Yesterday, we posted on Alyce Santoro's repurposed audio cassette tape ties which are constituted at the intersection of the sartorial and the sonic (as well as the visual and the aural). Today, we learned (from the FIT Facebook feed!) about Dr. Elena Bodnar's sartorial-scientific invention, the bra/gas mask, and a bulletproof hair weave.From the New Zealand Herald: "Bodnar, a Ukraine native who now lives in Chicago, started her medical career studying the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster." According to Bodnar, "If people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster, they may have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation sickness . . . [Moreover,] the bra-turned-gas masks could have also been useful during the September 11 terrorist attacks, and for women caught outside during the dust storms that recently enveloped Sydney."
For these life-saving bras, Bodnar earned an Ig Nobel prize from the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
The bulletproof hair weave is an older story but nonetheless relevant to this admittedly silly post. Last February, Briana Bonds of Kansas City, Missouri survived what would have been a fatal gun shot wound from her jilted boyfriend because her hair weave stopped the bullet. See the video below.
