and a pixie cut.

Emily:
Oh, and a pixie cut. Adorable. But also what I appreciate is that your thought process wasn’t, it wasn’t like, “Oh man, this really sucks that my mom is dealing with this.” It was like, “My mom’s a really cool human being and we’re going to make something really cool for her.” I think that’s a very evolved way for a 12-year-old to be thinking.

Emma:
I think it’s easy when you have a mom as cool as my mom, but I agree. I just never thought it as a pity party or something. It was just, also my dad has always been an inventor, he always was creating toys, and trying to get things patented, and always creating something. So it was kind of like, I just want to create something and bring it to life and make it for my mama.

Emily:
Yeah. You said this thing at the beginning where you were like, “Oh, this is my first company.” I was like first company? I don’t have a first company.

Emma:
I said that, and I was like, what is she talking about? This is going to be her only company.

Emily:
I was like, I don’t have a company, I have no companies.

Emma:
I heard my internal dialogue go, this is the only company you’re going to run, Emma. What does first company mean?

Emily:
No, never say never. That’s how I feel about that. But Gemma, we can come back to you. I know Kyle, you said you wanted to hear a little bit more about Gemma’s journey.

Kyle:
Yes. If you’re willing to share, of course.

Gemma:
Yeah, of course. I mean, do you want to come back to it or do you want to delve on it now?

Emily:
Let’s go on your journey, [inaudible 00:08:02] your journey, and then we can circle back around to the other part of the conversation. But I think one of the things that we tend to talk about a lot is our own journey with how we have felt about our disabilities. So I’m always interested to hear what that’s been for other people, especially because you said you started out not even really showing your arm.

Gemma:
Yeah, definitely. I think that the world has 100% changed from when I was growing up. I feel like everyone always says, “Oh, we didn’t have this growing up or this growing up.” But it is genuinely like that. So I mean, I was born with my limb differences on my left hand. Oh, my left arm, should I say? I mean my family have always been very accepting. They’ve never treated me any differently. My mom’s always thrown me at the deep end. She’s never been like, “You are different. You need to be treated differently.”
I’ve always thrown myself into everything. Growing up until I was probably, until I got to my teenage, when I was 13, I mean I didn’t care. I actually called my arm stumpy and my whole family called it stumpy too. Which is really funny because I went to an event not long ago with loads of other limb different women. They also called it stumpy, which I thought was really funny.
Then obviously I hit 13 and as a young disabled girl and having no role models, and fashion and media back then was very stereotypical. In a world that was so developed with technology, you become more different because the world is essentially in your hands. If you are not seeing other disabled women like yourself out there, who can you relate to? So luckily I went to an all girls school, which some may say was a bad or a good thing. You say what you need to say.
But yeah, I mean, I hid my arm. For pretty much when I was 13 until I was about 21. Even really hot weather I’d wear knitted stuff or long sleeves, I would never, ever wear anything that I wanted to wear. I felt like I always had to cover up. Along with that becomes social anxiety. Then COVID happened and I don’t know what happened. I just had this kind of thought as why are you holding back on something? You should just go for it.
I sign up to my agency, the start of my Instagram, and I’ve kind of never looked back, really. Yeah, now, I mean, I’m wearing short sleeves, and I went into town today and I didn’t even care. Then a year ago, Emma, well, she headhunted me. She was like, “We’ve got a job for you that you’d be perfect.”
Yeah, it’s just so nice to be working within a company that doesn’t feel like a job. It’s Like me, I’m the demographic. You can ask anyone in our team a question and it wouldn’t be like, “Oh gosh, how should we do this? How should we approach this?” It’s like, “What do we want to see? What do we want? What products do we want to see? What didn’t we have growing up that we need now?” So yeah.
I mean short term, that’s my journey. But yeah, it’s been great and I love every minute working here.

Emma:
You went fully from one direction to the other of hiding to, well, I’m going to be a model now.

