14 DAY TRIAL // Tanja Kiewitz is gorgeous, blonde and has a nice cleavage. Tanja is also missing half her arm, which ends right below the elbow and, for the first time, she’s using her handicap for a cause.
The graphic designer was approached by CAP48 with the request to pose for an ad that would replicate Eva Herzigova’s famous pose for Wonderbra, the Global Post report.
The ad is part of a campaign meant to raise awareness on handicap problems by highlighting that, before anything, a handicap is not the defining trait of those who have it.
Here is where Tanja comes in, the Global Post notes. Her ad is almost nothing different from countless other photos of gorgeous women we see plastered in magazine, up on billboards and on TV.
The only thing that’s different about her is her arm, which ends handless right below the elbow. This is precisely why the tagline for the ad asks whoever is watching it to look Tanja “in the eyes.”
“Regardez-moi dans les yeux… j’ai dit les yeux.” (“Look me in the eyes... I said the eyes.”) reads the tagline meant to show people that a handicap should never define a person.
The photo came out in Belgium in September and has been featured ever since on billboards, in magazines and even in television. Tanja is now a household name.
“There’s been a huge reaction. I’ve been besieged on Facebook. Mostly the reactions have been great, really positive feedback. I’ve got journalists from around the world calling; it’s been a bit crazy,” the model says for the Global Post.
It’s not just the media that’s going crazy for the new model, since the campaign centered on her also led to concrete results: a recent telethon raised more than 4 million euros for the organization.
Moreover, people are starting to change their preconceived ideas about handicapped people, which was precisely what the campaign aimed at.
“It would be good if handicapped people started to be used to advertise other things. Why shouldn’t somebody with a disability be a model? It would make a change from those models who all look alike,” Tanja says for the aforementioned media outlet.
“Why don’t we have more people in wheelchairs speaking on TV, they can speak as well as anybody else,” she explains, adding she personally found the experience very positive – and definitely very liberating.
Here is Tanja Kiewitz’s ad for the CAP48 campaign raising awareness on handicap issues. *Some discretion is recommended when viewing it.