From The New York Times, 30 November 2009:

The fashion world may be the last bastion of prejudice, a field that overtly discriminates against people because of their looks. So there is something both bold and troubling about “Britain’s Missing Top Model,” a reality show that begins on Tuesday on BBC America that pits disabled women against one another to compete for a photo spread in the U.K. edition of Marie Claire magazine.

One thing never changes in the beauty industry, however: an ounce of fat is a greater hurdle than a missing limb. “Rebecca’s disability didn’t cause me any problems,” a photographer says after shooting Rebecca, 27, a stunning brunette who was born with a deformed hip and wears a prosthetic leg. “It was just the fact she’s not really in shape. Most models are pretty toned, slimmer, more agile.”

In other words, this is pretty much like any season of “America’s Next Top Model,” except when it’s not. This series comes with a paradoxical premise: it’s a contest designed to raise the profile and confidence of disabled women but makes a spectacle of their hunger for acceptance. “Missing Top Model” tries to bolster self-esteem yet revels in the piquancy of physically imperfect women competing in a profession that demands physical perfection, which one judge defines this way: “It’s what 99 percent of the population do not have and never will.”

The show wants to enlighten viewers and also keep them amused; it tries to be considerate, yet reality shows are by definition cruel.

These conflicts pop up in almost every scene, and are captured best not by the judges or the aspiring models, but by two passers-by in London who stare through a lingerie store’s window at a disabled model posing in a lacy bra and thong. A young man in a fleece cap says he is impressed that she is not scared to show her stump, “because she’s beautiful at the same time, so she’s got nothing to hide.” A middle-aged woman agrees, but worries about using amputees to appeal to prurient tastes. “Personally I think it should be emphasized,” she says. “But if it’s to sell something like lingerie I think people are going to be troubled.”

The women themselves, though, are delighted by the exposure. “I don’t know if people were really looking only at my arm,” Debbie, a 22-year-old who lost an arm in a bus crash, says, noting jubilantly that everyone was looking at her breasts instead.

I find it creepy when people have a fetish for amputees, and I suspect that many amputees find it creepy as well.  But if the premise of the project is that it’s empowering to be a model and stimulate men’s prurient interests (“everyone was looking at her breasts”,) how can you justify excluding amputees from lingerie ads?