0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
I was speaking to a group of about 300 kids,

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
ages six to eight, at a children's museum,

0:00:05.000,0:00:09.000
and I brought with me a bag full of legs,

0:00:09.000,0:00:11.000
similar to the kinds of things you see up here,

0:00:11.000,0:00:13.000
and had them laid out on a table for the kids.

0:00:13.000,0:00:17.000
And, from my experience, you know, kids are naturally curious

0:00:17.000,0:00:19.000
about what they don't know, or don't understand,

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
or is foreign to them.

0:00:21.000,0:00:23.000
They only learn to be frightened of those differences

0:00:23.000,0:00:26.000
when an adult influences them to behave that way,

0:00:26.000,0:00:29.000
and maybe censors that natural curiosity,

0:00:29.000,0:00:32.000
or you know, reins in the question-asking

0:00:32.000,0:00:34.000
in the hopes of them being polite little kids.

0:00:34.000,0:00:38.000
So I just pictured a first grade teacher out in the lobby

0:00:38.000,0:00:41.000
with these unruly kids, saying, "Now, whatever you do,

0:00:41.000,0:00:43.000
don't stare at her legs."

0:00:43.000,0:00:45.000
But, of course, that's the point.

0:00:45.000,0:00:48.000
That's why I was there, I wanted to invite them to look and explore.

0:00:48.000,0:00:52.000
So I made a deal with the adults

0:00:52.000,0:00:55.000
that the kids could come in without any adults for two minutes

0:00:55.000,0:00:57.000
on their own.

0:00:57.000,0:01:01.000
The doors open, the kids descend on this table of legs,

0:01:01.000,0:01:04.000
and they are poking and prodding, and they're wiggling toes,

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
and they're trying to put their full weight on the sprinting leg

0:01:06.000,0:01:08.000
to see what happens with that.

0:01:08.000,0:01:10.000
And I said, "Kids, really quickly --

0:01:10.000,0:01:14.000
I woke up this morning, I decided I wanted to be able to jump over a house --

0:01:14.000,0:01:16.000
nothing too big, two or three stories --

0:01:16.000,0:01:21.000
but, if you could think of any animal, any superhero, any cartoon character,

0:01:21.000,0:01:23.000
anything you can dream up right now,

0:01:23.000,0:01:25.000
what kind of legs would you build me?"

0:01:25.000,0:01:28.000
And immediately a voice shouted, "Kangaroo!"

0:01:28.000,0:01:30.000
"No, no, no! Should be a frog!"

0:01:30.000,0:01:32.000
"No. It should be Go Go Gadget!"

0:01:32.000,0:01:34.000
"No, no, no! It should be the Incredibles."

0:01:34.000,0:01:37.000
And other things that I don't -- aren't familiar with.

0:01:37.000,0:01:39.000
And then, one eight-year-old said,

0:01:39.000,0:01:43.000
"Hey, why wouldn't you want to fly too?"

0:01:44.000,0:01:47.000
And the whole room, including me, was like, "Yeah."

0:01:47.000,0:01:49.000
(Laughter)

0:01:49.000,0:01:52.000
And just like that, I went from being a woman

0:01:52.000,0:01:56.000
that these kids would have been trained to see as "disabled"

0:01:56.000,0:02:01.000
to somebody that had potential that their bodies didn't have yet.

0:02:01.000,0:02:03.000
Somebody that might even be super-abled.

0:02:03.000,0:02:05.000
Interesting.

0:02:05.000,0:02:10.000
So some of you actually saw me at TED, 11 years ago.

0:02:10.000,0:02:14.000
And there's been a lot of talk about how life-changing this conference is

0:02:14.000,0:02:18.000
for both speakers and attendees, and I am no exception.

0:02:18.000,0:02:24.000
TED literally was the launch pad to the next decade of my life's exploration.

0:02:24.000,0:02:29.000
At the time, the legs I presented were groundbreaking in prosthetics.

0:02:29.000,0:02:31.000
I had woven carbon fiber sprinting legs

0:02:31.000,0:02:33.000
modeled after the hind leg of a cheetah,

0:02:33.000,0:02:35.000
which you may have seen on stage yesterday.

0:02:35.000,0:02:41.000
And also these very life-like, intrinsically painted silicone legs.

0:02:41.000,0:02:45.000
So at the time, it was my opportunity to put a call out

0:02:45.000,0:02:49.000
to innovators outside the traditional medical prosthetic community

0:02:49.000,0:02:53.000
to come bring their talent to the science and to the art

0:02:53.000,0:02:55.000
of building legs.

0:02:55.000,0:03:00.000
So that we can stop compartmentalizing form, function and aesthetic,

0:03:00.000,0:03:02.000
and assigning them different values.

0:03:02.000,0:03:06.000
Well, lucky for me, a lot of people answered that call.

