 Good morning my beautiful internet friends, it's Tuesday and you know what that means. Welcome back to Taboo Tuesdays where we tackle topics that are challenging or difficult or weird or awkward to talk about. You guys ask me questions and I answer them as long as you're asked respectfully. Today we're going to talk about something that I had the privilege of never having to think about before. I mean like actually think about for myself which is how amputees are displayed in the media. Displayed sounds weird like we're being put on display but like how amputees are represented that's the word in the media. And as a blonde-haired girl in America I've never had to deal with a lack of representation in the media like so many people have to deal with or stereotyped representation right? Like there's a lot of people who look somewhat like me that I see on TV or on YouTube or in the movies things like that. I've never had to deal with that struggle until now. Now that I belong to a group a minority group of people I think I can say that I'm not sure that might be the wrong way to say that. Don't crucify me if I said that wrong. A population of people that is not the majority of people this is something I've now spent a good bit of time thinking about. I suddenly realized that wow it actually does matter whether it's on magazine covers or in photos or movies or TVs or books or wherever it matters if you see people who are like you. In a lot of ways they model things for us right? And Amy Purdy is someone who I really look up to and I'm so glad that she is such a public figure and a lot of people know who she is. She's a great example of what people can do when they're missing two legs. She's a double below the knee amputee and she's been on Dancing with the Stars and freaking killed it by the way. And she's a Paralympic snowboarder who's won lots of medals and so on and so forth. And so seeing her and seeing her public speeches and things like that gives me a lot of courage and gives me a lot of hope and being like yeah I can absolutely do those things I can work up to that right? And this is gonna sound silly but also how to train your dragon? Pick up the main character I freaking love. He's missing a leg and he's like the hero of the story right? And seeing a hero of the story missing a leg makes me kind of emotional and I think is really cool and super sweet and literally didn't matter to me at all before. Like it wasn't ever a thought because there were lots of heroes that looked like me if that makes sense who are white and blonde and female. With that being said and having acknowledged how important it is to be represented and that it actually does make a difference in how I feel anyways. I don't always love how amputees in general are portrayed in the media. There are generally like two paths laid out for us. This is literally just my experience but the first is it's a tragic tragic story. Something horrible that happened that ruins someone's life forever but that's really the minority story right? Like you might hear about someone who lost an arm or a limb in some accident something like that. But really that's only part of a larger story and the larger story is how they eventually ran a marathon or how they became a motivational speaker and now travel the world 300 days a year speaking about how they overcame adversity and then you go on Facebook and there's inspiration porn and what is inspiration porn you might ask? That's when you see clips of people who are disabled doing you know all these cool things which oftentimes are just like normal things and it'll end with like what's your excuse you know because if these people are missing legs and they're running races why are you sitting on the couch? Like we're used as a way to shame people into doing stuff which I have always disagreed with. Side note everyone's situation is different I hate the idea that like hey because I'm missing a leg and I went for a walk today you shouldn't sit at home. Like that's not logical that there's there's a big missing piece there and it's that your life is your life your story is your story and your circumstances are unique to you and I don't know what those are so I'm never going to use my life to be like if I can do it you can do it. That's a really big bias that I don't like but that's mostly what you see right? Like can you think of anyone that you've heard stories of that wasn't either completely tragic and their life was over or they are now doing incredible amazing superhuman things and are so inspirational? I can't and when I became an amputee it was hard because so many people were telling me that I was inspirational which I am sincerely so humbled by and so grateful for but there was also like a lot of pressure that came with it and then a lot of people would ask me like are you going to run a marathon or like are you going to do you know I almost had Spartan race what's what's the race called where you like run through fire? Tough Mudder is one of them but see like the poster in my head because we have them in Colorado all the time you guys you guys know what I'm talking about right? Let me know in the comment section down below I cannot think of it and I'd be asked these questions as I am four months out from amputation dealing with a ton of pain dealing with complications not having prosthetic limb having no idea what my future looks like dying to be able to just walk and people are like oh my god you're so inspirational when are you gonna run a marathon and I'm like I just want to walk like I would just love to live a normal freaking life and take a few steps and take my dogs for a walk in the morning and I do not blame people for a second for having this assumption that because you are disabled because you're an amputee you are automatically going to do something like characteristically amazing or inspirational or stunning with your life because that's how things have been portrayed right there's a middle ground there's a middle ground between being bitter and your life is ruined forever and being completely inspirational where nothing ever touches you and you are the most incredible human on planet earth like that's that's the zone in which I sit where I'm just a person I happen to have had my leg cut off for medical reasons so that I could hopefully live a better life where I'm in less pain I would love to do cool things but not to be inspirational not to be motivational because being active is in my nature like I've always been a really active person from the time I was like 13 onward ironically when I fell off the horse broke my ankle and realized that like oh things can be taken away from you really quickly and I got super involved with anything that I could do I love moving my body I love being able to do things running sounds freaking amazing to me that's like a dream of mine so yeah one day you'll probably see a video on this channel of me running my first 5k please jesus please god please universe I cannot wait for that moment and I will work hard for it but that's because that's who I am anyways that's just like what I would like to do not because I'm an amputee and I want to inspire you that's what I would be doing if I had two good likes anyways and yeah I think it'd be really cool to like run a the race I still can't think of the name of like a tough mutter you know do something like cool with like obstacles and all that kind of stuff but that's just because I like it again that's not because I'm so amazing because I'm missing a leg and I would do it anyways and overcome adversity I just want to do it because it'd be fun I think that's an important distinction to make yeah absolutely some things are more difficult because I'm missing a leg but I did a video a little while ago where I talked about the language that we use and like calling people cripple and do I take offense at that and and then looked at different words like disability and handicap and when I looked at the word handicap it talked about success being more difficult to achieve and I was like no no like certain things are more challenging like you definitely have to adjust to more I have had to adjust to so sorry my cats are like playing what are you guys doing they love each other I feel like witnessing a kitty fight in the background is not a great vibe for this video looks like they worked it out like I was saying yes some things are more challenging you have to adjust to a lot of things but guess what in your life you watching this you probably have specific and unique challenges that you have faced that you are facing that you are adjusting to that are also impressive and inspirational and also very challenging and difficult and we're all working on overcoming adversity in our own way I don't corner the market on that just because I'm an amputee and I think that the media sometimes portrays that so and answer to the question of how I feel about how amputees are portrayed in the media I think it's really important that we are there because we're people like anybody else as a person and I've come to realize in the past few months how important representation is how important it is to see someone who looks like you doing things for lack of a more eloquent description but at the same time if the only representation of that that you see is a stereotype and that isn't who you are that that also feels uncomfortable and also kind of perpetuates an incorrect idea and the way that people interact with you then changes because that's what they see if all you see is inspiration porn of amputees doing cool things and amazing things and living their life doing impressive crap then it makes sense that you would expect me to do that because that's all you see and I think you can apply that to any group of people when we talk about stereotypes in the media and I'll leave it at that for now at least from my thoughts but I'm curious what you think what kind of people group do you belong to or minority do you belong to and how do you feel about representation do you think it's important do you think it's done well or not I would love to hear I don't have your life experience I would love to hear what you think about this a gigantic thank you goes out to all of my patrons for making these videos possible and supporting me in so many ways thank you guys so much today's patron of the day is Sarah Loewenstein thank you Sarah so much for supporting me for believing in me and for taking care of me over on patreon and being a member of my team there to you watching this thank you for spending a few minutes of your day here with me truly humbling to me and I really appreciate it I look forward to hearing your comments and I will respond to as many as I possibly can thanks guys I love you I'm thinking of you and I will see you in the next video bye guys