I'm a college student still, so when people ask me, I don't have any issue explaining it away. "Do you have a job?" "No, I'm a student" and it ends there. When I do get there, I imagine I'll just tell them I'm on SSI. I'm always up-front about it, and if they question it, I will use the old "looks can be deceiving" and tell them I have a lung disease. If they question it further *politely* I will happily answer. If they give me attitude, I won't bother with them, except to tell them to piss off. That's generally how I go about it.
I got harassed at a bar last weekend. I was hacking outside because I had to walk through smoke to get outside (everyone was, of course, right outside the door). So I sat up on some steps by the street and hacked for a while. Then I hear drunk male morons down by the door (smoking away) say "Sounds like she's coughing up a furball, better call 911, har har har" with their imbecilic stupid drunk-man-laugh. I got up immediately, walked down there and said (except I didn't censor myself) "Do you have an effing problem?" and they just looked at me. I asked them twice more if they had an effing problem, and they continued to stare. I then said "I have a genetic lung disease, is that okay with you?" and then, thankfully, my Mike showed up to take me home. As I got in the car, my friend Caite was talking to them, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about, and if you did, you'd feel like (poop)."
I don't know why I just shared that, but I had to. Haha. Basically, if people are polite, they can ask me whatever they want. and I'll answer it happily. If they are rude, they get quite a big attitude out of such a little girl, along with a potty mouth that I don't bother to censor when talking to ignorant jackasses.
