Ever hear the one about the quadriplegic on the beach? A guy comes across a woman with no arms and no legs. She laments the fact that she's never been kissed. Filled with pity, he kisses her. The joke runs around the sexuality bases until the woman says, "and I've never been fucked." Our kindly stranger, tired of the girl's shenanigans, picks her up, tosses her into the ocean, and says: "Now you're fucked." It's a bizarrely cruel and fundamentally unfunny joke, told largely amongst middle-schoolers in the '80s.

It's hard to imagine it being told now. Not because we've matured—obviously not. But because this was before our current war, even before the Gulf War, and quadriplegics, paraplegics (-legics of any kind, really) and amputees not only had no working limbs, they had no real face—no heartstring-yanking representation on The Today Show, no covers of Esquire, no Murderball. Times have changed. It is a testament to the true sex appeal of the personality that people with appendages missing are—I'm going to go out on a fake limb here—hot. Once there was pity, now there are, well, breasts. We are on the precipice of fully embracing the missing-limbed ladies of the Western world.

Let's take a moment to trace the trend, shall we? First there was Scarlett Johansson in The Horse Whisperer wailing, "Who's going to want me like this?" Umm, I don't know, Scar Jo. The whole world maybe? Then came Holly Hunter in Jesus' Son, engaging in some vivid, half-paralyzed sex, and reminding us all that she can do a whole lot more than mumble when she's excited. Now it's 2007 and look how far we've come. Heather Mills is speculating with Larry King about her prosthetic popping off during her stint on Dancing With the Stars! Ha ha ha. Rose McGowan has happily portrayed a go-go dancer with a fake leg that doubles as a machine gun in Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse. What could be sexier? The spirit of the woman in the immature '80s joke is back, alright. She's crawled back from the ocean to deliver a message: "Who's fucked now?"—Sloane Crosley