0:03:06.000,0:03:11.000
And the journey started, funny enough, with a TED conference attendee --

0:03:11.000,0:03:14.000
Chee Pearlman, who hopefully is in the audience somewhere today.

0:03:14.000,0:03:17.000
She was the editor then of a magazine called ID,

0:03:17.000,0:03:20.000
and she gave me a cover story.

0:03:20.000,0:03:23.000
This started an incredible journey.

0:03:23.000,0:03:25.000
Curious encounters were happening to me at the time;

0:03:25.000,0:03:28.000
I'd been accepting numerous invitations to speak

0:03:28.000,0:03:31.000
on the design of the cheetah legs around the world.

0:03:31.000,0:03:34.000
And people would come up to me after the conference, after my talk,

0:03:34.000,0:03:36.000
men and women.

0:03:36.000,0:03:38.000
And the conversation would go something like this,

0:03:38.000,0:03:42.000
"You know Aimee, you're very attractive.

0:03:42.000,0:03:44.000
You don't look disabled."

0:03:44.000,0:03:45.000
(Laughter)

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
I thought, "Well, that's amazing,

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
because I don't feel disabled."

0:03:49.000,0:03:54.000
And it really opened my eyes to this conversation

0:03:54.000,0:03:56.000
that could be explored, about beauty.

0:03:56.000,0:03:59.000
What does a beautiful woman have to look like?

0:03:59.000,0:04:01.000
What is a sexy body?

0:04:01.000,0:04:03.000
And interestingly, from an identity standpoint,

0:04:03.000,0:04:06.000
what does it mean to have a disability?

0:04:06.000,0:04:09.000
I mean, people -- Pamela Anderson has more prosthetic in her body than I do.

0:04:09.000,0:04:11.000
Nobody calls her disabled.

0:04:11.000,0:04:16.000
(Laughter)

0:04:17.000,0:04:21.000
So this magazine, through the hands of graphic designer Peter Saville,

0:04:21.000,0:04:26.000
went to fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and photographer Nick Knight,

0:04:26.000,0:04:28.000
who were also interested in exploring that conversation.

0:04:28.000,0:04:31.000
So, three months after TED I found myself on a plane

0:04:31.000,0:04:36.000
to London, doing my first fashion shoot,

0:04:36.000,0:04:37.000
which resulted in this cover --

0:04:37.000,0:04:40.000
"Fashion-able"?

0:04:40.000,0:04:44.000
Three months after that, I did my first runway show for Alexander McQueen

0:04:44.000,0:04:49.000
on a pair of hand-carved wooden legs made from solid ash.

0:04:49.000,0:04:52.000
Nobody knew -- everyone thought they were wooden boots.

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
Actually, I have them on stage with me:

0:04:55.000,0:04:59.000
grapevines, magnolias -- truly stunning.

0:05:00.000,0:05:03.000
Poetry matters.

0:05:03.000,0:05:08.000
Poetry is what elevates the banal and neglected object

0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000
to a realm of art.

0:05:10.000,0:05:16.000
It can transform the thing that might have made people fearful

0:05:16.000,0:05:18.000
into something that invites them to look,

0:05:18.000,0:05:21.000
and look a little longer,

0:05:21.000,0:05:23.000
and maybe even understand.

0:05:23.000,0:05:27.000
I learned this firsthand with my next adventure.

0:05:27.000,0:05:31.000
The artist Matthew Barney, in his film opus called the "The Cremaster Cycle."

0:05:31.000,0:05:34.000
This is where it really hit home for me --

0:05:34.000,0:05:36.000
that my legs could be wearable sculpture.

0:05:36.000,0:05:43.000
And even at this point, I started to move away from the need to replicate human-ness

0:05:43.000,0:05:45.000
as the only aesthetic ideal.

0:05:45.000,0:05:49.000
So we made what people lovingly referred to as glass legs

0:05:49.000,0:05:53.000
even though they're actually optically clear polyurethane,

0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000
a.k.a. bowling ball material.

0:05:55.000,0:05:56.000
Heavy!

0:05:56.000,0:05:58.000
Then we made these legs that are cast in soil

0:05:58.000,0:06:02.000
with a potato root system growing in them, and beetroots out the top,

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
and a very lovely brass toe.

0:06:04.000,0:06:06.000
That's a good close-up of that one.

0:06:06.000,0:06:08.000
Then another character was a half-woman, half-cheetah --

0:06:08.000,0:06:10.000
a little homage to my life as an athlete.

0:06:10.000,0:06:13.000
14 hours of prosthetic make-up

0:06:13.000,0:06:17.000
to get into a creature that had articulated paws,

0:06:17.000,0:06:21.000
claws and a tail that whipped around,

0:06:21.000,0:06:23.000
like a gecko.

