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I was speaking to a group of about 300 kids,

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ages six to eight, at a children's museum,

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and I brought with me a bag full of legs,

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similar to the kinds of things you see up here,

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and had them laid out on a table for the kids.

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And, from my experience, you know, kids are naturally curious

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about what they don't know, or don't understand,

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or is foreign to them.

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They only learn to be frightened of those differences

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when an adult influences them to behave that way,

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and maybe censors that natural curiosity,

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or you know, reins in the question-asking

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in the hopes of them being polite little kids.

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So I just pictured a first grade teacher out in the lobby

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with these unruly kids, saying, "Now, whatever you do,

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don't stare at her legs."

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But, of course, that's the point.

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That's why I was there, I wanted to invite them to look and explore.

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So I made a deal with the adults

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that the kids could come in without any adults for two minutes

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on their own.

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The doors open, the kids descend on this table of legs,

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and they are poking and prodding, and they're wiggling toes,

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and they're trying to put their full weight on the sprinting leg

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to see what happens with that.

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And I said, "Kids, really quickly --

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I woke up this morning, I decided I wanted to be able to jump over a house --

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nothing too big, two or three stories --

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but, if you could think of any animal, any superhero, any cartoon character,

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anything you can dream up right now,

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what kind of legs would you build me?"

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And immediately a voice shouted, "Kangaroo!"

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"No, no, no! Should be a frog!"

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"No. It should be Go Go Gadget!"

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"No, no, no! It should be the Incredibles."

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And other things that I don't -- aren't familiar with.

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And then, one eight-year-old said,

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"Hey, why wouldn't you want to fly too?"

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And the whole room, including me, was like, "Yeah."

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(Laughter)

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And just like that, I went from being a woman

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that these kids would have been trained to see as "disabled"

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to somebody that had potential that their bodies didn't have yet.

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Somebody that might even be super-abled.

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Interesting.

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So some of you actually saw me at TED, 11 years ago.

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And there's been a lot of talk about how life-changing this conference is

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for both speakers and attendees, and I am no exception.

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TED literally was the launch pad to the next decade of my life's exploration.

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At the time, the legs I presented were groundbreaking in prosthetics.

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I had woven carbon fiber sprinting legs

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modeled after the hind leg of a cheetah,

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which you may have seen on stage yesterday.

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And also these very life-like, intrinsically painted silicone legs.

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So at the time, it was my opportunity to put a call out

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to innovators outside the traditional medical prosthetic community

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to come bring their talent to the science and to the art

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of building legs.

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So that we can stop compartmentalizing form, function and aesthetic,

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and assigning them different values.

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Well, lucky for me, a lot of people answered that call.

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And the journey started, funny enough, with a TED conference attendee --

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Chee Pearlman, who hopefully is in the audience somewhere today.

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She was the editor then of a magazine called ID,

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and she gave me a cover story.

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This started an incredible journey.

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Curious encounters were happening to me at the time;

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I'd been accepting numerous invitations to speak

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on the design of the cheetah legs around the world.

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And people would come up to me after the conference, after my talk,

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men and women.

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And the conversation would go something like this,

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"You know Aimee, you're very attractive.

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You don't look disabled."

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(Laughter)

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I thought, "Well, that's amazing,

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because I don't feel disabled."

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And it really opened my eyes to this conversation

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that could be explored, about beauty.

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What does a beautiful woman have to look like?

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What is a sexy body?

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And interestingly, from an identity standpoint,

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what does it mean to have a disability?

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I mean, people -- Pamela Anderson has more prosthetic in her body than I do.

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Nobody calls her disabled.

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(Laughter)

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So this magazine, through the hands of graphic designer Peter Saville,

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went to fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and photographer Nick Knight,

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who were also interested in exploring that conversation.

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So, three months after TED I found myself on a plane

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to London, doing my first fashion shoot,

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which resulted in this cover --

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"Fashion-able"?

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Three months after that, I did my first runway show for Alexander McQueen

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on a pair of hand-carved wooden legs made from solid ash.

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Nobody knew -- everyone thought they were wooden boots.

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Actually, I have them on stage with me:

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grapevines, magnolias -- truly stunning.

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Poetry matters.

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Poetry is what elevates the banal and neglected object

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to a realm of art.

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It can transform the thing that might have made people fearful

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into something that invites them to look,

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and look a little longer,

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and maybe even understand.

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I learned this firsthand with my next adventure.

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The artist Matthew Barney, in his film opus called the "The Cremaster Cycle."

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This is where it really hit home for me --

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that my legs could be wearable sculpture.

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And even at this point, I started to move away from the need to replicate human-ness

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as the only aesthetic ideal.

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So we made what people lovingly referred to as glass legs

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even though they're actually optically clear polyurethane,

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a.k.a. bowling ball material.

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Heavy!

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Then we made these legs that are cast in soil

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with a potato root system growing in them, and beetroots out the top,

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and a very lovely brass toe.

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That's a good close-up of that one.

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Then another character was a half-woman, half-cheetah --

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a little homage to my life as an athlete.

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14 hours of prosthetic make-up

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to get into a creature that had articulated paws,

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claws and a tail that whipped around,

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like a gecko.

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(Laughter)

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And then another pair of legs we collaborated on were these --

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look like jellyfish legs,

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also polyurethane.

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And the only purpose that these legs can serve,

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outside the context of the film,

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is to provoke the senses and ignite the imagination.

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So whimsy matters.

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Today, I have over a dozen pair of prosthetic legs

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that various people have made for me,

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and with them I have different negotiations of the terrain under my feet,

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and I can change my height --

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I have a variable of five different heights.

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(Laughter)

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Today, I'm 6'1".

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And I had these legs made a little over a year ago

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at Dorset Orthopedic in England

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and when I brought them home to Manhattan,

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my first night out on the town, I went to a very fancy party.

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And a girl was there who has known me for years

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at my normal 5'8".

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Her mouth dropped open when she saw me,

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and she went, "But you're so tall!"

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And I said, "I know. Isn't it fun?"

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I mean, it's a little bit like wearing stilts on stilts,

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but I have an entirely new relationship to door jams

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that I never expected I would ever have.

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And I was having fun with it.

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And she looked at me,

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and she said, "But, Aimee, that's not fair."

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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And the incredible thing was she really meant it.

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It's not fair that you can change your height,

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as you want it.

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And that's when I knew --

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that's when I knew that the conversation with society

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has changed profoundly

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in this last decade.

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It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency.

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It's a conversation about augmentation.

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It's a conversation about potential.

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A prosthetic limb doesn't represent the need to replace loss anymore.

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It can stand as a symbol that the wearer

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has the power to create whatever it is that they want to create

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in that space.

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So people that society once considered to be disabled

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can now become the architects of their own identities

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and indeed continue to change those identities

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by designing their bodies

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from a place of empowerment.

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And what is exciting to me so much right now

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is that by combining cutting-edge technology --

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robotics, bionics --

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with the age-old poetry,

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we are moving closer to understanding our collective humanity.

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I think that if we want to discover the full potential

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in our humanity,

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we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths

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and those glorious disabilities that we all have.

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I think of Shakespeare's Shylock:

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"If you prick us, do we not bleed,

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and if you tickle us, do we not laugh?"

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It is our humanity,

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and all the potential within it,

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that makes us beautiful.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)