Dancer Outfit R&D

I've been kicking around different ideas for an "accidental stripper" outfit. Susan Wayward had the idea of an outfit that could be "removed" via remote control. I guess it would be routine that would have assorted clothing items popping off at different moments.


That put my bent little mind in overdrive think about how to pull something like this off. My idea was to go get a remote control car and adapt the servos. My first concern with this approach is what to do with the antenna. I suppose you could play it up, sort of my favorite Martian meets Bettie Page. Maybe not. The antenna would have to be integrated into the bottoms, probably some sort of belt. Actually a belt would work pretty well for hiding the electronics. One of the difficult parts of this is hiding the actuators. With servo idea I figure a set of pins connected to cables would be the best approach. When you press the remote control the motors would start and pull the pins that held the outfit together. The pins would be hidden in a figure eight loop. The overall draw back with this is bulkiness of the gears and servos. There is also the issue of cabling. Since its clothing it has to be stretch and flex. The cables would have to have enough slack to allow normal movement. Doable, but making it reliable could be very difficult. Another problem is I'm stuck with the electronics that come with the RC car. I think the micro RC cars would work pretty well. I'll need to do more research on that.

Susan had a really good idea of using magnets. I haven't quite figured an approach to this. It's possible to use electromagnets to switch on and off. But these tend to be pretty high power devices. A big ass battery pack would be impractical. You'd probably be put in the situation of having to recharge your bra everything you used the outfit. Maybe that's not such a problem. This isn't exactly a daily use item. Of course then I have to sort out a charging systems that wouldn't start a fire, this tends to upset the management. Not to mention the person wearing it. The biggest problem I see with the magnets is a creating a solid enough bond to keep the outfit together. It would kind of defeat the purpose having the outfit fall off every time you moved. To deal with the power issue it's possible to use regular magnets and pulse the electromagnets to repel them. You can store up energy to fire a large pulse to pop off the clasp. That doesn't take much battery. You always run into safety issues when you start to store up power. Nothing says sexy like an "I've just been tasered" muscle spasm.


Another idea I had would be to use hidden buttons instead of remote control. Basically the dancer would press a button that would delay a certain amount of time, and then pop off. Ideally in her routine she could set the trigger inconspicuously, so it would appear the wardrobe malfunction was unexpected.

I located some small and fairly powerful magnets (yes my place looks like somebody blew up a Radio Shack). I'm going to try some experiments at work tomorrow to see how much power it takes to repel these magnets. Then maybe a stop by a hobby to shop for some RC goodies. More later.