Lyric Mariah Heard has hilarious names for her prosthetic legs—Bertha and Tina. Bertha is her daily prosthetic, and Tina is her high-heel prosthetic.
The 28-year-old model has used her birth defect, Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS), which has caused limb deformities in her right hand and right leg, to her advantage.
In an interview with Good Morning America, she revealed that amniotic bands had encircled her right leg and both hands all through her mother’s pregnancy, limiting movement.
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The National Organization for Rare Disorders reports that the arms and legs are most frequently impacted in cases with ABS. Organs can also be impacted.
According to Heard, she was born missing her right leg and some of her fingers.
Nevertheless, the Chicago native has amassed a social media following with her entertaining and amusing videos which have gone viral several times, as she is often seen in these videos casually changing between prosthetic legs.
She told the outlet, “Bertha makes me feel more confident in everyday life, while Tina makes me feel more confident in fashion life.
“Bertha and Tina are their own trend. I can hardly keep up with them, to be fair; they’re just too iconic on accident.”
She believes that comedy and laughter have allowed her to enjoy her life .
In addition to her internet fame, Heard has walked in New York Fashion Week, the 2020 Savage X Fenty show, and modeled for other fashion labels.
She remarked, “I don’t need people’s sympathy. I need people’s understanding in the sense of, don’t put everybody in the same box and think that everybody who has a limb difference or who has a disability is somebody who needs sympathy.”
“I don’t want to live my life miserable,” she declared. “I don’t want to live my life sad. I want to be joyful. I want to be happy.”
The model remembers having no confidence as a child and being bullied because of her appearance. In middle and high school, she continued, kids would toss her prosthetic limb “through the basketball hoop.”
She also admitted to having body image issues.
She explained, “I just wanted to look a certain body type, where my leg and my hand were the least of my worries. I just wanted to look a certain way.”
Heard, now an adult, believes that the biggest bully she ever faced was herself.
“I think that I taught other people how to bully me from the start,” she said, adding that she would hide her hands “well before anybody ever made fun of me.”
“They knew that I wasn’t comfortable with who I was. They knew that I didn’t like it and I didn’t understand being a limb-difference girl.”
“The less you hide yourself, the less people feel like you are something to be hidden,” she observed, reflecting on her experience as an adult.
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