Aimee Mullins Has Superpowers

Wow, you've got to check out this video, featuring paralympic champion Aimee Mullins and her 12 pairs of legs. They're prosthetics, of course, and they're all over the floor!

She set records in the 100-meter dash and the long jump. Oh yeah, and I believe she's a fashion model. Did I mention, she's gorgeous!

She did a TED talk last month and it's superb.

She asks:
"What is a sexy body?"
and:
"What does it mean to have a disability?"
and she jokes:
"Pamela Anderson has more prosthetics in her body than I do, nobody calls her disabled."

I think maybe this quote really resonated with me the most:
"It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency, it's a conversation about augmentation, it's a conversation about potential."

Me here: Whoo hoo, that's right. We're not here to overcome our disability. That's pretty much the ableist Hollywood story line, isn't it. "Jenny" was born autistic, and well, we call her special, and look how she overcame. Or "Private Johnson" was hit with shrapnel, and lost her (fill-in-the- blank with the attribute-of- your-choice) but look how she overcame. Oh please. Disability is not a deficiency that needs overcoming. Prejudice is a deficiency that needs overcoming! It's sooo patronizing to act like there's something wrong that we need to overcome. And it's shaming. And this prejudice has become so institutionalized and normalized that we don't even see it. We're proud of who we are. And sure, we do augment. We're here to celebrate who we are, and be empowered to do that. We're our own culture. We offer a helluva lot that able folks don't have.

Which leads into this quote, which I may be mangling it a bit:
"People once considered disabled, can now become architects of their own identities.. . through empowerment. "

Watch it, and share!






Hat tip to A Life Less Mediated.