What would that look like?

In the recent discussion of Aimee Mullins in Sports Illustrated, Sara, Trin and I have been debating Mullins' portrayal in that mag, and the portrayal of amputees and disabled people, generally, by the media. In the sidebar at right I've got a category for analysis of media coverage of disability, Wheelchair Dancer frequently looks at NYT coverage (examples of that here, here, and here), and there's a thoughtful discussion at Medical Humanities Blog, also about a woman amputee excelling in her career.

So, what would positive media coverage of Aimee Mullins, specifically, look like? How would someone laud her successes without putting her on the supercrip pedestal or fetishizing her amputated limbs either textually or with photos? Here are a couple alternatives to the SI story's sexualized supercrip slant:

• Photographer Lynn Johnson offers twelve photos of Mullins' life -- athletic, personal, typical and extraordinary in so many ways.


• The Women's Sports Foundation, where Mullins is currently serving as president, interviews her about athletic training, being a role model, advice for disabled girls, runway modeling and changing attitudes.

And here is Petra Kuppers on "Addenda? Contemporary Cyborgs and the Mediation of Embodiment" where she specifically analyzes a fashion photo of Mullins wearing those old-fashioned wooden prosthetics she briefly mentions in the SI article. It's a complex look at disability, feminism, Mullins' agency or complicity with the image, "false consciousness" and media portrayal both of disability and femininity. I'm too short on time and energy just now to write about it, but it's right on topic here.

Visual description: There are three photos here. The first is one of Lynn Johnson's collection on Mullins and is in black and white. Mullins stands in her athletic uniform and high tech racing prosthetics on a race track facing a woman holding a microphone and two men with tv cameras on their shoulders. This is a media interview at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta.

The second photo is the fashion art pic Kuppers analyzes and this is her thorough description: "The large colour photo presents Mullins sittting on the floor, her head in her hand in a defeated or melancholic position. She appears squeezed into the frame, contained by the photo’s borders. The colours of the image are brown and beige, earthy, taking up the blond of Mullins’ wild hair and echoed in the make-up. Mullins is wearing various stiff items of clothing, all of which extend out of the photo frame. The clothes are referenced in the accompanying text, in accordance with the generic conventions of fashion photography. The comprise of: a calico-coloured skirt skeleton reminiscent of whalebone crinoline underskirts (crinolin [sic] frame, for hire from Angels and Bermans) and a textured close-fitting top (suede T-Shirt by Alexander McQueen) to which shoulder ornaments are attached that look like wooden filigree Japanese or Spanish fans (wooden fan jacket, by Givenchy Haute Couture). She is also wearing artificial ‘mannequin’ lower legs (not referenced as ‘model’s own’ in the picture blurb, but extensively discussed in the Press). The legs look old and stained, and while one foot with coloured toenails is visible in the frame, the other reaches out to frame-left."

The final photo is Mullins running full-out on a beach with the ocean and blue sky behind her. She's heading down the beach away from the camera and appears to be wearing the exact black bra top and string bikini bottom she wears in the posed studio photo topping the SI article -- that much-discussed other photo.