Rushdie, Padma
Aimee Mullins
Posted on 10/30/2008 9:36:55 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Famed author's new love is 28 years younger
HE used to turn heads with sultry actress Padma Lakshmi on his arm.
Now, author Sir Salman Rushdie is drawing stares again with his new lady, model Aimee Mullins.
At 1.75m tall, the slender beauty is 28 years younger - and at least 5cm taller - than her portly 60-year-old beau.
And they are the latest May-December pairing which has raised eyebrows.
Rushdie and Mullins turned up at a Manhattan party earlier this month and guests were left in little doubt that, following the end of his fourth marriage to Lakshmi, 37, Rushdie now has a new, even younger, woman in his life.
Although Mullins has told friends that she and Rushdie are only "close friends", onlookers say otherwise. A source told the Daily Mail: "They certainly looked like they were on a date.They arrived together, left together and were being touchy-feely - Salman would take her arm as they walked around the room and when he was talking to people, she'd wait a step behind him.
"She said they'd been to another movie earlier that day and they'd been drinking together since the afternoon."
Mullins reportedly told guests: "We've been hanging out together for the day. I'm a little drunk and we're tired."
FRESH-FACED BEAUTY
But it's probably more then Mullins' fresh-faced beauty that has attracted the controversial author. Looking at these pictures, it's hard to tell.
But Mullins is a double amputee - she was born without any shin bones and her legs had to be amputated below the knee on her first birthday.
The daughter of a working-class Irish immigrant to the US, Mullins spent most of her life wearing cheap, unsightly and clumsy artificial stumps.
Yet, she managed to become a champion athlete and long jumper, setting world records at the 1996 Paralympics in the 100 metres, the 200 metres and the long jump.
She has also forged a lucrative career as a model, starring in numerous catwalk shows and appearing on the cover of fashion magazines such as i-D and Dazed And Confused.
People magazine even put her on one of its annual 50 Most Beautiful in the World lists.
She is also hotly sought-after on the speaking circuit, where she commands as much as £12,000 ($32,400) for motivational lectures.
She told Daily Mail: "If I want something, I get it. That is the way I have always been.
"I don't want to look back when I am 80 and say, 'God, I wish I had spent more time feeling sorry for myself.''
Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Mullins was brought up in a small house on a noisy main road by her mother Bernadette, a hospital worker, and her father Brendon, a foreman at a ball-bearing plant.
It was a tough life, but she rarely complained, even during the eight years of painful operations following the amputation of her lower legs.
Her first artificial limbs were crude plaster stumps but she insisted on learning to walk unaided and took her first steps by the age of two.
She refused to use crutches, let alone a wheelchair, explaining: "I hated that feeling of being confined."
Incredibly, her disabilities didn't stop her from being a tomboy like her two younger brothers.
"She did all the things other kids do - swimming, climbing, falling out of trees. She just tried hard," her father told the Daily Mail. At Allentown's Parkland High School, Mullins would even compete in track races against able-bodied pupils.
She participated in school activities like any other students that her English teacher, Amy Mutis, only found out the lively teenager had prosthetic legs when she wrote an essay about it.
A few years later, Mullins won a scholarship to Washington's Georgetown University, where she was determined to make her mark as an athlete.
Her former coach Frank Gagliano recalled: "She called me up one day out of the blue, and said, 'I'm Aimee Mullins, I'm a very good runner, and I want to train with you'.
"She said she wore prosthetics but I didn't know what those were, so it was a shock when she turned up and had false legs below the knee.
"She was always sore, always aching. But boy, could she run."
Mr Gagliano eventually propelled her to stardom at the Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996.
Mullins also found another source of inspiration when she met Heather Mills, the now ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney, by chance in 1996.
Mullins said at the time: "A lot of the things I wanted to do - activism, modelling, giving speeches - Heather was already doing them."
"NOT MANIPULATIVE"
The English specialist who designed Mills' lifelike cosmetic leg made a set of legs for Aimee with silicone "skin" that exactly matched her colouring.
The day Mullins got her limbs fitted, she treated herself - by varnished her toenails for the first time. The next day, she and Mills went shopping in London for short skirts and high-heeled shoes.
She made her modelling debut with Mills in September 1998 at an Alexander McQueen fashion show in London, strutting down the runway in a leather corset.
She even had a TV and film career, including a role in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, and invitations to many glamorous events thronging with eligible men.
But Mullins was immune to their advances. Said a friend to the Daily Mail: "Unlike Heather, Aimee has never been attracted to money. She doesn't have a manipulative bone in her. She has principles."
In fact, until she appeared with Rushdie at the Manhattan party, friends and family assumed she was still with her long-term boyfriend, Eric Treiber, whom she has dated since high school.
"As far as everyone knows, Aimee is still loyal to Eric. She has never mentioned breaking up with him," said the friend.
"But now that Salman Rushdie is taking an interest in her, you do have to think she may finally have outgrown her roots.
"Rushdie is a high-risk, high-maintenance guy, but Aimee has taken far bigger risks than this."
Rushdie, Padma
Aimee Mullins
I need to write a book that pisses the hell out of Muslims...
Lucky rascal.
It’s good to have a jihad declared against you.
Now that I’m 51 I have had a change of heart and now approve of the once frowned upon older man younger woman thing. You go Salman!
My parents would declare one themselves on me if it got results!!
For a dude who looks like a goat, ol’ Rushtie gets some hot challenged babes.
Man, I was just thinking “I hope she takes those things off before she gets into bed...”
Um..actually I prefer she keeps them. Makes it more fun :)
No wonder these stupid jihadists couldn’t win the WOT...they couldn’t even kill Rushdie and he’s out on the open.
main reason to watch Top Chef is Padma
My new hero. ;’)
Hey, at least she isn’t eight years old, ye Mohammedan thugs!
And I can’t get a date...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.