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Aimee MullinsParalympic Athlete/Model/Actress “The more you try to tame the wild thing that you are, the less wonderful your life will be.” I didn’t know what to expect when I met Aimee Mullins for lunch at Gemma, a bistro next to the Bowery Hotel in Manhattan. A yard-long list of accomplishments provided by her publicist included a predictably humbling array of feats (world record-holder athlete, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation) for a thirty-two-year-old. But it also displayed a remarkable range. Olympian athlete and runway model? Division I track competitor and actress? One of three students selected for a full academic scholarship from the U.S. Department of Defense . . . and named to Rolling Stone’s annual “Hot List”? Oh yeah, and all of this on silicone and titanium prosthetic legs. Aimee was born with fibular hemimelia, a condition in which the shin bones are partially or totally absent. Her parents decided to have both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was one year old, with the hope that she would be able to walk rather than use a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The model part of her lengthy resume became instantly understandable when she walked toward our table. Tall and slender, she has long, sandy blonde hair and wideset hazel eyes that radiate candor. Wearing a peasant-style blouse, she looks like the girl next door whom everyone has a crush on. A quick perusal of Google Images shows how far up those natural good looks can be ratcheted. She morphs from fashion queen to intergalactic android to glossy celebrity. One arresting black-and-white photo, by Lynn Johnson, of her wearing her cheetah-styled sprinting prostheses is part of a permanent exhibit of the “Greatest American Women of the 20th Century” at the Women’s Museum in Dallas. Aimee was still mourning the loss of her cat, Socks, a twenty-year-old “superstar” who never seemed to age until her sudden demise a week earlier. “She has been with me since my childhood, so I’m feeling strangely orphaned now,” she told me. Growing up with two brothers in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Aimee played softball, volleyball, soccer, and raced on skis. She attended Georgetown University on that Defense Department scholarship and entered her first meet for disabled racers one summer when she was bored by her job at the Pentagon. “Initially, I just wanted to get out of work for a couple days,” she says. “I had always competed against people with legs. I didn’t know anything. I went to this meet with wooden legs. I was like some girl under a rock with 1930’s technology—but I won running against people with high-tech legs.” What can I do next? she wondered. She signed up for the long jump. A guy at the meet came up to her and said, “I hear you’re a double BK.” “I didn’t know the lingo. I thought, ‘What’s that—a hamburger?’” laughs Aimee. It stands for double below-the-knee amputee. He told Aimee that she wasn’t supposed to be able to do the long jump. That’s when she looked at the eight guys who had entered the event. Sure enough. They each had one good leg. No matter. Aimee came within four inches of the national record that day, and within a year she owned the world record. She’s still the only double BK to attempt it. The rest of the athletic story is just as amazing. She joined Georgetown’s women’s track team, the first disabled member to compete on an NCAA track team in history. She then trained, qualified for, and competed in the Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996 only eighteen months later. In addition to the long jump, she set world records there for the one hundred- and two hundred-meter sprints. She has since collected a broad portfolio of accolades and accomplishments as a speaker, board member, fashion model, athlete, and actress. In 2006 she appeared in Siofra Campbell’s Marvelous, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, and Carlos Brooks’s Quid Pro Quo. With such roles—and future ones that she hopes will come her way—another limitation associated with being “disabled” falls thunderously to the ground. This one has personal reverberations. When Aimee announced her intention to become an actress after playing the lead in a school play, her aunt said, “You’ll never make it. Hollywood only wants perfect people.” Aimee, thirty-two, writes to herself at twenty-one, after the 1996 Paralympics Games in Atlanta. Dear Aimee, Surprised? I know. The message every older person seems to want to send to a younger person is: Be focused, responsible; plan your life and then work hard because that leads to success and maturity. But adulthood is not about being inflexible and unafraid. You must not try to prevent the happy accidents that are strewn throughout life. Being “responsible” is really about being a consciously present, self-accountable adult. From twelve to twenty you’ve been a super achiever—trying to become organized and sensible, invulnerable to the prospect of failure. You ran your paper route, cleaned the house, and made the dinners at home. College was a solo project. You had to scare up a ride to the SATs and find your own way to the Defense Department scholarship. Oh, Aim, I now know that you could have gone to any college in the country for free . . . but who in your world back in Allentown knew enough to tell you that? Okay, so training yourself to become disciplined and serious has paid off beyond belief in some ways. You’re an Olympic athlete, and you’ve learned the incredible power of determination. But . . . here’s the big But: Being a super achiever isn’t about developing the habits of someone who is rigid, impervious, and unrelenting to any idea of “failure” or “weakness.” That isn’t real strength, and it isn’t the best place for you. You’re a dreamer, and yet daydreaming is something you’ve forgotten how to do. I want you to relearn how to be naïve. Being naïve isn’t about being unaware, it’s about being curious. It’s a different way of having an ongoing conversation with yourself about possibilities, about the potential both within and around you. Your naïveté made you fearless. It was as much a part of your successes as being responsible and determined. In society you’re encouraged to drop naïveté. You’re encouraged to be realistic. But what is being realistic for a girl without two ordinary legs? Being realistic would mean that you would have never learned how to walk on prosthetic legs. Or that it would take months to learn, instead of the days it took you. Or that you’d never have even tried the long jump, let along four-inch stilettos on a runway alongside supermodels, which you’ll do soon. You were right to always resist this yoke of being “disabled.” Growing up, you were expected to do anything and everything as well as or better than others. Making high honors. Playing musical instruments. Winning local art contests. Skiing. Sports of all kinds—against able-bodied kids because that’s who your brothers, cousins, and friends were. Only you decided your limits because if you could imagine it, you believed you could do it. Your report cards always had As for grades and minuses for attitude. “Aimee is never really ‘with’ us,” the teachers would write. Of course you weren’t. You were in ancient Egypt. Or sailing on the high seas. Jousting for a seat at the Round Table! There’s a lot to be said for a belief in yourself and your ability that comes from that childlike place, from a trusting mind of a six-year-old. Einstein said: “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” People will always be commenting on your determination, but you must remember the key role your curiosity played in shaping who you are and who you will become. A decade from now you’ll find it immensely powerful to be around a group of six-year-olds. You’ll walk into a classroom of kids whose parents have carefully prepared them to meet a woman without legs—a disabled woman. But then you tell them about the cheetah-legs that made you the fastest woman in the world on prostheses. When you ask them which animal’s or superhero’s or cartoon character’s legs they’d want if they wanted to be able to jump over a roof or make a fast escape, they immediately scream a kangaroo! No, a frog! No, Go-Go Gadget! And just like you did, they don’t see deficiency when they see your legs; they see pure potential. To these kids you’re not disabled—you’re super-abled. Surround yourself with the fantastical. You have everything you need inside of you already. You don’t have to see the whole journey laid out in front of you so you can “plan” for it. Honor the magic; be present for the adventure. Just trust that if you get from A to B, the next step C (or whatever letter you jump to!) will reveal itself. Keep the dreamer alive. It’s who you really are. Love, |
