Aimee Mullins Prosthetic Aesthetics on Redefining Beauty

Aimee Mullins was born without fibular bones, and had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was an infant. She learned to walk on prosthetics, then to run -- competing at the national and international level as a champion sprinter, and setting world records at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. At Georgetown, where she double-majored in history and diplomacy, she became the first double amputee to compete in NCAA Division 1 track and field.

After school, Mullins did some modeling -- including a legendary runway show for Alexander McQueen -- and then turned to acting, appearing as the Leopard Queen in Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. In 2008 she was the official Ambassador for the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival.

She's a passionate advocate for a new kind of thinking about prosthetics, and recently mentioned to an interviewer that she's been looking closely at MIT's in-development powered robotic ankle, "which I fully plan on having."

Notes from the speech: "What does a beautiful woman have to look like? What is a sexy body? What does it mean to have a disability? Pamela anderson has more prothetic in her body than I do and nobody calls her disabled. Fashion designer Alexander McQueen and Nick Knight ...doing a fashion shoot and first runway show. Hand carved wooden legs solid ash..everyone thought they were boots. Poetry matters. Poetry is what elevates the banal to a piece of art...In my next adventure...a film by Matthew Barney called "the creamaster cycle"...My legs can be wearable sculpture."

"...Even at this point I started to move away from the necessity to emulate humanness as the only aesthetic...we made what people lovingly call glass legs even though they are made from...the same materials that bowling balls are made of.  Then we made these legs that are cast in soil...with potato root system...with a little grass toe...cheetah legs...jellyfish legs...today I have over a dozen legs...I can change my height (I have a variation of hights)...what is exciting to me so much, is that combining cutting edge technology robotics bionics with the age old poetry we are moving closer to understanding our modern humanity...it is our humanity and all the potential within us that makes us beautiful."