Go Ahead, Stare

Flashing a boyish smile, John Box admits to being something of a rebel.

Rather than ask for help, he once tried to go down a flight of stairs in his wheelchair and toppled end over end. He once brandished a squirt gun at the mall and fired at gawkers.

Today, Box wants us to stare.

His company, the wheelchair maker Colours by Permobil, has launched a provocative national ad campaign intended to make everyone take a good long look at people in chairs. Featuring amateur models, the ads deal with sensuality, philosophy, politics and birth.

Crista Adamson, a neurobiologist from New Jersey, is photographed in profile, skinny legs and all, looking down pensively at her bare, pregnant belly rising above her wheelchair armrest.

Second-year dental student Nicole Parsons of San Francisco is leaning seductively in a negligee out of her tipped-back wheelchair.

Box says his marketing strategy--dubbed revolutionary by some and repulsive by others--is designed to do more than shock. Yes, he is in the business of selling wheelchairs. But Box, 32, says he is also committed to dispelling stereotypes.

“The majority of the [wheelchair] advertising either has the person with the hospital gown in the big, chrome wheelchair or the athlete holding the trophy over his head,” he says. “There are people in these chairs, and they’re all different.”

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On Fridays, the day Box sets aside to do free wheelchair repairs, the Colours showroom near the Pond in Anaheim takes on a relaxed mood. First through the door one recent morning is Jose “Shorty” Zetino, 24, of Los Angeles, for whom Box designed a custom chair. Most wheelchairs were too large for Zetino, whose dwarfism results in pressure to the spine.

“John cares about his clients,” Zetino says. My chair’s important; I mean, that’s my feet right there.”

Colours, which became a division of the Swedish wheelchair manufacturer Permobil Inc. less than two years ago, sells about 1,000 chairs a year. Ranging in price from $1,800 to $2,800, the chairs--some coated in vivid candy red or bright blue--include models designed for playing tennis, basketball and rugby as well as for easy mobility in day-to-day life; each is custom-built for the user.

“We’re small, but we really like our customers and like to feel that they’re comfortable here,” Box says.

Box, a paraplegic since a motorcycle accident at 17, decided to build his own wheelchair out of frustration. He had driven four hours to order a new wheelchair from a manufacturer and then had not been treated well. “They said, ‘We have no time for you.’ I was mad,” he recalls.

He had taken welding and metallurgical science classes at Fullerton Junior College, and in 1988 Box and his brother started a company, West Coast Precision, specializing in aerospace measurement work. Using materials he ordered and some from his own machine shop, Box created a lighter, more agile chair. That success led to a prototype for the Eclipse, the first wheelchair developed by the company he formed in 1992, Colours in Motion.

“We struggled our first year; the costs were too high,” he says. “But I got out of the aerospace business just in time.”

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The first round of photographs in the People of Colours ad campaign appeared a few months ago in New Mobility, Sports N’ Spokes and similar trade magazines. The reaction was about what Box and photographer Martin Bibow, who collaborated on the concept, expected: kind words and warm handshakes, cries of outrage and hostile letters.

“I was horrified,” one woman wrote in reaction to the “Sensuality” ad featuring dental student Parsons. “Depicting disabled women as helpless, overly sexualized objects only serves to perpetuate the myth that people with disabilities are undeserving of respect and incapable of living fulfilling lives. It is inexcusable to objectify any person in a manner such as this.”

Asked another letter writer: “What the hell is she selling?”

The ad is a hot topic in disability chat rooms on the Internet as well as in the magazines where they appeared.

As for 26-year-old Parsons, she says the photograph is anything but exploitative.

“It took a long time to learn to accept myself, to love myself and to love my body,” she says. “I don’t feel victimized at all. With Americans, sexuality is so taboo. If you look at Europe, bodies are accepted in every magazine, and why shouldn’t they be? Bodies are beautiful--in any form.”

An array of personalities and statements mark the People of Colours photographs, including the “Politics” ad with San Francisco radio journalist Kiilu Nyasha wearing a T-shirt in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death row inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer. Another shows street philosopher Ekulalelit Saq with the message “Down but not out. Slowed but not stopped. Bent but not broken.”

Bibow, 38, who is also marketing director for Miramar Communications in Malibu, promises more of the same in future shots for the campaign. And he says he admires Box for taking such a risk.

“John is the only person in this business, I think, who would let me do this,” he says. “He has a commitment to the disabled community that really means something. . . . He’s a gutsy person.”

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“My first thought was ‘I’m a vegetable; I’m useless,’ ” Box recalls of the moment he learned he was paralyzed from the chest down.

But the doctor told Box something he will never forget: “Look at this as a mountain. You can climb this mountain; you’re just starting at the bottom.”

Physically, scaling that mountain has been difficult--especially during the four months of rehabilitation at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton. It was there, after seeing a disabled man in a video negotiate a flight of stairs on his own that Box decided to give it try. “The nurse thought I was trying to kill myself. . . . I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

But Box says emotional obstacles can be the hardest to conquer.

“The physical barriers come easily, but dating and the girl thing was tough. . . . That kind of pain was much harder than any physical pain,” he says.

Box met the woman who would become his wife when she filled in for his secretary.

“I think I knew from the start that I wanted to marry him,” says Mary Box, 30, who still works alongside her husband. “He has a pretty cool personality, and he’s cute. . . . He made me laugh.”

She says the People of Colours campaign is fueled by the people they have gotten to know through the business. “A lot of our friends in chairs have kids and do a lot of things,” she says. “We’re trying to show that being in a chair is not the end of the world.”

Adamson, who broke her neck in a Santa Monica surfing accident 10 years ago, is proof of that. The strong public reaction to her pregnant image only made her more confident in her decision to pose semi-nude. (She and husband Douglas are now the proud parents of Kelsey, 6 months.)

“The more I saw the photos, the more comfortable I became,” she says. “I liked the concept and what it was showing people, the extremes of people who are disabled. The comments that were negative made me even happier I did it.”

Which is the life-affirming spirit Box wants to champion.

“Some wheelchair companies give something back by donating to spinal research,” Box says. “I like to think that we give back in a lot of ways, but mainly through education.”

The lesson he hopes to convey: People who use wheelchairs for mobility lead productive, happy and fulfilling lives and have every right to be known as the individuals they are.