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A County Durham teenager turned a childhood tragedy into a global platform for redefining what a prosthetic arm can look like.
Tilly Lockey lost both of her forearms and hands before she turned two, and instead of hiding that fact, she’s built a career showing it off. The Shake My Beauty episode “The Teen With The Bionic Arms” follows the British teen as she applies flawless makeup, paints, and styles herself entirely with a pair of futuristic, 3D-printed bionic arms — proving in real time that a prosthetic doesn’t need to blend in to be beautiful.
- At 15 months old, Lockey contracted meningococcal septicemia (meningitis strain B), forcing doctors to amputate both her forearms and hands, along with her toes, to save her life.
- She now uses myoelectric “Hero Arms” from UK robotics company Open Bionics, multi-grip prosthetics controlled by electrical impulses from her own forearm muscles rather than passive cosmetic hands.
- In early 2019, director James Cameron and 20th Century Fox worked with Open Bionics to give Lockey custom Alita: Battle Angel-inspired bionic arms ahead of the film’s London premiere.
From a Hospital Bed to a Robotics Ambassador
Lockey’s story starts with an infection, not an invention. Meningococcal septicemia moved fast enough in her infancy that surgeons had no choice but to amputate both forearms and her toes just to keep her alive. What could have been the end of an ordinary childhood became the beginning of an unusual one: as she grew, Lockey became one of the public faces of Open Bionics, a Bristol-based company building prosthetics that look nothing like the flesh-toned hooks and gloves that dominated the industry for decades.
Instead of a device engineered to disappear, the Hero Arm is designed to be seen. It’s a myoelectric prosthesis — sensors pick up electrical signals from the muscles left in Lockey’s forearms and translate them into multiple grip patterns, letting her pick up small objects, hold a brush, or grip a makeup sponge with real precision.
The Alita Arms and the Cameron Connection
The clearest signal of how far Lockey’s profile had traveled came in early 2019, when James Cameron and 20th Century Fox teamed up with Open Bionics to build her a bespoke set of arms modeled on the cybernetic heroine of Alita: Battle Angel. The unveiling was timed to the film’s London premiere, turning a marketing tie-in into a genuine milestone for a teenager who’d spent years being told to make her prosthetics look as “normal” as possible.
She’s not trying to hide the fact she has bionic arms — she’s doing her makeup with them on camera to prove they’re better than the alternative.
Makeup as the Ultimate Demonstration
The Shake My Beauty segment leans into exactly that argument. Lockey doesn’t just wear the arms; she uses them for one of the most fine-motor-intensive tasks there is — applying a full face of makeup, precise enough to rival anyone using biological hands. It’s a deliberate choice of showcase, built to answer the obvious skeptic’s question about whether a robotic hand can really handle delicate, everyday work.
That mission — normalizing prosthetics rather than concealing them — runs through everything Lockey does publicly, from her modeling work to her advocacy appearances. The Hero Arm’s sculpted, machine-like design is part of the pitch: robotic limbs as a style choice and a statement, not a medical device to apologize for.
Open Bionics and the Bigger Shift
Lockey’s visibility has mattered to Open Bionics as a company too. The firm built its reputation on getting away from generic, one-size prosthetics and toward 3D-printed devices tailored to each user, with interchangeable, glossy “bionic” covers that kids and teens have actually asked for. Having a teenage ambassador who does her own makeup, styling, and public appearances on camera gives the technology a real-world test that a lab demo never could.
The Shake My Beauty format has made a habit of finding subjects who force viewers to rethink their assumptions about beauty standards, and Lockey’s episode does exactly that without needing to say it outright. She just picks up the eyeliner and gets on with it — arms on full display, no attempt to disguise where the mechanics end and her wrist begins. That’s the whole argument, delivered in one steady hand.
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