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Rose McGowan as the soon-to-be amputee Cherry Darling in Planet Terror

Paris Hilton may have done some good for fellow inmate Pamela Richardson, when they shared jail time. Gloria Allred (that irritating lawyer who always wears red to emphasize the lipstick on her teeth) filed a claim accusing officials at Century Regional Detention Facility of denying her client, Ms. Richardson, the use of her prosthetic leg.

“I know I am not Paris Hilton,” Richardson said in a statement released through Allred, “but I am a human being with medical needs, and I don’t understand why I was treated in the way that I was.” Such a claim is the precursor to a lawsuit. County officials say they are already receiving dozens of similar complaints.

Since Paris got special treatment, so should everyone. Then we could call it ordinary treatment.

FSR’s own Brian Gibson wrote about an amputee costumed as Grindhouse/Planet Terror‘s Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan played Cherry Darling in both movies) “enticing [Brian] to come closer.”

What is it about amputees that can turn people on?

The case of Pamela Richardson is the most recent newsworthy amputee story since fashion model Heather Mills, ex-wife of Paul McCartney, danced her way to popularity on ABC’s hit television series, “Dancing with the Stars.” She showed amazing ambition in overcoming the most difficult ballroom steps, to the extent of ordering a special prosthesis which can respond to rapid turns. Like her or not, she seemed to inspire the audience with perseverance so intense, it’s surprising she failed to hold onto Lord McCartney. When she was still aka Lady McCartney, she once removed her fake leg and daintily slammed it atop Larry King’s desk in the middle of a television interview.

We’ve seen amputees Tom Whittaker climb Mt. Everest, stuntmen Glenn Malmskog and Casey Pieretti perform in major films, and champion surfer Bethany Hamilton overcome the loss of her arm to surf again. Heart of a Soul Searcher about Bethany’s life, based on her book, “Soul Surfer,” was released in April.

Back in 1939, White Sox pitcher, Monty (“Gander”) Stratton lost his leg in a hunting accident. He later coached for the White Sox, and a movie, The Stratton Story, starring James Stewart, was made about his life.

In the 1940′s, movie star Herbert Marshall, who had lost a leg in World War I, was a most sought after lover. Hollywood historians claim that his wooden leg was neither detrimental to his acting prowess nor his legendary prowess with the ladies. We hope he did not leave too many splintered starlets.

Equally notable was Tony Soprano’s one-legged Russian girlfriend, Svetlana Kirilenka. The audience was not clued in as to whether Tony had the hots for Svetlana because she was limbless, or despite it. In an earlier episode, Tony’s sister, the intriguing and devilish Janice, stole Svetlana’s artificial leg as revenge for having had a 78 record collection stolen by her.

Perhaps Tony Soprano should have discussed his attraction to Svetlana with Dr. Malfi, his long-suffering psychiatrist, and give her the opportunity to diagnose his condition. He may be a victim of “acrotomophilia — a sexual attraction to amputees. In the same way some people are turned on by, say, high-heeled shoes worn during sex, others are turned on by amputees.

Sex can definitely be enhanced by loss of limb, according to the now-defunct website of amputee porn star Carol Davis, who said, “One of my devotees has given me several pair of pantyhose that he has custom-tailored for me. They have the stump side cut off and sealed closed. When we go out on a date, he is turned on by the fact that while I sit, my stump is nicely enclosed in tight-fitting nylon while it lies on the seat under my dress or skirt. I can always get his attention if I should happen to casually move it under my skirt or dress.” You can see Carol modeling swimsuits on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCAlhYFUVNg&mode=related&search=

Carl Elliott’s article in the Atlantic Monthly, “A New Way to be Mad,” revealed that a surgeon in Scotland, Dr. Robert Smith, had amputated the legs of two patients at their request. The odd thing about the surgery was that it was not necessary. The patients were not physically sick. Their legs did not need to be amputated for any medical reason, nor were the men incompetent, according to the psychiatrists who examined them. Both men whose limbs Smith amputated have declared in public interviews how much happier they are now that they have finally had their legs removed.

Such elective surgery, though radical, is not as rare as one might think. According to Elliott, in May of 1998, a 79-year-old man from New York traveled to Mexico paying $10,000 for a black-market leg amputation. In October of 1999, a mentally competent man in Milwaukee severed his arm with a homemade guillotine and threatened to sever it again if surgeons reattached it. That same month a legal investigator for the California state bar, after being refused a hospital amputation, tied off her legs with tourniquets hoping that gangrene would set in necessitating an amputation. It didn’t work. Now she says she’ll probably have to lie under a train or shoot her legs off with a shotgun.

BBC London broadcast a documentary on this phenomenon, called “Complete Obsession,” in which Dr. Smith stated “What true apotemnophiles share is the feeling that their body is incomplete with their normal complement of four limbs.” Smith has elsewhere speculated that apotemnophilia is not a psychiatric disorder but a neuropsychological one, with biological roots. Perhaps it has less to do with desire than with being stuck in the wrong body.

Dr. John Money, director of Psychohormonal Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore MD published the first modern case history of what he termed “apotemnophilia” — an attraction to the idea of being an amputee, which is to be distinguished from “acrotomophilia.” On the internet, apotemnophiles are known as “wannabes” while acrotomophiles are known as “devotees.”

One woman, then a forty-two-year-old student and housewife whose history Money magazine presented in a 1990 research paper, said one of the appeals of being an amputee was “coping heroically.” A man told Money that his fantasy was that of “compensating or overcompensating, achieving, going out and doing things that one would say is unexpectable” [sic]. One of Money’s amputee correspondents wrote that what attracted him to being an amputee was not heroic achievement so much as “finding new ways of doing old tasks, finding new challenges in working things out and perhaps a bit of being able to do things that are not always expected of amputees.”

With so much research being conducted today, Sarah Bernhardt would have many choices if she were still alive. She could have hooked up with Tony Soprano for the series’ final episode, starred opposite Fred Astaire in a remake of “Daddy Long Leg” or open her own shop, Leg-r-Us.

Heather Mills, on the other hand, should run for political office, since there are none better than Heather to go on the stump.

We can’t apologize to anyone offended by this article. We’d like to, but we won’t. We wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.