A woman with a prosthetic leg was motivated to have a maternity photoshoot, after struggling to find pictures of mums-to-be who have disabilities.
Christa Couture, from Toronto, Canada, had to have her leg amputated when she was a teenager because she had bone cancer.
“I have rolled my eyes at the cliche of maternity photos but, I must admit, I have also longed for the opportunity to have them taken,” Couture wrote in an article for CBC. “I’ve viewed that kind of photoshoot as a cultural rite of passage.
“The trouble is, I struggled to imagine my own maternity photos when I couldn’t find any examples of them with a body like mine. I only have one leg.”
The mum-to-be said, like many representations of women in the media, maternity shoots seemed to “abound with thin, white bodies”.
Wanting to improve the representation of women with disabilities, Couture decided to enlist photographer Jen Squires. She wanted to have photos of her both wearing and not wearing her prosthesis, “I waited for the little voice to tell me there was something wrong with how I looked,” she wrote. “Instead I heard: ‘That looks incredible. That is what I’ve wanted so badly to see.’”
The mum-to-be said she hopes next time a woman with a disability searches for “disability and pregnancy”, her photos will come up and that woman may feel inspired.
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