Unabridged Text - Video - Audio - iPod Audio Download - Visit BeautyAbility.com

Elio: Thank you for taking time to do this [interview]. Well, let me start out by asking how long have you been a writer?

Tiffiny: I started writing professionally when I was in college. I was approached by a website that no longer exists called HalfThePlanet.com, which was started by a man out in New York City who had a daughter that died. She was born with some type of congenital disability and died. So, he used her memory as an inspiration to start this website, which its purpose was basically to be a one-stop shop for all information related to various disabilities, and this was back in 1998. The guy had a lot of money, so it was a really great way for me, at least, to start out writing, because at the time, I had just a little AOL homepage that I had that comes free when you're an AOL member, and it was just a personal website, and that's how my blog started. Some of the HalfThePlanet people found my website and approached me to write for them. That's how it started when I was in college. I just wrote articles whenever they needed me to, and between classes, and since I was writing about stuff that I know about, it wasn't a lot of work to write these articles. There wasn't really a lot of research involved. It was easy and fun, since I was writing about stuff that actually mattered to me, plus they paid really well. After 2000, that website went under. Then, I was forced to find new writing jobs from there.

Elio: You've been writing for New Mobility, Disaboom, Kids on Wheels.

Tiffiny: The disability genre is definitely my niche. That's kind of what you should do when you decide to be a writer is find your niche and stick with it, and you're more apt to be successful that way. And they also always say, “Write what you know about.” So, for me, being paralyzed since I was 14 and living this lifestyle, writing about all things related to disabilities for me has proven successful. After HalfThePlanet, it spread out from there. I started writing for iCan.com, which unfortunately is no longer around either. Heidi Van Arnem was the quadriplegic who started that website, and she passed away in 2003. When she died, the website kind of went away after that. In 2003, I pitched an article idea to New Mobility Magazine about a quadriplegic that works for a CBS affiliate here. They liked that idea, and I wrote a two page feature for them. For that magazine, New Mobility, after they received that article from me, they assigned me some more stuff. And then in 2004, Barry Corbett, who's a well-known spinal cord injured guy who's now passed away, was writing a column for New Mobility called, “The Spinal Cord Injury Life Column” – it's like on page 14. They needed someone to write that column after he died, and they wanted someone younger and with new, fresh ideas, so they asked me to do that. Of course, I said yes, and so I've been doing that column since 2004. You kind of have to go out there and keep pitching stuff to people all the time to make sure you have a steady income 2-3 months from now, which is usually the lead time for these places.

Elio: So, what was your inspiration behind BeautyAbility.com. Is it another avenue for you to express yourself?

Tiffiny: For me, the reason I started the blog way back in the day was because I was inspired by this lady I had met while I was going to rehabilitation over at the Courage Center and the rehab place I went to in Minnesota here. She was a professional woman, very pretty inside and out and independent. This lady was married and had kids, and drove her own car. She just kind of had everything, and the fact that she used a wheelchair didn't even seem to faze her. This was the first woman I had met since I broke my neck that was kind of doing the whole lifestyle that she probably would have been doing anyways if she never would have even gotten injured. For me, that was really inspiring, so I used that meeting of this lady to help me get out of the depression that I was feeling after I got hurt because for the first few years after I broke my neck, I was really depressed because I really didn't feel I'd be able to do any of the stuff I had planned for my life because of my wheelchair. I didn't really have any good role models in my hospital or my rehab. In the initial rehab experience, it didn't really introduce me to anybody that gave me hope for the future, it was a hard three years. After I met this lady, whose name was Karen, she helped me realize. It sounds petty, but really as a female, when you take care of yourself, whether it's your hair or your makeup, or going out and buying clothes that make you feel good when you do all these things that really makes you feel better about everything. When you have a disability, I think that's really important because if I'm feeling pretty, I'm happier and I'm more positive, and I'm more apt to not let my disability bog me down and get to me. So, that's why I started this website. Then, I started coming out with articles that I was just coming up with on the fly. I was younger, and they weren't written that well. It was stuff about adapting clothes that you would buy at the mall, and how to shop for clothes that will work for you because you're sitting down all the time. How to buy pants and dresses and shoes, and just everything. Then, I started coming out with how to apply makeup if you can't use your fingers, if they are paralyzed. It just went from there. Right now, I love it because I can write about anything I want to. I'm the editor, I'm the owner, I don't have to filter out any kind of words. I can swear, I can be as graphic about sex as I want to, and it's great because all these other magazines that I write for, you can't see that.

