Csun Professor Ellen Stohl on Posing in Playboy

(swoosh effect) ANCHOR: Nearly 25 years ago, a local LA woman did something no one could have imagined. She opened an arena of debate on disability by posing nude for Playboy magazine. Today her past actions have forced many to view handicap in a whole different light and make society sit up and take notice. ELLEN: (reading) "Dear Mr. Hefner, my name is Ellen Stohl, and I am a model-actress, who three years ago was injured in a tragic auto accident but after a few months and a lot of learning, I realized that a wheelchair should not make a difference." ANCHOR: In an open letter to the editors of Playboy magazine, Ellen wanted to slay the most persistent myths about women in chairs. ELLEN: (reading) "The reason I chose Playboy for this endeavor is that sexuality is the hardest thing for a disabled person to hold onto." ANCHOR: That was nearly 25 years ago when Ellen Stolh made history. ELLEN: I was trying to say, look at me! I am a woman more than I am a wheelchair, and you need to see that about me. ANCHOR: Ellen was photographed for an eight-page pictorial and became the first woman with a disability to appear in Playboy magazine. ELLEN: Disability is not going away, and if we can't deal with the changes in our bodies and the changes in our physique whether it's from aging or catastrophic injury, we limit what we can do. ANCHOR: Ellen now lives in Northridge with her husband David and daughter Zoey. She's an incomplete quadriplegic, meaning she recovered sensation in her upper body after being paralyzed from the neck down in an auto accident. ELLEN: I hydroplaned off the edge of the freeway onto the side, flipped, rolled three or four times and then was airborne for about 40 feet. I broke five vertebrae in my neck. When I was in the hospital and this was happening to me, I refused a blood transfusion, because I said, I want to die now. ANCHOR: Would you describe it as hopelessness? ELLEN: It was hopelessness. It was that every dream that I had could not be fulfilled because I was no longer capable, because I was a disabled person. ANCHOR: But what Ellen learned-- ELLEN: Life can be just as good. You know, it's different. But you can ski, you can horseback ride, you can skydive, you can get married, you can have kids, you can have a job. Really, you're just doing it sitting down. ANCHOR: Her disability would create an ability in her to make society change its attitude in dealing with disabilities. ELLEN: There's always this undercurrent that we are damaged goods, and that we can't have the same quality as other people, and really I want people to realize you can do anything. ANCHOR: And even going as far as showing some skin for the cause of *** equal opportunity. ELLEN: Hef was really adamant that he believed that I had the right to have the same *** voice as women without disabilities and yes, there's criteria to fit in the magazine, to look a certain way, but the chair didn't matter. ANCHOR: She emerged as a sex symbol and a woman who would not let a disabling accident spoil her dreams of making it big in Hollywood. ELLEN: How do I pursue my dreams? And I started to get involved in acting again. ANCHOR: Would you do the Playboy thing again? If you had to do it all over-- ELLEN: If I had to do it all over again? Absolutely. I wish that society was such that I didn't have to go to such extremes. But I would do it again because it has made changes. I'm Ellen. I just happen to use a chair. The disability does not define me. I am who I am. (music) ANCHOR: Ellen is currently a professor at Cal State Northridge. She continues to tour and lecture on sexuality and body image and how they relate to physical disability. Now to learn more about Ellen and her cause, just go to CBSLA.com and click on Seen on TV. A warning today for Bay Area beach-goers-- (trails off)