How Selma Blair Is Helping to Make Shopping Easier for People with Disabilities
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Raul Romo
Selma Blair wants to make shopping easier — and more fun — for people with disabilities in her new role as QVC Brand Ambassador for Accessibility.
Blair, who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2018, says that when she first received her diagnosis and searched for adaptive products, "there weren't a lot of options."
"When I did Google things like clothing, there was nothing," she says. "Just 'find a cane in the United States' — we are not a place that celebrates a walking stick. We don't realize there is a hole for people that don't have the same needs and wants as the non-disabled people."
Blair eventually found jeans with an elastic waistband on QVC. "QVC's already doing accessible clothing in a way that they don't even know," she points out. "That's so much why their fans have grown older with them because the clothes are still ones they can pull on."
QVC has launched a dedicated Accessible & Adaptive category with products ranging from clothes and beauty tools to home gear and electronics.
"It's such a privilege," Blair tells PEOPLE of her new role. "I am just one person representing a whole huge part of the population. And really, the disabled community needs allies. I'm an ally. I also happen to have my own [disability]."
The actress, 50, calls QVC "the original influencers" because of the vCommerce retailer's longstanding history of being in people's homes.
"I grew up in the Midwest. It was what was on in the background always, even as a kid," she says. "A lot of people [with disabilities] are people that might be home more than some people, or there's plenty of caregivers at home. It's a huge part of the audience and these people are beloved family members who tune in. So what's better than a trusted source to start exploring?"
The Dancing with the Stars alumna jokes that her "big mouth" and friends in the disabled community helped her figure out what products she needs and where to get them, as did lived experience.
"There's a lot of things I just forget that are not going to be easy for me, like gardening," Blair says. "I don't get on the ground like that as much anymore because getting up by myself after being on the ground is really hard. There's things I see here that's like, this can go into the disability space."
Blair names fellow actress and longtime friend Christina Applegate, who also has MS, as one of the pals she's been able to lean on.
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"We check in all the time," Blair says. "We live right by each other. Our kids were best friends. It's just wild that one of your closest people gets the same supposedly incurable disease as you. It's truly been a really strange, magical time, for lack of a better word."
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The Cruel Intentions star actually recognized Applegate's MS symptoms one day during a playdate between her son Arthur, now 11, and Applegate's daughter Sadie, now 12.
"I was noticing the symptoms when she was over," Blair recalls. "I was like, 'You've got to get an MRI.' She did."
Today, Blair says of Applegate, 52, "She's doing beautifully. Seeing her in this last season of Dead to Me, I know the love that she has garnered for her badass attitude."
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Blair herself has entered remission for her relapse remitting MS after having a bone marrow transplant a few years ago.
"It really took me three years to start to get online in my brain again, for that flare to actually die down, because I had really been in active flare since my son was born, which is unheard of," she says. "I was definitely weakened by the chemo and the forced menopause it brought, so it's all been a journey and I've come out of it learning more and trusting my body more."
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Blair appreciates that QVC has embraced serving people with disabilities and that she can be part of that experience. "Giving information to people is something I love," the Mean Baby author says.
She also welcomes the idea of shopping feeling fun again.
"All people have a lot of what we call 'guilty pleasures' in our daily lives," Blair says. "Well, the disabled community doesn't have a lot of consumer guilty pleasures. It's very serious. And it doesn't always have to be. There can be lighter subjects and some of those lighter subjects are shopping and making time for yourself. I love that QVC is welcoming people in the disabled community. There's an evolution in that."
