Batwing

Batwing (pronounced bat-wing)

(1) In zoology, the wing of a bat (and, informally, related creatures).

(2) In entomology, several South or Southeast Asian species of tailless dark swallowtail butterflies in the genus Atrophaneura.

(3) An object or design formed or shaped in a way resembling the extended wing of a bat.

(4) In architecture, as “batwing doors”, pairs of swinging doors which typically do not lock nor cover the full vertical range of the doorway (leaving a large gap at the top and bottom), common as entrances to commercial kitchens and in bars.  It was the US industry in the mid-1950s which adopted “batwing doors” to replace “saloon doors” because there was some “middle class resistance” to the association with such establishments; it was a in time which rising prosperity had made mass market interior decorating a thing, hence the re-branding.

(5) In fashion, a garment or part of a garment resembling or conceived of as resembling the wing of a bat, applied usually to a loose, long sleeve (some flaring out, some with a tight wrist and known also as the “magyar sleeve”) but also to hem-lines.

(6) In hairdressing, a variation of the pigtail (in which the tied hair extends from the scalp at close to 90^o before cascading) in which the tied hair extends from the scalp upwards at an acute angle before cascading.  Batwings can be single ties but more typically appear symmetrically to the sides, in emulation of the wings of a bat.

(6) In physical training, an exercise routine or posture on the stomach wherein a dumbbell row or lateral raise is performed.

(7) In slang, an area of flabby fat under a person's arms (known in some places as “tuck shop lady’s arms).

(8) In automotive design, a type of rear fin which extended laterally rather than upwards.

1955–1960: The construct was bat + wing.  Bat (in the sense of the small flying mammal) dates from the late 1570s and is thought to be from a Scandinavian source, possibly the dialectal Swedish natt-batta, a variant of the Old Swedish natt-bakka (night-bat).  It replaced the Middle English bake & bak, from balke & blake, also from a Scandinavian source.  The related Nordic forms included the dialectal Swedish natt-blacka and the Old Icelandic ledhr-blaka (bat), the construct being ledhr (skin, leather) + blaka (flutter) and understood in the vernacular as “leather flapper”, the sense something like the later Old Danish nathbakkæ (literally “night-flapper”).  The earlier use (to describe a club, staff etc) dated from the turn of the thirteenth century and was from the Middle English noun bat, bot & batte, from the Old English batt which may have been from Celtic (the Irish & Scots Gaelic bat & bata meant “staff, cudgel”.  The Middle English verb batten, came partly from the noun, influenced by the Old French batre (batter).  Wing dates from the mid-twelfth century and was from the Middle English plural nouns winge & wenge, from the Old Danish wingæ (the other Nordic forms including the Norwegian & Swedish vinge and the Old Norse vǣngr (wing of a flying animal, wing of a building)).  In the Old Norse, the architectural sense of “a building’s wing” extended to nautical use, a vængi a “ship's cabin”.  The Nordic forms came from the Proto-Germanic wēingijaz, from the primitive Indo-European hweh- (to blow (hence the connection with “flapping” & “wind”).  The cognates included the Danish vinge (wing), the Swedish vinge (wing) and the Icelandic vængur (wing).  In English, “wing” came to replace the Middle English fither, from the Old English fiþre, from the Proto-Germanic fiþriją), which merged with the Middle English fether (from Old English feþer, from Proto-Germanic feþrō).  The spellings bat wing & bat-wing are also used.  Batwing is a noun and adjective, batwinged & batwingish are adjectives; the noun plural is batwings.

Gothic Batwing Sleeved Mermaid Long Dress by Punk Design (left) and Gothic Black A-Line wedding dress with leg Slit, batwing sleeves and bat hem by Wulgaria Couture (right).  Goths like batwings (usually in black with the odd splash of purple), the flowing sleeves often paired with leather or the more accommodating “wet latex look”.  Wulgaria Couture describe the A-Line style as a “wedding dress in gothic black” but it’s available also in a blood red for those non-Goths who like the batwing aesthetic.

Alfa Romeo BAT 5 (1953, left), BAT 7 (1954, centre) and BAT 9 (1955, right), designed by Franco Scaglione (1916–1993).

