The London 2012 Paralympics marked a significant turning point in raising global awareness of disabled athletes. They increased media coverage and attracted the largest-ever global audience, with a cumulative global television audience of 3.4 billion (excluding the U.K.), a 37% increase from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The 2012 London Paralympics

- Oscar Pistorius, known as the 'Blade Runner', is a double amputee with carbon fiber prosthetic limbs. In 2012, he received significant media and public attention for being the first double amputee to compete in both the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.
- He fell from grace shortly after and went from an Olympian to a murderer. He killed his girlfriend and was charged with first-degree murder in 2016.

Who is Oscar Pistorius?

- After World War I, the need for prosthetics became a major concern for many countries with a large number of injured soldiers and civilians. In Germany, around 80,000 soldiers had limbs amputated, so they created a rehabilitation project to provide financial compensation and physical and vocational rehabilitation to reintegrate them into society. 
- Before the war, most artificial limbs were hand-made and aimed to resemble natural limbs closely. However, hand-made production's high demand and limitations led to criticisms of their limited functionality. As a result, mass-produced prosthetics with increased functionality became more important than their appearance.
- The functional-oriented prosthesis improves functionality by replacing missing limbs and stimulates the imagination of future bodies. Prostheses were seen as a component of the technologically advanced "new human body." The Germans called it the "New Man." It was expected to be a more efficient and powerful step beyond the organic human body.
- The development of leg prosthetics has seen significant advancements since 1988, especially in the Western world. The design of prosthetic legs has evolved from resembling natural human legs to a more machine-like appearance with advanced biomechanics. Pistorius's Cheetah prosthetic legs were created by biomedical engineer Van Phillips and produced by Össur.

A Brief History of Prosthetics

Paralympic cyborgs are Paralympians who rely on high-tech devices to compete or play their sport. In the early 20th century, the concept of the "New Man" involved the idea of a technologically enhanced human being. For example, Pistorius's Cheetah prosthetic legs, designed for track and field performance rather than human resemblance, symbolize a body that challenges traditional human limitations and has a machine-like quality. This "cyborgified" body represents a modern interpretation of the "New Man," illustrating society's ongoing interest in combining humans and machines.

The Paralympic Cyborg and the Concept of the New Man

Aimee Mullins is a well-known Paralympian sprinter, actress, and model who gained fame as a double amputee. She has revolutionized the perception of prosthetics and identity through her fashion model and actress work. Mullins' use of creatively designed artificial limbs, including ones resembling animal legs or jellyfish tentacles, challenges the traditional conventional idea of beauty and identity. Her success as a model with prosthetics has helped redefine the concept of prosthetic beauty. In 2011, People magazine named her one of the "fifty most beautiful people in the world."

Who is Aimee Mullins?

Schilder introduced the concept of body schema as the three-dimensional image one holds of one's own body in the mind, a term he used interchangeably with body image. However, Gallagher and Meltzoff distinguish between the two, defining body image as encompassing perceptions, mental representations, beliefs, and attitudes towards one's own body, while body schema refers to motor capacities, abilities, and habits that facilitate movement and posture.


Body Schema and Body Image

Schilder and Weiss suggest that our mental images of our bodies constantly change and are never completely still. This temporary stability is crucial for our body coordination and seeing the world around us. Our body images are always changing, even when we're not moving. Schilder explains that when we stop trying to keep our body image the same, it starts to change, showing that it's never completely still.

Body Movement and Equilibrium as Transient Steadiness

- The idea of morphing involves changing one body image to another, which has been explored using digital morphing technologies. Vivian Sobchack's study of digital morphing in movies emphasizes how morphing is continuous yet fixed in time and space. This process is compared to the ongoing evolution of body images, where each morphing stage represents a point of change rather than a static image. 
- Schilder's observations of the contortionist's body as an example of how altered body images evoke mixed feelings of wonder, disgust, and curiosity. This fascination stems from the desire to challenge societal norms and expand the definition of what is considered normal or acceptable.


