Such a pretty girl, huh?
Ouch.
Such a pretty girl, too bad she…
I am almost certain that somewhere in your head,
those were your exact words: "Too bad."
Well, I will prove to you that life is a matter of editing.
Choosing to add or take out a certain detail
changes the whole picture.
At least, that’s what it looks like.
There are one too many clichés when it comes to disabled people.
For example, no matter what we do,
even the easiest, most trivial chore, like going shopping,
becomes sort of epic in the eyes of beholders.
This has gotten me quite a few laughs over the years.
You may not know, but I'm also a heavy metal guitar player.
Here I am, on stage,
with my cool guitar and my cool hair.
One night I was backstage, waiting to go up and play with my band,
electric guitar in one hand, and a drink in the other,
when this journalist comes up to me
and, trying to give a compliment I suppose, he says:
“You must be very brave to go on stage in your condition!”
I looked at him and replied,
“Hey, what conditions? I am perfectly sober!”
I had no idea what he was talking about!
(Applause)
Another prejudice has to do with my wheelchair.
I have lost count of the times I heard people say, “Confined to a wheelchair.”
It appeals me how much ignorance this sentence is infused with,
and how it increases that very horrible sense of pity
we're trying to get over.
A wheelchair is an incredible piece of equipment,
halfway between technology and design, which allows you to go wherever you want,
to wear, to dance, to run,
even to wear five-inch heels without fearing cobblestones.
There is nothing “confining” about it.
A wheelchair gives you the freedom to move around the world,
it does not take it from you.
I guess you are now wondering why I'm sitting on a wheelchair.
When I was five months old,
I was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition.
I was not given much chance of survival,
so I had to undergo emergency surgery.
The heart surgery was a success,
and I quickly got healthy again.
However, during the procedure, the doctors hadn’t noticed
that blood wasn't reaching my spinal cord.
The result was a bone marrow injury:
a very low one, thankfully, but it took away my legs.
Yes, that was a medical accident.
Most of you may say:
“How unfortunate!”
Instead, I think of it as a simple "collateral effect'"
of being healthy, alive, and here with you today.
Back then, I was one of very few cases
when a spinal cord injury occurs in a newborn.
Thanks to this, however,
nobody explained to me what I could or couldn't do with my body.
So I simply learnt on my own while I grew up, like all children do,
adapting the circumstances to my abilities,
learning to take advantage
of all the potential that my body could give,
and not being worried about my limitations.
Don't get me started on how many times I caused my parents goosebumps
when they found me climbing trees or kitchen shelves.
From then on, my free spirit and my eagerness to explore the world
have taken me far away.
Fresh out of high school I moved to Bologna,
where I graduated in philosophy,
and I traveled far and wide in Europe,
sometimes with other people, but more often by myself,
to festivals and concerts,
with the very goal of seeing new places, meeting new people, and cities.
One day, my travels took me to the mountains.
I met my latest challenge in 2012
when I tried skiing for the first time.
I had never done any sport before then, mind you, and I did not even like sports.
But when I saw these high-power carbon mono-skis,
that can get you to 120km per hour,
the speed I take on the highway
down by the steepest slopes,
balancing on a single ski,
I fell in love hard,
and I decided I was going to become a professional Alpine skiing athlete.
This is me, and then it started,
a very challenging time of my life.
I used to wake up at six AM to load my mono-ski in my car,
25 kilograms with one arm only,
since I was balancing on the other,
and I would drive almost two hours to get to the ski slopes of Folgaria,
singing along to Motley Crue or Testament to keep me company on the road.
Then I would train for three to four hours between the poles,
and I would jump back in my car and head back home.
Three times a week, plus competition weekends,
no matter what the weather was like.
I faced storms, snow, fog, freezing ice, sun, heat, whatever.
After as little as two years of training,
in March 2014, I was awarded the title of Alpine Skiing National Champion
with a gold medal in Giant Slalom and the silver in Slalom.
Not too bad for a girl
who was used to staying up all night playing in clubs.
Anyway, I can’t deny that life on a wheelchair
isn't always rock events, parties and sport winnings.
Often, yes, but not always.
As it happens in everybody's life
there are also challenges you have to confront.
One of mine came about when I was 13.
I found myself with a serious scoliosis and two possibilities ahead of me.
I could either wear
a plastic orthopedic corset all day, every single day,
until I was at least 20.
Or I could undergo a surgery called 'posterior arthrodesis,'
where two metal bars are inserted on both sides of your spine,
in order to support, extend and fix it.
It is not an easy procedure.
Your backbone is open and you stay there, under the knife,
in general anesthesia for four hours,
with no certainty of a positive outcome.
OK. Great.
I had to make my choice. What do I do?
On the one hand, I was literally scared to death
thinking that something bad could happen during the procedure.
