Celebrities with Scoliosis
By Amelia Wang and Zoe Parrott
We might have had experiences with scoliosis, and it could have been with your friends, family, relatives, or a personal experience. But what about the people we look up to? Maybe their smile and perfect hair make you think of them as people who've never had problems from the day they were born. But they were, or still are real people too. They might have even had scoliosis!
There have been many people who have had scoliosis. They might have hid it from the world, showed it loud and proud, had many back treatments to cure it, or just had scoliosis briefly. We’re first going to be talking about Elizabeth Taylor.
Elizabeth Taylor was a British-American actress who succeeded in getting the Légion d'honneur, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Best Actress Academy Awards for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. She had been in at least 28 films, created her own foundation called “Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation” which raised $1.3 billion for fundraising in AIDS research, and had about $1 billion at her death. But what about any diseases or addiction she had to battle during her life? She had, in fact, a lot. And one of them was indeed scoliosis.
Elizabeth was in fact born with a double curved, or congenital scoliosis (the famous “S”), on February 27, 1932. She was hospitalized over 100 times, and at one point needed a wheelchair. However, she continued to keep acting, and with it won the Légion d'honneur, the Presidential Citizens Medal, and many more. She is one of the most famous people with scoliosis.
Elizabeth Taylor was indeed great, but how about someone more modern? Let’s try Yo Yo Ma. Yo Yo Ma. Yo Yo Ma is a cellist whom you have probably heard of before. He triumphed in playing for 9 different presidents starting age 7, and has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, The Glenn Gould Prize in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Kennedy Center Honors in 2011, the Polar Music Prize in 2012, and the Birgit Nilsson Prize in 2022. And, although not showing it too much, he too had scoliosis.
After graduating from Harvard, Yo Yo Ma wanted to start his career as soon as he had his graduation, which quickly came to an end after having to undergo a back surgery for a 63-67° scoliosis curve at 25. After surgery, he had to wear a cast around his body, and was forbidden to play the cello for 6 months. Despite this, the surgery was successful, and Yo Yo Ma turned out to be a magnificent cellist.
So we’ve done things modern, and we’ve done things old. What about the fastest runner on the planet? Yup, Usain Bolt (Usain Saint Leo Bolt), the fastest runner on the planet, had a 40° scoliosis curve.
Works Cited
https://elizabethtayloraidsfoundation.org/story/
https://www.hudsonvalleyscoliosis.com/celebrities-scoliosis/elizabeth-taylor/
