Here we are again: another new year, another fresh start, another blank canvas to fill in from scratch. Away with the muddied palette and hardened brushes of 2023.
The work of 2024 begins with bristles spry and colors pure, the masterpiece in our imagination not yet diminished by the foibles of reality.
We’re bound to find ourselves painted into a corner eventually, but that feels like a long way off. For now the landscape is uncluttered, and the hand, eye, and heart can roam free.
That spirit of unbridled renewal bubbles up repeatedly in Amplitude’s first issue of the new year, nowhere more so than in Alexis Hillyard’s article about the joys of residual-limb cosplay. “Personifying my limb has always helped me understand myself and embrace my limb difference,” writes Hillyard, who went viral on TikTok last year by playfully outfitting her stump in all sorts of guises. Reinventing her limb as Baby Shrek, Bob Ross, Wonder Woman, Gene Simmons, and dozens of other characters isn’t just highly entertaining. It also gives Hillyard’s audience a more authentic, nuanced understanding of limb difference and disability.
The article, titled “The Secret Lives of Amputee Limbs,” includes a helpful how-to for those who want to turn their limb into Batman, Taylor Swift, or whoever else. Start reading on page 25.
Diana Theobald comes at the same subject from a different angle in “Which Cinematic Amputee Archetype Are You?” After decades of narrowly drawn, painfully cliched representations of limb difference, Hollywood has finally started to develop amputee characters who aren’t total caricatures. Or, at least, they’re new caricatures that challenge nondisabled moviegoers to examine their biases and blind spots about disability.
Theobald’s taxonomy includes 12 new species of silver-screen amputees from about 30 recent flicks. She also explains how this ecosystem can keep branching out to produce even more complex, more highly evolved depictions of limb difference. Turn to page 20 to get started.
For a very personal, heartfelt meditation on fresh starts and new possibilities, check out “Will You Accept This Limb?” by our cover subject, Cam Ayala. If you’re a fan of the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise, you might remember Ayala—and the memories might not be warm ones. When he appeared on the Bachelorette a few years back, Ayala was portrayed as exaggerating his congenital health challenges in an appeal for sympathy. Audiences dismissed him as an insincere jerk, which left him bewildered and depressed—“one of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced,” he writes.
Unexpectedly, losing his leg in 2022—due to the same health problems that reality TV sneered at—gave Ayala a chance to start over. “Losing my leg gave me a new sense of purpose,” he writes. He learned to see himself as a whole, complete person, no matter how anybody else perceived him. “My story is proof that we can all learn how to accept, love, and honor ourselves,” he writes, “and to receive love from people who accept and honor all of us.”
To all of our readers: May you find the love and acceptance you deserve in 2024!