Morphing and Transforming

Julia Kristeva explores the psychological and socio-cultural implications of encountering significantly altered bodies, such as those with prosthetics or other modifications. She uses the concept of abjection to explain the unsettling yet intriguing nature of these bodies. Abjection disrupts the stability of the body image, challenging the coherent and established perception of the body. The way Paralympians with prosthetics are depicted shows an unstable aesthetic that arises from the body and prosthetics of their body.

Transformation and Mixed Feelings

The idea of "prosthetic aesthetics" is about how advanced prosthetics, especially on athletes like Oscar Pistorius and Aimee Mullins, can change the way people think about bodies. The media significantly influences how people see prosthetic bodies, often showing them in ways that make people very interested but also uncomfortable. How individuals perceive their bodies, particularly when using prosthetics, is affected by how they think and what society teaches them.

Prosthetic Aesthetics

The success of the London 2012 Paralympics highlighted new possibilities for individuals with disabilities and opened up discussions about the relationship between elite Paralympians and advanced prosthetic technology. Paralympic athletes such as Oscar Pistorius and Aimee Mullins have contributed significantly to a growing awareness of the cultural impact of prosthetic aesthetics on body image. The discussion surrounding this topic revolves around the relationship between the perceived attractiveness and societal attitudes of individuals with prosthetics.

Portland State University

The degree to which an individual culture, be it national, religious, class, education level, or otherwise, has a positive or negative (inclusive or exclusive) response to disabled individuals within their culture. 

Public Attitude Toward Disability

Tamari, T. (2017). Body Image and Prosthetic Aesthetics: Disability, Technology and Paralympic Culture. Body & Society, 23(2), 25-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X17697364

Body Image and Prosthetic Aesthetics: Disability, Technology and Paralympic Culture

The positive or negative response of individuals towards the disabled make up the public attitude and response toward disability. It has been shown there are four main determinates of whether or not a individual's response to disability is positive or negative to the disabled community within the wider culture.  Those factors are: 

- Knowledge/familiarity with the Disabled
- Contact with the Disabled
- Gender of the individual 
- Education Level

Determinates of Public Attitudes Toward Disability

The impact of religious belief and culture on the acceptance of disability within and outside of religious circles. 

Religious Attitudes Toward Disability

The quality of being discriminatory or prejudiced against those with disabilities.
Ableist behaviors can include stereotyping and devaluing people with disabilities or in some cases violence towards those with disabilities. 

Ableism (Disablism)

- Individualism's Effect on Public Acceptance on Disability

Societal Values' Effect on Acceptance of Disability

Attitudes toward deafness can be divided into two groups: the clinical and the cultural model.

1) The Clinical Model: Deafness is viewed as a handicap, a medical condition, or a deficiency. Deafness is viewed as something needing to be fixed, through such means as hearing aids and cochlear implants.

2) The Cultural Model: People with hearing difficulties are viewed as a linguistic and cultural minority group within a hearing society, marked by difference rather than limitation.

Attitudes Toward Deafness/ Two Conflicting Models

The sexuality of those with disabilities is frequently erased by the public and disabled people are often viewed as being asexual. Having sexual relations with disabled people is also often stigmatized and viewed as taboo.

Public Attitudes Toward Disability and Sexuality

The idea of disability studies within an educational setting has changed academic viewpoints for many areas of study. Essentially, there is growing acknowledgement of how disability studies highlight both hypothetical and practical questions regarding individual and structural standards and expectations that have previously been established by society. 

Attitudes Towards Educational Opportunities

TASH advocates for human rights and inclusion for people with significant disabilities and support needs – those most vulnerable to segregation, abuse, neglect, and institutionalization. 

TASH Organization

Online Communication and Disability

Societal Attitudes Toward Individuals With Prosthetics and How That Affect Body Image

Individuals with disabilities face varying stigmas based on whether or not their disability is seen as visible or invisible. These stigmas are most prominant in social, vocational, and educational settings. 

The differences in stigmatizing effects of visible versus invisible disabilities 

The visibility of a disability is often determined by the ease of its perception by others and does not often take into concern the impact that the disability has on the person with the disability. This leads to differing attitudes regarding people with disabilities often leading to an inadequate understanding of invisible disabilities. 

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