Elio: Yeah, they cater to a bigger audience.

Tiffiny: And they don't want to piss off people and lose subscribers, but I feel that my website is good. For me, for the younger generation of disabled people, I feel like I can help them the most by just being real and honest. That's going to involve, you know, putting my feelings out there. I swear, I have a potty mouth, so that's just me. Also, it's good for humor reasons. It's good to laugh at yourself and your situation, and I think it helps you to deal with everything better. I think it's helping people, whether they are newly injured or disabled their whole lives. I've met a lot of people who are born with a disability and their parents are overprotective and they don't even live out of their parents' house until they are, like, 26 or 27. They don't really feel very sexual. They've been treated as an asexual person their whole lives, and my website helps those people out.

Elio: You definitely accentuate the fact that you are an attractive female, you have a sexuality, there's a lot of that in the website that, in a way, might inspire some young females. Do you see yourself as a role model?

Tiffiny: Well, I always am afraid to say, “Hey, look at me, I'm really pretty and this is how you can be pretty too.” I don't ever like to make the website like that because I feel like that can be offensive to a lot of women. And there's a lot of women who, depending on the type of disability they have, they might be overweight. They are going to, maybe, not look the way they want to look. It's more of just looking the best that you can look. I'm always afraid that it's going to appear too materialistic or too petty if the website is only about outward looks. So, I've just been letting the website develop and change and evolve as I feel like, as an extension of me.

Elio: The website definitely does seem to follow you. As you evolve, the website evolves. You talk a lot about dating, staying away from certain types of guys. What would you give, as far as tips to other women who have disabilities who want to date and they want to have success, not that you've totally found success. I don't know your personal situation, but what kind of tips would you give?

Tiffiny: Well, I think the number one thing you first have to think about if you're a female with a disability, is what kind of disability do you have? I'm writing from the perspective of a woman in a wheelchair, so for me, I'm paralyzed from the waist down. I have to keep that in mind. If I want to have a sex life, I have to find a guy that's able-bodied enough to make up for the mobility that I don't have. I usually, when I was single, I would go out and try to find a guy that was able-bodied because of this. Now, it didn't mean I was completely against dating a guy in a wheelchair, but for me, practicality reasons, that's why I did it. I actually have dated a couple guys in chairs when I first started dating in my late teens, but it didn't really work out in the sex department. First, you should decide if you want to date an able-bodied or a disabled guy. You don't have to make it a steadfast one or the other for sure, but kind of keep that in mind because that will really guide you on what…let's say you are going to do online dating, are you going to go on a disabled dating website or are you going to go on a regular, mainstream dating site like Match[.com]. A lot of guys aren't going to be comfortable dating a woman with a disability. I'm not saying that not that many men are because I've always been surprised. More men than I would assume are comfortable with it. When I first started dating, I didn't think I'd find that many able-bodied guys that would be accepting of me, but I was pleasantly surprised. They maybe weren't the cutest guys out there or the most successful out there, but I kept forging ahead, and I kept being positive, and I eventually found a guy that was everything I was looking for. You can find that. You've just got to be patient. Be very careful because guys aren't stupid and they know how to peg you, and if you're in a wheelchair, they might assume you have a low self esteem, and they might say those certain things that they know you want to hear just to maybe get in your pants. Just be very aware of how guys can be manipulative and you need to protect your heart. Don't let the fact that people might be cruel or … don't let these fears stop you from meeting people. You just need to be realistic about it, and I always say, wait, wait, wait. Take your time when you get to know somebody. It definitely will work out better in the end.

Elio: I think that's some good advice. There are a lot of girls that are out there that are young that are newly injured or they maybe had a disability since they were born and they had that low self esteem. They might be more willing to buy what a guy is telling them and just not think it all through.

