Jordan “Footless Jo” Beckwith is an American YouTuber who has turned potentially life-destroying trauma into a positive force and successful, awareness-raising social media channel. After breaking her ankle in a riding accident when she was 13, Beckwith suffered years of chronic pain and was left unable to do a lot of everyday things. By her late 20s, after various surgeries hadn’t worked as hoped, she found herself having to make the almost unimaginable decision to voluntarily have her right leg amputated below the knee. The surgery took place in late 2018, and Beckwith began vlogging about it soon afterwards on two YouTube channels. Today, she has an amazing 655,000 YouTube subscribers, half a million TikTok fans, and 40,000 Instagram followers. She continues to regularly post about her journey, looking at every aspect of life as an amputee, from the unusual ways the body adapts to painting the toenails of a prosthetic foot.
Beckwith’s success on YouTube hasn’t been without its struggles. As well as putting up with regular comments from religious people, she has also had to fight against censorship from YouTube itself after the platform began restricting her videos because of their “disturbing” content (i.e. her body). She won that battle, however, and continues to act as an advocate and an inspiration to people in similar situations all over the world. She has also helped to raise awareness of migraines, another painful condition from which she suffers, by partnering with Shades for Migraine on a media campaign. Long may she champion such important causes.
