It had just gone lunchtime; the rushing office workers had been and collected their sandwiches. The continuous whirring of the coffee machines blended with the exchanges of families and couples contribute to the calm after the lunch storm in this small London café, the taste of bitter coffee lingered in the air. The little café was huddled amongst the huge city buildings, cloaked in the thick grey clouds on this damp Monday afternoon in the capital.
The half a dozen customers glanced up as the door swung open, victim to the blast of cold wind that strikes them. Entered a lady with a smile as bright as the summer sun and unlike the outside, the interior of the café had become significantly warmer upon her endearing arrival.
Mary Russell, 50, brought a new cheerful sense of life to this café as she slalomed through the awkwardly heighted chairs carrying her scooter in one hand and fold-away stool in the other, jokingly commenting: “I don’t travel light, do I?”
It was evident immediately from the glancing stares and several pairs of prying eyes that a physical disability like dwarfism couldn’t be hidden, and Mary, as an ambassador for the community embraces this.
The former athlete, and now London based fashion designer and model, opened up about her battles with mental health as a result of her dwarfism and how she now uses social media to empower others.
Mary has achondroplasia – the most common form of dwarfism, meaning she has shorter limbs than average. However, Mary insists she doesn’t let her short stature get in the way of her achieving her dreams.
Born in Huddersfield, Mary revealed the true extent of the discrimination she faced growing up. She said: “being a person of colour, it furthered the intrigue about my condition,
“I remembered comments like “I’ve never seen a black one before.””
Being one of nine children, and the only one with dwarfism, Mary also spoke about how it wasn’t just on the northern streets she felt isolated but sometimes in her home. On her siblings, she said: “I often have this running joke with them that’s it’s a good job I am the only one because they wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
Mary told me about how she would often not tell her parents if something offensive was said to her as it occurred regularly and didn’t want to annoy them with the burden she was facing, “I was just a product of the time when prejudice was rife, it was okay to discriminate. I paid in many ways as a result of that time.”
She added: “I don’t think my family understand what it’s like to be a person with dwarfism, as much as they love me, they truly don’t really know.”
Isolated in the West Yorkshire town, Mary took the bold decision to move to the capital city after visiting a friend and finding comforts in the place that didn’t exist in her hometown. “For someone who grew up in a time where racial divide was pretty prevalent and having dwarfism on top of it, I felt that this city suited me better. It allowed me to just get on with who Mary might be.”
Fast-forward to today, Mary has triumphed in the face of adversity and has been a successful athlete – having won 4 gold medals for Team GB at the World Dwarf Games, TV star, model
and is now tackling one of the most discriminative industries, fashion. On top of this Mary is a mother to her 21-year-old son who also has dwarfism.
“I think me raising my son with dwarfism was easier than my mum raising me.” Mary learnt that her parents approach to raising her was more detrimental than what they intended. She admitted whenever she would face difficulties growing up because of her condition her family’s reaction would be to build her up and make her tougher, not examine or discuss what went wrong and find the route of the problem. This was something that left a lasting negative effect on her, and caused the early stages of her mental health difficulties.
She said: “My son knows he can talk to me, a lot of the time we have the same issues any way, he has anxiety and can talk about it with me, I couldn’t.” She disclosed that growing up she didn’t realise she had anxiety and thought she just felt “weird”.
When I asked about her personal battles with mental health, to my surprise, she welcomed the question and eagerly answered: “You wouldn’t believe it but my dwarfism hasn’t been my biggest problem, it’s been my mental health.” Mary suffers from anxiety, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and bouts of depression and uncovered that these battles with her mental health were actually something she struggled to talk about, until she did the BBC One Documentary Without Limits, as people always seemed to only focus on her dwarfism.
She frustratingly asked herself “am I ever going to be complete?” as the weight of her mental health issues piled on top of the physical obstacles she faced as well.
Mary now uses Instagram to promote images of body diversity and body positivity through her modelling and fashion design. She said that the representation of dwarfism in media has changed, when she was younger people with the condition would be seen in comedy programmes as a source of entertainment.
A post Mary shared on her Instagram after our meeting. (Picture: Instagram @magdalenemm626)
Passionately she expressed a hatred she felt for seeing people with dwarfism on television when she was younger, as it made the hairs on her skin stand up when her family made light-hearted jokes, about at a future job or future husband on screen, at her expense. “They were completely unaware of what their comments were doing to me, but I forgive them.”
Mary believes to shake the social stigma of dwarfism there needs to be more positive representations both in the media and in everyday life, in ‘normal’ professions. For example, Lisa Hammond as Donna Yates on EastEnders and Ellie Simmonds winning the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2008.
Having spent years of her life going through the heartbreak of falling in love with outfits in shops, and then realising in the changing room just how much would need to be altered and “lobbed off”, she recognised she was spending so much extra on clothes and how after all the adjustments, the shape and design of the clothes had completely changed.
As a result, Mary has transitioned into fashion design to help share a body empowerment message. She told me: “in this world where I don’t feel represented I feel it’s important to represent what I truly feel.
“Having a body that is not a part of beauty standards in the quote on quote ‘world of normality’.”
On her future plans, Mary has just finished a Channel 5 documentary about her endeavours to be a designer, to be aired in the summer and also her dream is to one day showcase at London Fashion Week. “I like to achieve things that have not been done yet, something the world needs to see, London Fashion Week would be the perfect platform.”
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