The Birmingham Times
Ahead of UAB’s “Every Body Blooms: A Disability-Centered Fashion Experience,” featuring individuals with physical disabilities and mobility limitations as artists, models and collaborators, we look back on a profile of Karneshia Patton that ran in 2023.
Karneshia Patton: Model, Entrepreneur, Artist
Patton was raised in Senatobia, Mississippi, born with spina bifida, a developmental problem with the spinal cord, and is paralyzed from the waist down. Since the age of three, Patton has been using a wheelchair. Her first one, she said, was hot pink.
While Patton said she was the only person in Senatobia using a wheelchair to get around, it’s always felt natural for her. However, around middle school, Patton said her peers weren’t very understanding when they noticed that she was different from other people. “Kids are mean. I can just put it like that,” Patton said.
While the way some joked about her and laughed at her was painful, Patton said, she compartmentalized her difficulties.
“I think the earliest memory I had was like fifth grade of that. I don’t really know. I was a kid. [I just had] to keep going through the day. I couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell the teachers or nothing like that,” Patton said.
During her middle school years, Patton found enjoyment in wheelchair sports but away from school. Her mother used to drive her to Memphis, Tennessee to play a variety of sports, starting with tennis. Patton has also played basketball and wheelchair track and field.
Patton said she spent significant amounts of time inside Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis growing up, regularly seeing urologists, orthopedists and a variety of specialists.
“I was in and out of the hospital a lot. I didn’t technically live there…I had frequent doctor’s appointments. I knew the ins and outs of the hospital and how it worked, how it operated at a young age,” Patton said.
After finishing up at Senatobia High School, Patton said she was ready for a change. “I always felt limited,” Patton said of the town with a population under 10,000 and went off to the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, where she studied nutrition science.
Going to college, felt like “starting over,” even though she still felt like the only person with a disability, not knowing anyone else who used a wheelchair.
“It felt like a new world. I had never really been on my own, so it was all just very new, and then having to navigate people in this new setting…it was still kind of the same environment of being the only person with a disability around but more so on my own terms,” Patton said.
Given her childhood involved a lot of interactions with health care professionals, Patton said she first wanted to be a nurse. “Growing up in health care, essentially, being in a children’s hospital all my life, I just wanted to kind of embrace that and give back to that as much as I could. I knew I wanted to work with babies. That was my dream,” Patton said.
After graduating with her bachelor’s degree in nutrition science in 2012, Patton started on a graduate program in speech language pathology at Ole Miss. After a year in the program, Patton was accepted into Samford University’s Moffett and Sanders School of Nursing in 2013.
“I did it for a semester and quickly realized that that was not the life for me,” she said.
Patton considered her next move and around 2015 found a new passion in modeling.
Her first fashion show was for Jet Miller, who founded a movement called Living Out a Dream (LOAD). Patton said she had just taken a few pictures and assumed Miller knew she was trying to become a model because he asked her to be in his show, The Birmingham Times previously reported.
Since then, Patton has modeled in Magic City Fashion Week, founded by Birmingham designer Daniel Grier. Perhaps her highest profile campaign is with cosmetics retailer giant Sephora in 2021, called “We Belong to Something Beautiful.”
In the video, Patton spoke about the lack of representation for people with disabilities in the media, as well as the importance of friendships between those with disabilities. Her friend Ammie, who was paralyzed from the waist down after she was shot three times by her ex-fiancé in Birmingham years ago appeared alongside Patton in the video.
In addition to modeling, Patton turned another hobby into a profession. Doing nails happened to be something she already loved and had done all the way through her time in high school and college.
“I started trying to figure out what else I could see myself doing with my life because so much of my life was spent thinking I was going to be in healthcare, so I was like, ‘Okay, now what?’ And I always did nails as a side hustle,” Patton said.
In 2016, Patton started attending Birmingham’s School of Nail Technology and graduated in the summer of 2017.
After finishing up her nail program, Patton started her first professional nail work at Fingerpaints Nail Studio in Birmingham’s Smithfield neighborhood. During her time at Fingerpaints, Patton knew she wanted to work for herself, so she pursued a Master of Business Administration from Strayer University and took on Ebony Smith, the owner of Fingerpaints, as a mentor.
After earning her degree in 2018, Patton started her own nail business, Shantelz Nails, which she runs full-time in Hoover.
“I’ve come a long way. I really enjoy working for myself. It kind of feels liberating. I can set my own schedule. I can start and end when I want. I can take vacations when I want to. It’s definitely freeing, and I love that about the job,” Patton said.
In addition to her nail business she continues to work as a model.
“Every Body Blooms” is set for 6-7:30 p.m. in the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center’s Sirote Theatre, 1200 10th Ave. South. Doors open at 5 p.m., with seating starting at 5:30 p.m.