Gemma:
Honestly, I don’t know what happened. Just during COVID, you basically are hiding anyway, so I was like, “Well, might as well start an Instagram.” I didn’t actually tell any of my friends or family that I’d started my Instagram. My best friends a photographer, so she took all of my pictures. Then slowly as I started getting noticed, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I went to school with her and oh my God, I went to … He’s an ex-boyfriend,” and all this kind of stuff. So then I started to become more confident because it was like I’m proud of myself.

Kyle:
Like Emily said at the beginning of the question, we talk about our journeys all the time. That’s basically our whole show and how it ebbs and it flows. But to hear a story as fast-paced as yours is just really cool. Especially from a perspective of somebody who has a different disability than us. It’s really cool. We love hearing the stories of other disabled people. It’s our favorite thing.

Emily:
Yes, me too.

Kyle:
Coming back to Liberare, there has been, at least since we were kids, sort of an explosion on adaptive fashion brands. There’s still not enough. But you probably know that adaptive or inclusive clothing aren’t the most fashionable, in my personal opinion, or fun to wear. Why do you think that that needs to change?

Gemma:
So going back to what I said, being in your 20s, right now I’m 27, why would I not want to wear the same type of lingerie that my friends are wearing? Why can’t I wear something that is attractive and almost puts you aside, it makes you feel more different? Growing up, the word adaptive never seemed to resonate with me because there was never any option. All the adaptive options, as you said, on the market were really frumpy, or nude, and not very attractive at all, and targeted at a slightly older market.
But if I had an adaptive bra growing up, then I wouldn’t have struggled with dressing and having to teach myself how to do the hook and eyes. It would’ve been so much easier and less painful. So I think it’s so important to be able to have adaptive to be sexy, and cool, and fun so that it hits all target audiences and all ages.

Emma:
I agree. I just think it’s so infuriating that the baseline is that disabled people deserve frumpy. That just was taken for granted for the last, since the beginning of time. So it’s just so evident to us that disabled people, like anybody else, are sexy and beautiful. So creating sexy and beautiful clothing was obvious. But also we want to make bras that are great and easier to put on for disabled people, but also creating bras that are easy for everybody. It’s not a marginalized company. We want to be really inclusive.
So when we created this bra, I was like, “I want my mom, my disabled girlfriends, and the top models to wear this same bra that’s just a better designed bra that everybody freaking loves.” So I’m wearing our bra right now, I wear it every single day. So we were also thinking about how we can make it accessible to everybody and creating a world where everything is accessible and everything is beautiful, and going from there.

Emily:
I think I’ll be really excited when stuff this is no longer specialized but very easily available on the mainstream. Kyle, I know you were talking about shoes before and how shoes, for you, are like bras For me. When I was little I also had trouble finding shoes. I had to have platform lifts put on my shoes because I have a discrepancy in the length of my legs. So I could only wear certain shoes and they had to go over these really clunky plastic leg braces that I used to wear.
So before I was even worrying about bras, I was worrying about shoes, which was a much more visible thing for me. There were only certain shoes that I could wear and I wanted to be cool like everybody else. I mean Kyle, I feel like, did you have this experience?

Kyle:
Yeah, I definitely did. I used to wear leg braces as a kid too. I would be embarrassed, and I didn’t know why. Now I know why. But I remember that distinct feeling of embarrassment for no reason, just having to wear shoes that were two sizes up that I … Who cares about your shoe size in elementary school? Nobody. But you still feel that embarrassment of like, “Oh, everyone’s going to know that it’s different,” even though I went to school with people with disabilities. But you still have that. It’s just bizarre. It’s just weird to reflect on your old self. But yeah, it kind of never goes away. I still am very, very particular about shoes

Emily:
I am so particular about bras and about underwear because I want something that is cute, and functional, and easy to put on, and easy to take off. I feel like I have spent so long searching for that solution. You did, you sent me one of your bras, so I got to try the mechanism to take it on and off. I was like, “This is so clever. I wish somebody had sent this to me sooner.” I’m wondering if you could actually talk about your design process a little bit. I mean, how are disabled people involved in the design and the testing? Let’s hear more about that.

