Selma Blair is Stepping into the Light

Doesn’t the disability community deserve fashion with a capital F? “How do we do the things that are the things we talk about with each other every day?” she says. “That’s the light stuff.” She sees it as her task to “fight for the lighter things for people too.” It’s not, “Oh, clothes, whatever,” she says. “It’s like, No, that’s how I feel comfortable. I love that stuff.”

This is the task of Blair’s postdiagnosis life: balancing the needs of her body with the renewed ambition that disability has sparked in her. Recently she attended to the former by deciding to try ketamine, which some experts think can reduce inflammation and help build neurotransmitters in the brain. Blair has long feared psychedelics, but she wanted to trust her body enough to take it on an adventure. She did it with supervision, in a safe environment. The process ultimately amazed her. “It made me think, Oh God, there’s room for joy. I could learn to build joy here.”

And then there’s the latter—her desires, the future. She has her activism, her son, and her goals. Spending time with Arthur, who has “the empathy of a saint,” is a particular pleasure. From her new vantage point, she can also now see how disability is a spectrum, and the ways in which it’s coming for all of us. “If we’re lucky enough, we all know we’re all going to be in some form of disability or needing someone,” she says, “so let’s break that down now, and enjoy what everybody who’s lived a long time can offer us, because it does get better as it gets worse. You better see both, people!”

After all this, did Selma Blair ever think she’d find gratitude? “Life is wild,” she says, with a laugh. “I’m glad I stuck in there.”

Photographed by Lauren Dukoff
Stylist: Erin Walsh
Hair: John D 
Makeup: Molly R. Stern
Manicurist: Tom Bachik
On Set Producer: Connect the Dots

Read all the Glamour 2023 Woman of the Year profiles here:

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