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Talli Osborne

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Canadian musician and public speaker

Talli Osborne
BornMontreal
Occupation(s)Musician, speaker
Musical artist

Talli Osborne (born c. 1980) is a Canadian punk rock musician and public speaker. Osborne has shared the stage with the bands NOFX, Lagwagon, and Against Me! since becoming involved in the Toronto punk community. She was named spokesperson for the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas in 2022. Born without arms and some bones in her legs, she has given motivational talks centered on her life experiences and topics such as body positivity at speaking events in Canada and the United States.

Biography

Osborne was born c. 1980, in Montreal, Canada. She was born without arms and some legbones, and she is less than 4 feet (1.2 m) tall. Osborne has stated that she does not prefer the term "disabled" as "t implies that I'm not able to do things."

At her birth, the couple to whom Osborne was born chose not to raise her, so she resided in the hospital nursery for the first 13 months of her life until she was adopted by a couple in Ontario with one child. In a multi-racial adoptive family, Osborne would ultimately be one of 19 adoptive children, some of whom also had special needs. Her adoptive mother volunteered at an adoption agency, while her adoptive father was a mechanic. She recalls that, while she was growing up, all family members were expected to help with household tasks; for example, in mornings, she was tasked to clean litter boxes and floors. Osborne used prosthetic legs and arms in her youth, but stopped using prosthetic arms in high school to avoid the need of a teaching assistant. After moving away from her family to enter a social work program at Ryerson University in Toronto, she stopped wearing prosthetic legs as they felt uncomfortable. She later left Ryerson University without graduating. She began to volunteer for The War Amps, an organization which assists amputees, when she was 13 years old.

Osborne was the target of online harassment in 2013 after a photo of her was published on Reddit. In late 2018, she filed a complaint regarding two Hamilton Police officers who arrived at the scene when she was hit by a car while riding a mobility scooter. She alleged mistreatment by the officers. Following her move to the United States, in 2024, she became the subject of news media after she obtained a driver's license through a seven-year effort costing almost $100,000, some of which was paid with the assistance of the War Amps. Her car, a used Mini Cooper, had modifications to its steering system, floor pedals, and seatbelt, and was fitted with a touchscreen allowing for control of gears and turn signals.

Punk rock community

Active as a performer and concertgoer in the punk music scene, Osborne first gained an interest in punk rock in high school upon hearing a song by the band NOFX. As a vocalist, she performed in such venues as Toronto's Bovine Sex Club and opened for NOFX as part of the musical group named The Talliband. She has shared the stage with the bands Lagwagon and Against Me!. Vice magazine in 2015 called her a "fixture" of the local punk community in Toronto. She has also spoken on the issue of the accessibility of musical venues from her perspective as a concert performer and as an attendee.

External videos
YouTube logo
video icon "She's Nubs" by NOFX

Osborne also goes by the nickname "Nubs", and has also led her own band named Nubs and Her Studs, in which she was the lead vocalist. Osborne had only briefly spoken to NOFX frontman Fat Mike at a concert some time before the band wrote a song about her, titled "She's Nubs", for their 2003 album The War on Errorism. The song led her to gain fame among fans of NOFX and other bands under the Fat Wreck Chords record label, and she began speaking to the general media. She explained her reaction to the song to Vice magazine in 2015:

A couple of months later my friend had gotten a hold of an advanced copy of their new album. He phoned me up and told me that he thought the band wrote a song about me and played me the song over the phone. At first I couldn't believe it. We had only talked for a bit so I looked up their email on the website and Fat Mike wrote me back from his AOL account. I guess I had left an impression. It was the ultimate compliment.

Fat Mike invited Osborne to become the spokesperson for the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, which he had founded, in 2022. In her role, she acted as the museum's "customer service director" and was responsible for representing the museum at punk music events. She performed research on old concert posters to be pieced together in a large mural for one of the museum's exhibitions prior to the museum's opening in 2023.

Speaking career

After leaving university, Osborne took a job at Virgin Mobile, where she ended up working for seven years in customer service and social media representative roles. In recognition of her customer service work, her employer rewarded her with a trip to the private island of Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson. She left her job at Virgin Mobile in 2014 to work full-time as a motivational speaker. Around that time, she moved to Hamilton, and soon after gave a talk at Supercrawl, an indie arts festival held in the city. CBC News featured her as one of "5 remarkable Hamilton women we met in 2014". She spoke on bullying and body positivity at the Toronto TEDx conference the following year. She has also spoken at universities and schools across the country and in the United States. In 2022, she was featured in a social media marketing campaign for the beauty retail company Sephora.

Notes

  1. Sources vary on her age. It has been reported that she was 36 years old in either 2015 or 2017, and 42 years old in 2022.

References

  1. ^ Fung, Nathan (August 17, 2024). "After 7 years and almost $100K, Canadian woman born without arms and short legs can now drive". CBC Hamilton. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  2. ^ "Toronto woman speaks out against cyberbullies on Reddit". CBC Toronto. March 6, 2013. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
  3. ^ Winsa, Patty (October 18, 2015). "Talli Osborne, born without full arms or legs, inspires punk rockers and TedxToronto attendees". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on October 1, 2023. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
  4. ^ Isador, Graham (June 30, 2015). "Punk Music Gave Talli Osborne the Confidence to Be Herself". Vice. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  5. Hay, Susan (December 3, 2018). "'Can't judge a book by its cover': Inspirational speaker Talli Osborne never lets anything stand in her way". Global News. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  6. Carter, Adam (September 27, 2018). "Motivational speaker hit by SUV and knocked off scooter, slams 'bullying' police response". CBC Hamilton. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  7. Hampshire, Laura (September 27, 2018). "Inspirational speaker files complaint against two Hamilton Police officers". Global News. CHML. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  8. Osborne, Talli (April 24, 2021). "Driving was the one part of my independence I hadn't achieved". Toronto Star. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  9. ^ Ysteboe, Taylor (July 26, 2017). "Punk's Ethos of Inclusivity Leaves Out One Major Group". Vice. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  10. ^ Gupta, Rahul (September 6, 2019). "Woman born without arms hopes to find her dressing stick lost in Toronto". Caledon Enterprise. Toronto.com. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  11. ^ Nickerson, Cara (August 25, 2022). "Canadian punk legend Talli Osborne picked as face of new Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas". CBC Hamilton. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  12. Nickerson, Cara (March 30, 2023). "Punk Rock Museum to open in Las Vegas with Canadian punk at the helm". CBC Hamilton. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  13. ^ Carter, Adam (September 10, 2014). "Talli Osborne turns missing arms into inspiration at Supercrawl". CBC Hamilton. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
  14. "5 remarkable Hamilton women we met in 2014". CBC Hamilton. December 31, 2014. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
  15. Crann, Justin (April 27, 2022). "Sephora celebrates the many forms of motherhood". Strategy. Retrieved September 15, 2024.

Further reading

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