Gemma:
Absolutely. So we have our lead designer, Maddie, she’s non-disabled. She’s been designing bras in New York for the last 15 years. So she’s an expert in things like how do we construct a pushup bra or how do we get the maximum confidence and support, but still make it look good?
Then the rest of the team help with the product ideas. Then we have big product meetings, and how it’s going to work, and why. Then when we test out all the products and we give all of our feedback to Maddie, we then send it to the Rest Bar community called Libber Babes.

Emma:
Yeah. One thing that is absolutely right is that we have Maddie who’s this experienced designer. But like Gemma said, but it’s really important that everybody on the team touches the bra and everybody on the team has different dressing differences and different disabilities. So making sure that it fits with everybody for … We have an Emma, a Gemma, and another Emma, so it’s really confusing. But making sure that it works for everybody on the team is really important.
Then also sending it to our community. So we have a community online, it’s a closed group and it’s a community where we talk about product development. Anything from what color do you guys want next to, hey, on this last iteration of bras was the strap too thin? Can we talk about what drafts you guys like better so that we can make sure that it works better for bigger bust sizes? Or things like, “Where should I put my disability in my Bubble profile?” Or other questions like that.
But then we also send out products to different women and say, “Hey, we’re looking for a 36G to test this bra, make sure it fits really well. Who is it? Where in the world are you?” We ship it off and usually do a FaceTime call and make sure we fit it. We’ve been doing that for a lot of … I mean that’s why we built and we were able to make these products and make sure that they’re accessible across multiple different disabilities.

Kyle:
You really pound the pavement. It’s just so cool. I’m sorry, I’m like fangirling over here. But yeah, it shows that you and your team put in the work. Also, I’m like a totally ignorant man right now. Do you have multiple sizes? This is not on our questions list, but you just said 36G, and I was like, that’s kind of outside of the norm of what I would consider … I don’t know that either. But it’s not one size fits all, is it? I’m sorry, this is just me being a man.

Emily:
My favorite moment to ever have it on [inaudible 00:19:56].

Kyle:
Yeah, this is going to be clipped for sure. I know.

Emma:
I have to be honest, Kyle, I’ve never gotten that question, but I love it and I am here for it. There are many different … Just like there are many different sizes for jeans, and well, it gets even more complex for bras because some folks might have really small rib cages, but a larger … Rib cage is right under where your ribs are, but a really large bust size. But you could have the same bust size as somebody else, but a different rib cage. Bras are the hardest thing to make and the hardest thing to fit right. So you have to have a size for all of that.
So actually our newest bra I think has 40 sizes, because you have to have … So it goes like 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, and it keeps going up from there. Then it goes from all the way from A to I. Our bras, our first thing is going from A to G, 32 to 46. So it’s a lot of iteration, a lot of … It’s a lot. So 42B, 402G, and so it’s a lot of sizes. So it’s a small business, that’s the most we can do for now, but we’re excited to expand more after that.

Emily:
I’m just going to say I actually love that Kyle brought this up because I am a weird bra size. So the fact that you go to, you said what? 46 and G, is that right? Or 46-

Emma:
[inaudible 00:21:26].

Emily:
That’s a big deal. That’s a big deal to me because I feel like when I go into a typical store, like, I don’t know, Victoria’s Secret, it’s impossible to find my bra size.

Emma:
I think all of us on our team have experienced different things on different points, whether it’s going into a store and not finding, as a non-disabled woman, not finding jeans that fit my curvy hips and not being in the size in this place called Paris, where everything is a double zero, or it’s, from a size perspective, we’re never finding something that fits or never something that’s functional, let alone actually getting into the store.
So I think that we all know what that feels like. I wanted to make sure I could, to the best of my ability, make sure that nobody felt left out when coming to our site. Even if it meant taking on more stock, and the headache that’s caused, it was really important for us. We just can’t wait to keep expanding.

Kyle:
I’m learning so much. Cool. Back to our our scripted questions, so tell us why entrepreneurship is such a big deal in the disability space and in the disability world. How has your journey shaped how you view the disability community and vice versa?