Tiffiny: I know! it's sad! I've seen it happen before. It happened with me when I first started dating, and I know a lot of women with disabilities that it's happened to, and I hate saying you have to be more cynical, but you kind of have to. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Elio: Well, I have another question for you here about your feelings about persons with disabilities in the mainstream media. There was one blog article you talked about, the Miss Ability Pageant in the Netherlands and how it was kind of good but kind of bad. You have these persons with disabilities out there in this mainstream media channel, but were they being exploited or was this really a good thing? What's your feeling about all that?

Tiffiny: Well, let's put it this way. There's going to be a mainstream television channel, whether it's network or cable, and they're going to put someone with a disability on any of their shows, whether it's a talk show, or a reality show, a drama, a comedy, they are going to somehow stereotype you. Period. Because it's a mainstream station and the people that run these networks are always worried about how the mainstream audience is going to perceive it and what they accept or expect and what they like and what they are comfortable with. I never thing they are going to ever portray someone with a disability the exact right way unless the channel itself is for people with disabilities because it just is not going to happen. The Miss Ability Pageant, for example, I think is sensationalistic. They're putting it out there for the able-bodied masses to kind of want to gawk and wonder what these girls look like in a swimsuit. Or you see a disabled person on a reality show. Either they're a little person who's supposed to be funny or they're in a wheelchair and they're out there doing something and they're inspirational. They're never just showing someone like they're just an everyday person. There always has to be some, something special attached to it. I'm never happy with it. I just don't think it's ever going to be until there's like a disabled network for all programming for people with disabilities and you might finally see some programming that's made the right way because they know that it's only going to be people with disabilities watching it. It's annoying and the people with disabilities really are the last minority to get treated the right way. All these other minorities have come a long way in terms of being treated right and getting the masses to treat them the way they should be treated. People with disabilities are still a long ways away. The media is a really good reflection of that. The Nike ad, though, I don't know if you are familiar with it, it came out I think last fall. It features this guy with Spina Bifida. He plays wheelchair basketball. The ad is really great. It's called, “No Excuses” and it's mimicking people how they always have an excuse for not to work out and it just shows him from his waist up, you know, dribbling his basketball, and he's really buff and stuff, and then at the end of the ad, they show him in his wheelchair, rolling off the court. That was a really good ad, and that was from Nike. That's rare. This is like years in the making. It's frustrating, but what do you expect?

Elio: It's interesting, because you talk about the disability community, the last minority really starting to make progress. What's your thought about how fragmented the disability community is when you look at how really it's a lot of smaller communities lumped together. You even talk in your blog about how sometimes, there's some “gimp on gimp” hate between different levels of ability in the same spinal cord injury community. How does that hurt us, how does that help us? It hurts us when we separate ourselves, but it also helps us when we join forces. Talk about that, about the segmented disability community.

Tiffiny: Well, you're right about it being fragmented. It definitely is. For me personally, I've experienced it in terms of what level of spinal cord injury you have. Generally, I've run into a lot of quads that would kind of get jealous of paraplegics because they didn't need a PCA and they had complete movement of their hands or I've met some high paraplegics, like T-4s that are jealous of T-12 paraplegics because they have full control of their abdomens. You know, they're not completely mean to each other, but there's definitely some jealousy, which I always say is stupid and ridiculous because, let's face it, we're all screwed. We're all in the same boat. None of us can walk. Whether or not we have small differences in our abilities is still, really we're all kind of screwed, and we're all going to be lumped together in the same category by the mainstream public. We definitely are stronger when we combine our forces. Really, I think it boils down to depression, and people really just aren't happy being disabled. A way they deal with it is by this stupid in-fighting. People really need to grow up and be more mature and think about the greater effect of what they're doing. In terms of being fragmented, though, there needs to be a voice, someone out there who can bring everybody together, whether it's a cognitive disability or you're deaf or you're blind. You know, we all have, when it comes down to it, we all just have some type of physical disability, and if we can just try to drive that home to people that don't, like say, “Hey, we all actually have some kind of disability, and whether it's really really minor, like a bad knee from a football injury or full-on quadriplegia, all of our bodies are somehow failed in some little way. People with disabilities definitely should combine their forces somehow. That's a big task, though.

Elio: It's something that's been tried for a lot of years with different movements and different organizations. We'll see what the future holds.