There have been some remarkable Amputees of the Week so far but they've all been a bit....well.....male.

Not so this week.

Aimee Mullins was born without fibula bones in both legs. She underwent a double amputation below the knee at the age of one.

She represented the United States at the 1996 Paralympic Games, and while at Georgetown University, became the first disabled athlete to compete as part of a NCAA Division I track team. In 1996, she set world records for leg amputees in the 200m, 100m and long jump.

In 1988, she was approached by Alexander McQueen to model in his couture show and took to the catwalk in legs designed by McQueen. She has recently moved into acting.

Mullins says of her modelling debut:
"I knew absolutely nothing about fashion, but the idea of modelling really interested me. It started after a speaking engagement at a conference one day, when a man said to me: 'You're really beautiful. You don't look disabled.' I wasn't offended, but it made me think that he obviously didn't really think of me as disabled, or he wouldn't have said that to me. I obviously looked like his idea of 'one of us', rather than 'them'.

It struck me that people found me very sexy, but if you sat them down and said to them, 'There's someone over there who's missing both legs from the shin down', most people would never find that sensual. Yet when people saw me as a whole package, without realising, they felt all those things that aren't supposed to happen. Modelling seemed a sneaky way to make a point about that." (Source: The Observer)

Aimee Mullins: Bilateral babe extraordinaire and this week's.....Amputee of the Week.

Aimee Mullins' Website



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