Emma:
Firstly, I think that the disabled entrepreneurs I know, and in my life, and on our board and our company are the best entrepreneurs I know. I also think we need to work on getting more funding for disabled owned businesses. So I think from an outsider’s perspective as a non-disabled person, and what I’ve heard from other folks is that my friends who are disabled entrepreneurs, it’s like you are forced from an inaccessible world to have to learn how all these traits, and they happen to be traits that are correlated with successful entrepreneurs. Whether that’s from being innovative, thinking outside the box, being adaptable and flexible, and working well with limited resources.
So when now it’s just time to get investors on board to be able to break the ableism that investors face and give more capital to disabled owned businesses. I think that entrepreneurship, at its core, is innovation and making changes that haven’t happened before. There’s a lot of changes that needs to be made and big companies aren’t working quickly enough to make sure that these changes are done. Who works quickly? Scrappy startups.
I think that startups can make a precedent in creating an accessible future, not just from accessible products, but also having disabled founders and CEOs, C-suites, boards, executives, interns, every level of the company creating inclusive hiring practices and accessible workplaces, talking about disability in the right way, creating all these different things. So I’m just really excited for what comes next in the next 10 years for entrepreneurship and disability.

Kyle:
Let’s keep going with that. Can you talk to us about how you do your marketing? Not just you specifically … Well, yes, you specifically, but also what do you think companies can do and are not doing to reach the disability community? How are you different?

Emma:
I’ll let Gemma speak in a moment because I know that once I start going, I have a hard time stopping. I just get really excited. But I think that before we can talk about how to reach the disability community and marketing, I really think that we need to talk about what happens behind the scenes and who is creating these marketing campaigns.
If 15 to 20% of the world’s population are disabled, then 15 to 20% of your workforce should be too. Again, it should be at all levels of the company, from strategic decision making to all levels, to interns, to everybody, to CEOs, all the way to the top.

Gemma:
To add to that, there’s nothing more confusing, and something somewhat infuriates me as well is when marketing and companies have a marketing campaign and they use disabled models, but their products aren’t accessible. So I think it’s really key that if you’re going out with an authentic marketing campaign and you want to include disabled people, you should have inclusive products.

Emma:
Yeah, I think if these companies hired more disabled people, they would put two and two together and be like, “Obviously this is not authentic and obviously this isn’t going to resonate well.” So I think that hiring people and listening are the two best things that companies can do in terms of marketing. Disabled people are everywhere. Depending on the product and depending on the channel, will differ based on which company it is. But if you have people internally as full-time employees, and not actually working on the campaigns, and not just a little focus group here that you rely on, then it’s going to be much easier to communicate and bring your product to life.

Emily:
Oh my gosh, my biggest pet peeve is when a company is like, “We talked to five disabled people and therefore our product is now good for all disabled people.”

Emma:
I know, I know. That was one of our things too, yeah, a lot of the women on our team have a disability. But five people is not enough. We got to get hundreds of people testing these products and making sure that it works. But I totally agree, it’s designed by and for disabled people. Company earnings or company report, 0%, not even listed or not even talking about disability in anything, or have no accessible … When you look at their Glassdoor for hiring, not inclusive, nothing’s inclusive. You’re like, who are you?

Emily:
I feel like I see that happen all the time. I think the one thing that always comes up for me too is not only are you focusing on what’s going on behind the scenes, but also how you’re presenting yourself to the world. So that, I think, is the biggest component of marketing for me. I am constantly looking for myself in marketing and I don’t see myself. I think that is enough to make me feel like a product is not for me. It wouldn’t work for me, it wouldn’t look right on me. I’m not the demographic. So I have that problem a lot.
But one thing I noticed you guys do is you show a lot of different people, a lot of different body types, a lot of different disabilities in the posts that you put up on social media. That is one of the most exciting things to me because I definitely don’t see enough of that. So I am pretty sure, based on the rest of this conversation, that’s got to be a conscious choice. But can we talk more about your thoughts on representation when it comes to marketing products?
Because yes, it’s great to hire disabled people. Yes, it’s really great to test with disabled people. But what about actually showing disabled people wearing or using your products? I feel like that shouldn’t be so radical, but it still continues to be radical.

