Can Disabled Models Rock the Runway and Reality TV?

"If it allows people to see disabled people in a different light than they normally would, I fully applaud that," he said. "That's something Tyra [Banks] and I have always tried to do."

Rebecca Legon, left, has a prosthetic leg. Lilli Risner is deaf.

"Missing Top Model's" six-episode run begins tonight, and at the moment, there are no plans to commission a second season. Phang hopes six hours will be enough to show the industry disabled models are employable -- perhaps more so than the girls on the runway now.

"It's easier to accommodate the problems of our girls than the problems of a spoiled teenage model making vast amounts of money with no value for it," he said. "If you don't want to show someone with a missing arm, you just put her in a different position."

But consider this: Months after countries like Spain and Britain instituted rules banning too-thin models from their runways, the skinny, heroin-chic aesthetic still prevails. Sea change doesn't come fast in fashion, regardless of whether its well-meaning and politically correct.

"Fashion is a very perverse, very limited kind of world that has its own sort of ungovernable aesthetic. Historically, it's not a very accommodating place," said Simon Doonan, creative director of Barney's and author of "Eccentric Glamour." "That's why when people try to inject it with some healthy, normal ideas, it doesn't work. There's no reason people can't challenge that aesthetic at any given time, but fashion tends to evolve on its own terms."