Bree Walker, a Southern California anchorwoman, was born with the rare condition, ectrodactyly, which is more commonly called lobster-claw syndrome.
The condition causes her fingers and toes to be fused together, taking on a claw-like appearance.
She says that through the 80s and 90s she hid her hands as she broadcast the news, but these days Walker says she is done hiding. She just wants to relax and be herself.
Walker, 51, is also playing a sideshow freak on the dark HBO drama Carnivale. Although some disability groups have scoffed at her role Walker says she is doing it to show how people with deformitis were treated back in the early twentieth century.
“When I was a little kid, my oldest brother used to tease me that the only job I’d ever get would be in a carnival as a sideshow freak,” she says. “I’ve spent all my professional life trying to act as if I were not different. I didn’t realize how I’d been hiding the true me all these years.”
“Were I born in the ’20s and working in the Depression-era Dust Bowl, I would have been lucky to have been Sabina,” Walker says. “In those days, there were laws on the books that didn’t allow people with deformities to be in public places during certain times of day, like meal times. So most people born with a physical deformity were either given away to an orphanage, drowned at birth or abandoned to the family closet or cellar.”
Walker is no stranger to controversy. Critics lashed out at her decision to have children years ago as the defect is genetic and the offspring have a 50/50 chance of being born with the condition. Both of her children were, in fact, born with it. Andrea, 16, and Aaron, 13 have both undergone a series of surgeries each to unfuse their digits.
[USA]
