Making Mermaids
I find this story both beautiful and a little uncomfortable.
Imagine being a double amputee and stuck in a wheelchair since childhood. Imagine all the questions that you’d learned to deflect, perhaps with a little sarcasm, or, perhaps, with gentle humor. Well, one such person who told a kid who asked why she didn’t have all her legs that she was a former mermaid has gotten to realize a dream. The special effects wizards behind the Lord of the Rings movies have made her a mermaid suit, that works.
On the one hand, it’s cool that these guys are helping her out and that she’s not letting her disability keep her down. On the other hand, I wonder how long it will be until they have a product and are marketing it to people who want to turn themselves into mer-people.
I think it would make me feel claustrophobic. It looks like a fun kind of costume, though, but not that functional. Even for an amputee, two prosthetic fins would be more natural. So while she has a really cool dream almost made real (let me know when people start breathing water), I doubt it would really catch on.
Comment by Cheri — 5/8/2009 @ 5:46 pm