Emma:
I completely agree, Emily, and I’ll let Gemma speak to this. But just to say that we’re actually planning a new photo shoot, and with our new launch of our new product that goes up to a G cup, we have even more body types, more different diversity, more age representation too. So I thank you for saying that we’re doing a good job with different disabilities. But there’s always more that we can do. So I’ll just preface that with this. But Gemma, why don’t you hit it off with our strategy?

Gemma:
Yeah, for sure. There’s always, like you said, there’s always more that can be done. As you said before, we want to have as many different types of disabilities as possible. If there’s any disability representation anywhere it’s often just white women in wheelchairs. Although these white women, they’re just as important, we want to see all types of people in intimates, and all types of disabilities, and all types of body types. So yeah, that’s really important to us.

Emma:
So yeah, I think that it’s like if there’s ever something, it’s like it’s never intersectional. It’s never talking about trans disabled people, or queer disabled people, or disabled people of color too. It typically shows one type of disability too. So when we think about that, we’re trying to think of, A, we know that disability is not a monolith. So being able to capture as many unique experiences as we can is important to us. So yeah, it’s been really important to us.

Emily:
I volunteer Kyle for your next photo shoot.

Emma:
We love it. Kyle, we’ll have to get your bra fitted and make sure your size, and that there’s more than one-

Kyle:
Now that I’m educated on how it all works, I will get that right to you.

Emma:
Absolutely.

Emily:
This is a great behind the scenes content where we are going to take a video measuring your bra size, Kyle.

Kyle:
Oh my God, we should actually do that. We should do that. That’s so-

Emma:
We can teach you-

Emily:
Oh, you think I’m joking, but I’m not, we’re doing this.

Kyle:
Yeah, no, we’re doing that.

Emma:
We’ll tell you all about how to measure.

Kyle:
Yeah, I’m so enlightened.

Emily:
I think there is a whole conversation here. I mean, I know we could go way off the rails. But I will just say I do think there is a whole conversation here about the measuring process and how inaccessible that is too.

Emma:
I literally just had coffee with somebody and we were just talking about this. I think we could start a whole other company that’s just inclusive measuring in terms of … That’s for bras, for all products. If my brain wasn’t entirely in bra mode and thinking about the support and wire free support and all of that stuff, I would maybe having me another ability to make another company all about sizing. But dear listeners, that is a great business. We need you and we’ll work with you. We need to think about more inclusive size measurements, tactics.

Emily:
See, you also … I said at the beginning when you said first company and you were like, “Well, this is my only company.” But now we already have a new company idea and we’re like 30 minutes into this episode.

Kyle:
All it took was a conversation, right?

Emily:
I also realize people are not seeing the video here, but just as the description, Emma is literally holding up a tape measure as she is talking.

Emma:
I have to have it on me at all times.

Emily:
Honestly, I respect it.

Kyle:
To kind of round this out, we know that when we put this episode out that we are inevitably going to get feedback from less than savory people about how disabled people aren’t sexier, can’t be sexier, that kind of crap. What would you say to people like that?

Emily:
That kind of crap.

Kyle:
Well, it’s just not true, but I want to know from their perspectives.

Gemma:
Do you know what? It’s just so disheartening to know that there are people out there that hold such ableist views and have such trolling behavior. I mean, we’ve all experienced it day-to-day, everyday lives on social media, in person. It’s just important to remember that their opinions do not define the worth of attractiveness of disabled people and to just ignore them. Get on with it.

Emma:
Yeah. Our final words to them are F you. Wow. There’s a line between when we’re managing our social media comments, which I’m sure you guys … On TikTok where it’s photos of … One, we could end up on, we’re always worried. We’re like, are we going to end up on the wrong side of TikTok or the right side of TikTok with this video? We’re like, are we going to end up on the creepy old man side where they’re saying the most inappropriate things about our team and everything? Or are we going to end up on disability TikTok, which is the best side of TikTok, arguably? There’s no argument there. It is the best side of TikTok.
It’s always a gamble, and it’s really frustrating. The stuff that people say on our TikTok videos can be really disgusting. It’s hard to say. It’s hard for us to think, especially as a non-disabled ally, at how much of my day do I want to spend building this company and making sure that people feel empowered and getting the right bra, redoing the cups, doing these things, working with amazing influencers? How much of the day do I want to spend educating these people that say nasty things on our comments where I feel obligated to educate as an ally or block? But it’s something I think about a lot.

