Step Forward for Disabled or Exploitation? : Paraplegic Actress Stirs Controversy in Playboy
A pictorial on a paraplegic actress may have sparked internal debate at Playboy magazine, but the woman who posed seminude for the pictures says the focus is on who she is, not that she is disabled.
Ellen Stohl, 23, a student at California State University, Fullerton, is the subject of a planned eight-page layout in the July issue, Playboy spokesman Bill Paige said.
Stohl is nearly nude or partially clad in all of the photos except for one, which has her sitting fully clothed in her wheelchair.
Stohl was studying acting when she broke five neck vertebrae in a 1983 automobile accident and was temporarily paralyzed from the neck down. Her legs remain paralyzed.
“For a while, I tried to sublimate my desire to act and model by going to art school, but I came to terms with myself and decided I wanted to make a statement that I was a total woman,” she said in a telephone interview.
“I went to Playboy because they handle sex very well,” she said. “It makes a statement people will listen to.”
“She wrote to the magazine, suggesting the article,” said Paige. “She wanted to show that her sexuality was still part of her.”
“The focus is on who I am, not the fact that I’m disabled,” Stohl said.
Her views were echoed by Speed Davis, a spokesman for the National Spinal Cord Injury Assn. of Newton, Mass.
“She has the same right to pose for Playboy as any other woman who thinks she has the qualifications,” Davis said. “It’s a step forward for a disabled woman, and I see no reason to feel different about it because it is in a magazine like Playboy.”
But Playboy Associate Editor Barbara Nellis disagreed. “This is precisely the kind of attention Playboy doesn’t need,” Nellis said in a Chicago Tribune interview Monday. “The only thing people are going to say is: ‘Have you seen what Playboy is doing? Girls in wheelchairs.’ ”
Editorial director Arthur Kretchmer defended his decision to run the layout, saying, “I may be naive, but I don’t see this as exploitation.”