0:06:23.000,0:06:24.000
(Laughter)

0:06:25.000,0:06:29.000
And then another pair of legs we collaborated on were these --

0:06:29.000,0:06:31.000
look like jellyfish legs,

0:06:31.000,0:06:33.000
also polyurethane.

0:06:33.000,0:06:36.000
And the only purpose that these legs can serve,

0:06:36.000,0:06:39.000
outside the context of the film,

0:06:39.000,0:06:42.000
is to provoke the senses and ignite the imagination.

0:06:42.000,0:06:45.000
So whimsy matters.

0:06:45.000,0:06:51.000
Today, I have over a dozen pair of prosthetic legs

0:06:51.000,0:06:53.000
that various people have made for me,

0:06:53.000,0:06:57.000
and with them I have different negotiations of the terrain under my feet,

0:06:57.000,0:06:59.000
and I can change my height --

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
I have a variable of five different heights.

0:07:01.000,0:07:03.000
(Laughter)

0:07:03.000,0:07:05.000
Today, I'm 6'1".

0:07:05.000,0:07:08.000
And I had these legs made a little over a year ago

0:07:08.000,0:07:10.000
at Dorset Orthopedic in England

0:07:10.000,0:07:12.000
and when I brought them home to Manhattan,

0:07:12.000,0:07:14.000
my first night out on the town, I went to a very fancy party.

0:07:14.000,0:07:17.000
And a girl was there who has known me for years

0:07:17.000,0:07:19.000
at my normal 5'8".

0:07:19.000,0:07:21.000
Her mouth dropped open when she saw me,

0:07:21.000,0:07:24.000
and she went, "But you're so tall!"

0:07:24.000,0:07:26.000
And I said, "I know. Isn't it fun?"

0:07:26.000,0:07:28.000
I mean, it's a little bit like wearing stilts on stilts,

0:07:28.000,0:07:31.000
but I have an entirely new relationship to door jams

0:07:31.000,0:07:33.000
that I never expected I would ever have.

0:07:33.000,0:07:36.000
And I was having fun with it.

0:07:36.000,0:07:38.000
And she looked at me,

0:07:38.000,0:07:40.000
and she said, "But, Aimee, that's not fair."

0:07:40.000,0:07:43.000
(Laughter)

0:07:43.000,0:07:45.000
(Applause)

0:07:45.000,0:07:49.000
And the incredible thing was she really meant it.

0:07:49.000,0:07:51.000
It's not fair that you can change your height,

0:07:51.000,0:07:53.000
as you want it.

0:07:53.000,0:07:55.000
And that's when I knew --

0:07:55.000,0:07:58.000
that's when I knew that the conversation with society

0:07:58.000,0:08:00.000
has changed profoundly

0:08:00.000,0:08:02.000
in this last decade.

0:08:02.000,0:08:07.000
It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency.

0:08:07.000,0:08:09.000
It's a conversation about augmentation.

0:08:09.000,0:08:13.000
It's a conversation about potential.

0:08:13.000,0:08:18.000
A prosthetic limb doesn't represent the need to replace loss anymore.

0:08:18.000,0:08:21.000
It can stand as a symbol that the wearer

0:08:21.000,0:08:24.000
has the power to create whatever it is that they want to create

0:08:24.000,0:08:26.000
in that space.

0:08:26.000,0:08:29.000
So people that society once considered to be disabled

0:08:29.000,0:08:34.000
can now become the architects of their own identities

0:08:34.000,0:08:36.000
and indeed continue to change those identities

0:08:36.000,0:08:38.000
by designing their bodies

0:08:38.000,0:08:41.000
from a place of empowerment.

0:08:41.000,0:08:46.000
And what is exciting to me so much right now

0:08:46.000,0:08:50.000
is that by combining cutting-edge technology --

0:08:50.000,0:08:52.000
robotics, bionics --

0:08:52.000,0:08:54.000
with the age-old poetry,

0:08:54.000,0:09:00.000
we are moving closer to understanding our collective humanity.

0:09:00.000,0:09:05.000
I think that if we want to discover the full potential

0:09:05.000,0:09:07.000
in our humanity,

0:09:07.000,0:09:11.000
we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths

0:09:11.000,0:09:14.000
and those glorious disabilities that we all have.

0:09:14.000,0:09:17.000
I think of Shakespeare's Shylock:

0:09:17.000,0:09:21.000
"If you prick us, do we not bleed,

0:09:21.000,0:09:24.000
and if you tickle us, do we not laugh?"

0:09:24.000,0:09:27.000
It is our humanity,

0:09:27.000,0:09:29.000
and all the potential within it,

0:09:29.000,0:09:32.000
that makes us beautiful.

0:09:32.000,0:09:33.000
Thank you.

0:09:33.000,0:09:40.000
(Applause)