Emily:
That’s a really good question. I think it’s something that Kyle and I think about a lot too, the picking your battles.
Yeah. We are constantly, how much energy do we spend engaging with arguing with people? How much do we put into actually doing the work?

Emma:
How much do I want to talk to user, 69, 74, 420 in [inaudible 00:36:01] trying to convince him of something? I will even … So, yeah.

Gemma:
Sometimes silence is more powerful than anything. You’re just giving them what they won’t otherwise.

Emily:
Wise words. On that note, I want to know, first and foremost, Kyle, what your final takeaway is before we go to our guests? Because I feel like you have been schooled a little bit today in the best possible way.

Kyle:
A little bit? This is, hey, I mean, I’m going to get off this call and we’re going to film me fitting a bra for me. I mean, I’m like, I’m ready. No, my final takeaway is that there’s things that you think you know. Every disabled person will argue disabled people are sexy and that they deserve to be.
But when we talk to people like this who are actually putting in the work and trying to make inclusive clothing, what I learned most of all is that this is not easy. It’s not. Not that both of you have claimed that it is, but just hearing about it from somebody who is disabled but who this product is not for, it’s just like, wow, there’s so much more work involved in all of this than I could have ever thought of. That’s just amazing to me.

Emily:
Yeah. I think also right now it’s so much work because there’s such a lack of resources for stuff like this. It doesn’t have to be this hard, I think. I feel like my final takeaway is that this needs to become the norm.

Emma:
I agree. I think it will be.

Emily:
You hope it will be. I hope it will be. But in the meantime, can you tell all of our fine and beautiful listeners where they can find you on social media?

Emma:
Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having us. This was such a pleasure, such a great conversation. So many laughs on a great afternoon. You could find us on Instagram at Liberare.co. That’s L-I-B-E-R-A-R-E.co. That’s the same as our URL, L-I-B-E-R-A-R-E.co. It’s not.com, it’s just .co. But that’s where we’re at.

Emily:
[inaudible 00:38:27] it on this, listeners, all of you. Be ready. Yeah. What about if you would like, where can our listeners find you, Emma and Gemma, as human beings outside of Liberare?

Emma:
Absolutely. I am frequently traveling back and forth, and so actually Instagram is the best way to reach me. I try to respond … Try to respond. I have my mom and my sister as my followers, so yes, I will respond. Speaking as if I have a lot of followers. I do not. I literally am, my mom and my sister, and my Instagram famous or TikTok famous dog. My mom’s dog. Emma_C, like the letter, Butler at … Emma_CButler is my Instagram channel.

Gemma:
Mine is at GemmaAdby. So G-E-M-M-A-A-D-B-Y.

Emily:
My god, there is so much spelling happening right now. Seriously, thank you both for joining us. You are both lovely. We’re super excited about what you’re doing. We really appreciate the real talk. It’s just been a joy having you both.

Emma:
It’s been a joy being on here. Thank you so much. We’re so excited. Thank you.

Emily:
Kyle, can we plug our Patreon?

Kyle:
Yes. If you are willing and able, you can go to patreon.com/theAccessibleStall. I know the name of the show. Just $1 a month ensures all current and future episodes of the Accessible Stall remain, what, Emily? I forgot.

Emily:
Accessible.

Kyle:
Oh, that’s right. On that note, this has been another episode of The Accessible Stall, and might we say, you look great today.

Emily:
We love that bra you’re wearing.

Kyle:
Yeah. Fantastic.

Emily:
Was that weird? Was that a weird way to end that? That’s a weird way to end that. We always tell people that they look good, but can we compliment them on their lingerie?

Kyle:
I think for this one we can. I didn’t do it. You did it. It’s fine.

Emily:
I did. It’s fine. You’re right. Absolutely. It’s fine. I meant it in the most loving way possible. Thanks so much for listening everyone. Have a good night. Stay … Oh my God. I don’t know what time it is. Okay. Thanks for listening. Bye.