Ok, I'm crazy, but I think I can do it...

Put a set of fully articulated angel wings on a beautiful woman that she can move at will, and have them look like they grew there.  *chuckle*  Yes, of course, spun off of the Victoria's Secret thing on TV, but hey... a better challenge than figuring out how to say blow up someone's satellite in orbit without them knowing who done the dirty deed.


I saw where the show was going to be on, and kind of said ok, good for them, maybe someday someone will figure out just what Victoria's secret really is, beyond seducing the boys into buying fancy underwear for their girls, or is it the other way around?  Anyhow, I don't normally watch such things, fashion isn't my venue at all and I don't think she'd be selling anything I'd want to wear, I'm certainly not on good enough terms with any ladies at the moment to be buying her slinkies for an un-birthday present.  I didn't watch the show, I packed up and went to the diner to hang out and draw.

But then on the road (having put reality in one hand and sour grapes in the other) I got to thinking you know, Vicky really does have some truly beautiful women on her crew of models, and more than beautiful women from all reports they're good women as well, giving a lot of their time and media clout to the cause of contesting the plague of eating disorder diseases.  I've heard several are now mothers returned from maternity leave to work the very apogee of their profession and I find that a good thing as well, a solid stroke against the idea that sexy ends when parenthood begins.  Well, sitting in the diner yacking with the kids and stewing around in a mix that included beautiful women who are also good women who are also mothers who also portray angels for their job imagination got fired off and presented me with a vision.

Make it the very start of the show, and of course the stage and runway are empty, the show hasn't really started when the lights go out, and I do mean out, total darkness.  Let the audience wonder for thirty seconds, maybe a minute, bring on at very low volume a very surreal music, perhaps something by the band Delerium might work.  The first light to be seen is a slowly rising haze of aurora borealis colors glowing in a rising, swirling fog (easy enough, fog generators and overhead exhaust fans with a transparent shroud to set a low pressure zone, projector lights in the circle at the end of the runway).  Borrow a trick from Andrew Loyd Weber, as the fog is rising so is a platform, lifting perhaps five feet above the runway but concealed by the darkness and the glowing fog swirling slightly outwards.  When the platform is at full elevation begin adding power to both the aurora lights and the exhaust fans, set a vortex of glowing color over the platform until within the vortex a shape becomes visible, at first little more than a mound of indeterminate origin.  Of course, as the lights continue to rise and the fog fades away the mound resolves as an angel on one knee, her wings curled all the way around in front of her, her head bowed to where all that can be seen is her hair (there is a reason her wings are curled around in front and her head down of course, the fresh air vents to protect against the irritating effects of stage fog are under her feet). 

The fog is sucked away, the aurora colors fade to be replaced by a soft blue white spot to make her wings glow as she lifts only her head to look around at the room.  Her glance lasts a good fifteen seconds, she takes a good look around before she begins slowly lifting her wings (which is why they absolutely must move like real wings would, slowly and gracefully).  As she opens her wings it is revealed she is not alone, beneath her wings are her children, one on either side of her.  As she stands she takes her children by the hand, her wings come to full extension, the platform begins to settle slowly back into the runway. 

While the platform is lowering I want the model portraying Momma Angel to do what only the best of the professional models can do: I want her to project out at the audience two thoughts, one in every nuance of her posture, and the other in her eyes.  I want her to say to the world I am the gentlest creature in God's universe with her posture, but I want her eyes to say "unless you do harm to my children, and if you do harm to my children don't bother trying to hide in hell because hell itself will move out of my way when I come looking for you."  When the platform is at rest the look fades, she folds her wings behind her and hand in hand walks her children back up the runway and off stage.  But as they're leaving the observent in the audience will notice one more thing: the children are dressed in simple white outfits, tailored shirts and trousers, but seen from behind one anomaly presents: the yoke on the shirt curls in, falls in deep accordian pleats to the waist, and in the swell of the pleats you can clearly see where their  wings are just starting to grow.

Yea, right, forget the bull in the china shop, me working in the same world as those ladies would be like a bull moose in a crystal garden, but still.  I saw it, saw it intact, and me being me I just can't help trying to figure out how to pull it off.  The vast majority of that vision is pretty stock stage stuff, but the wings are not.  I've never seen wings on a woman that can move the way I saw those wings move, and that's what I think I've figured out, how to make happen.  How?  I'll say this much: it involves counterbalanced hydraulics and clear plastic chambers that pressurize from the natural motions of her body riding a spring loaded plastic frame putting the weight on her hips, not her shoulders, the mechanism hidden cameleon fashion by being crafted of very thin clear plastic set reflective flat by a film of inverted polorized film and a clear working fluid carrying a micro-suspension of color particles adjusted to exactly match Momma Angel's skin tone.  The rest is just mechanics, and that's easy.  I think I can give a Momma Angel a working set of wings.

And you know, I'd probably do it for room and board and a beer a day because if there is one thing this world really, really needs to buy into it is the idea there is nothing, nothing at all, more beautiful than the beauty of a mother.

Beauty of a Mother
models: Elizabeth and Little Chris
photographer: GuessWhoIsBack on DeviantArt.com