The Newest Fashion Statement | Wearing Fake Legs

It’s interesting to me how our opinions change with each generation. In the generation before me, seeing a prosthetic leg was something to secretly gawk at and whisper about, in this generation, it looks like it is becoming a fashion statement. I’ve read about this a lot lately, but now that Popular Science, Fast Company and Gizmodo have all published articles about it recently (each article linked respectively), I’m ready to say that I think it could really develop into a fashion trend in the future.

In the Fast Company article, Hugh Herr, who wears prosthetic legs said, “What is the obsession with looking human? You think the only beauty is human? Bridges can be beautiful. Cars can be beautiful. Cell phones can be beautiful. They don’t look biological. So why do you anticipate 30 years from now that amputees will give a shit about human beauty? They won’t. Their limbs will be sculptures.”

The Popular Science article even goes so far as to imply that in the future, prosthetic legs will be designed to be sexier than flesh legs (not to mention they will provide greater physical capabilities). People that wear them will have an unfair advantage over the rest of us. There may come a day when we will elect to trade our human legs for robotic legs.

The article on Gizmodo reads, “Using technology to augment ourselves physically and mentally is now a regular part of our agenda, and will be more and more integral to ourselves in the coming decades.” Wow. I’m reminded of this article I wrote last week: Will We Date Robots In The Future?

For the most part, I believe we can thank Aimee Mullins for changing our minds and our attitudes about this. As a very smart and sexy double-amputee, she’s modeled in Paris and London, been an actress on television and in movies, she holds several world records and she’s been named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. Some of her pictures are shown below. This is a very inspiring video where she speaks about having prosthetic legs, and where she sees this technology headed in the future.