Jessica Kruger is breaking boundaries in her pursuit to become the face of Something Sweet
By Alison Roach
Photos by Bill Hawley
*See update below
SFU student Jessica Kruger is challenging what our society considers to be beautiful. The 20 year old Coquitlam native is currently in first place in the Lise Watier Something Sweet modeling competition, to become the face of the cosmetic line’s new perfume. Kruger also happens to be in a wheelchair.
When she was 15, Kruger worked for a house painting company as a summer job. While on the job, Kruger had her accident. “I was two stories up and I actually fainted and fell off of the ladder,” she explained. “From that fall I broke my neck in 4 places, and that led to my spinal cord injury . . . It was a pretty big life change.”
It’s now been five years since her accident, and Kruger has spent the time recovering. Of the first years after the accident, she said, “I didn’t really go through the typical mourning that someone would have after something tragic like that happens, just because I was so focused on doing my rehab and getting back into the swing of things, getting back to school. I never really took the time to think about what happened, but the second and third year after I got back into everything it began to hit me. I definitely struggled with it for a year.”
Through recovery was a long process, Kruger says her life now is even better than it was before. “I’m definitely at the point where I’m just as happy now as I was before, and I’ve totally accepted that having that accident has changed my life for the better in so many ways and opened up so many doors for me,” she said. “It’s not something that I can be upset about; it’s just given me so many incredible opportunities.”
Kruger is now going into her fourth year at SFU, where she majors in English and hopes to later on get her PDP certificate and become an English teacher. Beyond school, Kruger is also a the only female member of the BC provincial wheelchair rugby team, and the youngest female player in Canada.
Wheelchair rugby is a notoriously vicious sport, so rough that it’s been nicknamed “murderball.” One comment on a Reddit thread about Kruger in r/vancouver described it as what would happen if “rugby had sex with a demolition derby, and the baby came out top-half human and bottom-half death machine.”
“I love it,” said Kruger, who started playing the sport shortly after her accident. “It’s definitely not hard being the only girl; [the others] totally make me feel like I’m part of the team. I don’t even notice that I’m the only girl most of the time.” Kruger also currently works with WorkSafe BC, speaking at schools and conferences about the importance of workplace safety.
Kruger’s goal now is to become the face of Lise Watier’s Something Sweet perfume, and to show our society how to broaden its narrow view of beauty. Online voting for the competition ended June 8, and the top 5 contestants out of nearly 400 are now put before a panel of judges who will decide who will be the face of Something Sweet. At press time, Kruger was sitting comfortably in first place. The contest will announce the winner in July.
While she first sent in her picture just for fun — actually, at the suggestion of a friend — Kreuger quickly realized that the competition could provide a larger opportunity.
“I realized how much attention it was getting from the community and how I could actually do something to make a difference . . . It became more of an opportunity to educate people on disabilities and to show society that somebody with a disability could be seen in an advertisement or commercial,” Kruger said.
Kruger’s message has certainly captured the interest of a huge audience, with stories on her being featured in the Huffington Post, The Province, and CTV News. “It’s been a hundred percent positive, I haven’t heard anything negative,” she said of the feedback she’s received. “I mean, there’s been posts about it on Reddit, and Reddit isn’t always reknown for being politically correct or anything like that, and even those have all been positive for the most part. I certainly cannot complain; it seems like even strangers are behind me.”
The top comment on the same Reddit post about Kruger reads, “It’s great that BC has so many awesome women with disabilities to be role models . . . but if you’re a 15-year-old girl who’s just become paralyzed in a car accident, the person who might change your life is the girl in the wheelchair who has awesome style and even does modelling.”
*Update: Voting in the contest closed yesterday, with Kruger still in first place. The decision will now go to the judges. No specific date is listed for the final decision.
This article is actually pretty inaccurate, beyond the issues people have had with the terminology used within it. I realize it is over a year old but having just seen it now, I must say it’s a little sad to see news stories created without proper research. In Timmins, Ontario there has been a quadriplegic intermediate computer and technology teacher, who has held his position for the last 20+ years. While I’m not trying to take away from this young professional’s success, I do not feel it’s right to post and promote inaccurate information to the public.