Amputee model Lauren Wasser champions body positivity
About ten years ago, American supermodel Lauren Wasser, plagued by depression, assumed her modeling career was over.
“When I woke up from an induced coma in that hospital room in Santa Monica one day in early October 2012 in excruciating pain, it wasn’t just that I was unrecognizable: I had been stripped of all my identity, beauty and body. which, I thought then, made me my,” she wrote in an essay for British Vogue in August 2022.
She was reflecting on what had happened to her a decade ago, when she was 24 years old. She was found unconscious in her home and was rushed to hospital, where she was diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome or TSS – a condition caused by excess bacteria in the body associated with the use of tampons.
Having suffered two heart attacks and her kidneys failing, she had only a 1% chance of survival. A short time later, upon waking up from the coma, she was faced with the news that there was gangrene in one of her legs. She would have to be amputated.
love yourself
Her new reality seemed insurmountable.
After all, she grew up among models. Her parents were also models and Lauren landed her first gig as a two-month-old baby alongside her mother, Pamela Cook, on the Italian edition of Vogue. In California, Wasser grew up among supermodels Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford.
Lamenting the loss of her leg, she wrote that she “sat on a stool in the shower screaming at God, wondering why and how this happened. I didn’t think I would be loved again; I didn’t think I would be wanted – I definitely didn’t think the world of fashion would accept me.”
This would prove to be far from the truth in the long run.
Digging deep to discover beauty
Struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts, “I had to force myself to dig deep to see that beauty isn’t just found in the physical, it’s how we affect others and the world.” This deep sense of self also led Wasser to create a new sense of style. Losing her second leg several years later, prosthetics were the only option for her, but she hated the standard medical type of issue.
“I’ve always loved gold, so I decided to make a piece of jewelry out of my legs, to consciously make something that people look at and are fascinated with. The result is, I believe, something close to art,” wrote Wasser, once known as the “leg girl”. fashion gold.
Now, more than 10 years after nearly dying, these golden prosthetic legs have seen her grace the runways of Louis Vuitton and Dolce & Gabbana, as well as the pages of Vogue It is she.
As Wasser wrote in his Vogue referring to the end of her spring collection fashion show in May 2022: “Like a knight in shining armor: That’s how I felt closing out the Louis Vuitton Cruise Rehearsal Show in San Diego last May. While the sun was setting behind the beautiful, brutalist Salk Institute, casting long shadows on the concrete walkway, I emerged wearing a silver coat that swept the floor – my legs as golden as the early evening light, glinting under metallic shorts – making way for the army of models behind me.”
Great performances on and off the catwalk
This breathtaking catwalk yielded other stellar shows, as in the 2023 edition of the famous Pirelli calendaran Anglo-Italian limited edition glamorous photography extravaganza.
Lauren Wasser – who has been an avid basketball player all her life, as well as a marathon runner using “golden blades” to encourage her – inspired by Australian photographer Emma Summerton, who took the photos for Pirelli.
For the 2023 calendar titled Love Letters to the MuseSummerton chose Wasser to embody “The Athlete”, the one “who competes not in the Olympics but in life… A ‘Jean of Arc figure’ who is never held back by fear. Never held back at all”.
“I’m an athlete. I’d rather hit boys and play hoops than wear high heels. I’ve always been that way,” Wasser said. pirellispeaking of your courageous attitude.
Wasser is using her status in the fashion world to help reshape the industry’s definition of beauty and its acceptance of diversity.
Women’s health awareness
Source: DW
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