On the other hand,
I sure didn’t want to be stuck with a crooked back
and a plastic corset for the rest of my life.
But then I thought of something: I thought of butterflies.
Butterflies are not born as such: they start off as chrysalides.
Still, hiding in their cocoon in the dark, clammed up.
I thought of how much strength and courage those chrysalises must have
to break free from their cocoon
and reach the open air, finally free to fly in their most beautiful form.
I did not want to stay a chrysalis forever.
I also wanted to fly, I wanted to make all of my colors shine.
So I decided to become a butterfly and I gathered up all the strength I had
to break free from my cocoon, and undergo surgery.
When I woke up, I had a straight back and a new awareness:
I had become a butterfly, and nobody would ever be able to break me.
Having a straight back again made me feel more beautiful,
and admittedly, more self-confident.
You know, it is not easy to go unnoticed when you sit on four wheels.
But instead of hiding away or feeling uneasy
under all of the stares, I thought,
“OK, if people really can’t quit looking at me when I pass by,
let them at least look at the most beautiful thing they’ll ever see!”
Here is another cliché on people with disabilities:
the ever so irreconcilable contrast between disability and beauty.
This one time I went to see an American rock band
and when the gig was over the singer came after me,
looked me deep in the eyes and said
“You can’t be in a wheelchair! You are so beautiful!”
Excuse me?!
That’s what our traditional iconography taught us about people with disabilities.
We're losers.
Even Mattel,
in an attempt to include disabilities in Barbie’s perfect world,
produced Becky, Barbie’s friend on a wheelchair.
And this is what she looks like.
We can see:
Lumberjack shirt, long loose jeans, trainers, and a wheelchair as old as time.
Quite different from Barbie:
sexy, blond, slender, with her colorful makeup,
glitter micro tops, and high heels.
Sadly, people with disabilities often tend to reject their own bodies,
or the parts that can’t work anymore,
or what is not considered to be normal.
In fact, more often than not, we don’t even need a disability
to feel uncomfortable with our own bodies.
Let me tell you a story on this subject.
Do you know what mermaids are?
Mermaids are creatures of exquisite beauty,
much beyond the ordinary.
For centuries, sailors and pirates have hoped to see one.
These creatures of sublime femininity,
whose allure seduced and caught any human being,
have a peculiar trait:
A sinuous fish tail in place of legs.
And thus they swim in their immense sea,
quick and lively.
There is a well-known tale
where a young mermaid falls in love with a human prince
and chooses to give up her tail and her voice
in exchange for legs, so that she can seduce her prince.
Deprived of her most important features, though,
and contrary to what Disney would have us believe,
the young mermaid fails, and the prince never falls in love with her.
Did you get what this means?
It means that the mermaid,
refusing the very feature
that made her wonderfully unique,
thus not expressing her true self,
she ended up grey, dull, uninteresting.
Normal.
I know for a fact that, had the prince seen her for who she really was,
not only would he have fallen in love with her,
he would have loved her tail too.
And here lies the secret to a mermaid’s seductive power:
not only is she proud of her look and her tail's look,
she celebrates it, she makes it her strongest point.
And here lies the secret of seduction.
Loving yourself, your peculiarities,
anything that makes you different and unique.
I also - thank you.
(Applause)
There was a time when I used to wonder how my life could have been,
had I had a pair of strong legs in place of my “tail."
But then I closed my eyes and I realized that yes,
my legs would never allow me to climb up stairs.
but they let me feel the heat from the sun,
the sand and the grass between my toes.
I started loving my body and every single part of it
and I was grateful for all that they allowed me to do in this world.
I never saw my legs as too skinny to be shown again,
because they are slender and light…
and I started to highlight them,
maybe with just a miniskirt or shorts.
I believed in this so much that I became a model.
A disability, per se, is neither good nor bad.
It is a physical feature.
We all have features that make us stand out from the rest of the people.
A disability only becomes a handicap in relation to the environment,
that is, when the environment is not suitable for it.
We need to remove architectural boundaries,
to enhance our technology,
to allow all people to express their potential to the fullest.
Only then can we judge people for who they are
and for their true merits,
instead of appreciating them in a cheap, slightly pathetic way
just because of their disabilities.
Similarly, being sexy
has nothing to do with any prearranged model.
It is all in the confidence that we have,
in feeling at ease in our own skin and mind
and in transmitting all of this to others.
You need to be aware of how wonderful your mermaid tail is.
Loving our details
will make us love those of other people too,
all of those small or big peculiarities that make us all unique and beautiful.
That's the only way for disabled people to be seen as they are:
beautiful in our entirety and in our full seductive potential.
Life is just a matter of editing, of choices.
Choose to keep your details.
Thank you.
(Applause)