Chris Waddell is 28 and has a matinee-idol smile, a Roman nose and glossy black hair. Classic model material. Except that some eight years ago, while skiing in the Berkshires, his binding broke, he hit a tree and was paralyzed from the waist down.
"But why shouldn't Chris be able to model?" Curtis Gunn, a founder of an unusual new modeling agency called the Shot, asked with a rhetorical flourish. Most models, after all, are photographed from the waist up. "I mean, look at that face."Waddell is one of 27 pretty faces in the charter lineup of the Shot, the only modeling agency exclusively handling the disabled. Among them is Heather Whitestone, who, as the first deaf Miss America, in 1995, has become a highly visible symbol of the disabled. There are also a half-dozen athletes - including Allison Pittman, an above-the-knee single amputee and a Paralympic gold-medal swimmer, and Paul Martin, a below-the-knee single amputee and gold- and silver-medal winner at the 1997 Canadian National Disabled Ski Championships. Many others have some modeling or television experience.
To underscore the Shot's idea that its models can be used by advertisers with or without their physical impairment visible, most of them have been photographed for the agency's portfolio so that the disability cannot be seen, though it is listed beside their name.
Waddell, himself a Paralympic gold-medal winner, suspects it will be difficult for advertisers to hire him at first without their showing him in his wheelchair. "My feeling is that you play the game, and eventually maybe you get to play with your own rules," he said. "It's like coming in through the back door, but you're still getting in."
Gunn, a former marketing consultant, and Thom Gilbert, a fashion photographer and the Shot's other founder, neither of whom is disabled, were not the first to have the idea. A 1988 television ad campaign for Du Pont plastics showed the double-amputee Bill Demby playing basketball. It struck a strong note of public appeal and won the advertising industry's Clio award.
Ralph Lauren, on the other hand, used Mitchell Longley, a paraplegic, in a 1991 advertisement campaign for Polo/Ralph Lauren, picturing him from the chest up, no wheelchair in sight. "I chose to use Mitch Longley in my ads because he's a great-looking guy," Lauren said. "His disability didn't enter into the decision at all." The ad drew applause from the disabled community, turning into a public relations coup.
How long could it have been before a niche was born?
With a growing number of disabled people as the population ages - 26 million severely disabled people in the country in 1995, up from 23.5 million in 1992, according to the United States Census Bureau - advertisers are increasingly using the disabled to get their message across.
Recent mass-market campaigns from General Motors, AT&T and the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board (of milk-mustache fame) have featured disabled people in a way that has highlighted their disability..
Asked why AT&T had chosen to use a deaf model in a television spot, Burke Stinson, a spokesman, said: "I would say, first, it's about time. Second, as long as it doesn't look like anyone's being exploited, it's an intelligent way to present a company's image to millions of people." For a communications giant trying to illustrate how it can make people's lives easier, he said, it made sense to picture disabled people, who can clearly benefit from technological advances.
"It's a good way to buy a lot of good will," said Charles Riley, the editor in chief of We, a new general-interest magazine for the disabled whose premier issue last month reached 120,000 readers.
But while such ads may ease the stigma of disability, they may also reinforce the stereotype of disabled people as all being courageous, he said. "Sometimes, it does cross the border where it's exploitative, and you're just pulling on heartstrings." We, whose contents are a mix of articles tailored to the disabled and general features, aims to "minimize the visual impact of the disability, as well as the emotional part of it," Riley said.
Riley hopes that the Shot's concept of letting an advertiser play a disability up or down might help lead to a gradual change, to the point at which a disability becomes matter-of-fact. "The modeling thing will be interesting because it's a barometer," he said. "When certain kinds of people become more visible, that tells you about their degree of acceptance in society. Look at what RuPaul has done, and that's a tough industry to crack."
Ivy Gunter, a onetime Wilhelmina model who lost a leg to cancer in 1980, says she will be happy to be exploited all the way to the bank. She has modeled infrequently for clients like Perry Ellis and Yves Saint Laurent since her operation, concealing her prosthetic leg in photographs. With the Shot, she is looking forward to "coming out of the closet," and claims to be as protean with her artificial leg as Linda Evangelista is with hair color.
"I have five different prostheses, whatever they want," she said. "I've got the beautiful one where you can't tell." Or, she added, laughing, "I could give them a really graphic look with this sports prosthesis."
Still, Gunter has faced obstacles she's never dreamed of. "I just signed on with an acting agent," she said. "She looked over my stuff and called and said, `Ivy, you're too pretty, and you're not disabled enough.' "