The Alfa Romeo BAT (Berlina Aerodinamica Tecnica, best translated as “exploration of aerodynamic principles in cars”) concept cars were among the most stylistically adventurous (and aerodynamically successful) of the transatlantic movement in the 1950s which focused on applying the lessons learned from progress in aeronautics during World War II (1939-1945).  The tail fin had been seen as early as the 1920s and their role in enhancing straight-line stability was imported directly from aircraft design but on the road they’d tended to be single, upright structures, best remembered from the use in the pre-war Czechoslovakian Tatras, intriguing things which, configured with a rear-mounted V8 engine, at speed needed a “stabilizing fin” more than most.  However, it was in the 1950s, when such publicity was afforded to jet aircraft, rockets & missiles, that designers took a renewed interest in fins & wings.  In the US, they quickly became extravagances, divorced from any functional relationship to fluid dynamics much beyond the merely coincidental but for Europeans, for whom fuel was more expensive and incomes lower, it was understood aerodynamics alone could improve both a vehicle’s economy and its performance.

Batwings: A grey-headed flying fox.

The performance of the trio was, by contemporary standards, remarkable, all able to attain in excess of 200 km/h (125 mph), despite being powered by a relatively small 1.9 litre (115 cubic inch) engine, albeit one fitted with double overhead camshafts (DOHC).  The wings (the BAT acronym for the cars was opportunistic) were just one part on a design which in all aspects was intended to optimize air-flow and although even at the time there were cars with smaller frontal areas, the BATs gained much of their advantage from the lowering of the front coachwork and the drag coefficient (CD) of the three ranged from 0.19-0.23, impressive even today.  It’s on BAT 7 that the batwing motif is most pronounced, the wings extending as a single structure from the base of the A-pillar, at the rear tilting and sweeping in an arc towards the centre-line.  When the metalworkers in the coach-building house first saw the design, their reaction was something like that of the structural engineers on first viewing the “sails” on the blueprints of Jørn Utzon’s (1918–2008) Sydney Opera House but they rose to the occasion.  The design would never have been suitable for mass-production; the famous fins on the US cars of the era were not only simpler structures but also designed in a way which accommodated the relatively “lose” manufacturing tolerances which permitted them being built quickly and at scale.  Perhaps tellingly, BAT 9 appeared with appendages less batwing-like and more attuned to the way Detroit was doing things.

It's the batwings which made BAT 7 the most memorable of the three and in 2008, Carrozzeria Bertone (builders of the original trio) built the Alfa Romeo BAT 11dk prototype, a conceptual rendering in clay, Styrofoam & filler, designed to use the underpinnings of the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione.  Commissioned by a former owner of BAT 7, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) scuttled its appearance at the Geneva Motors Show and certainly any prospect of a small production run or even a one-off creation.

Misty was a weekly British comic magazine for girls which, unusually, was found also to enjoy a significant male readership.  Published UK house Fleetway, it existed only between 1978-1980 although Misty Annual appeared until 1986.  The cover always featured the eponymous, raven haired beauty.  Befitting its theme, bats often featured in the artwork.

Lindsay Lohan in Anger Management (2013) demonstrates the batwing (left), defined by the tied hair extending upwards from the scalp before cascading, as distinct from the “pig tail” (centre) which extends from the scalp at close to 90^o before cascading.  Batwings can be single ties (centred or asymmetric) but more typically appear symmetrically to the sides, in emulation of the wings of a bat.  There are also batwing hair clips (right), also called “batwing hair claws” which is more evocative.

Chevrolet Bel Air: 1957 (left), 1958 (centre) and 1959 (right).

The 1959-1960 Chevrolets quickly picked up the nickname “batwing” and richly it was deserved; there was nothing like them at the time and there’s been nothing since.  The 1959 range actually had a strange and rushed gestation.  The fins on the 1955-1956-1957 cars (the so-called “tri-five Chevies”) had grown upwards in the fashion of the time but the corporation decided something different was needed and for 1958 chose baroque, the embryonic batwings obvious now but it was only when the next year’s model was released they would be understood thus.  The reason the General Motors (GM) 1958 body shape would last only one season was that at time it suffered by comparison with the sleek Chryslers; it was thought frumpy and even bloated and that it was released into that year’s short but sharp recession, didn’t help. The re-design for 1959 had its flaws (many of which (including toning down the batwings) were fixed for 1960) but it could never have been called “frumpy” and the “cats eye” taillights are admired even today.  Still the market didn’t respond as GM would have liked and the batwings soon flew off; by 1963 the Chevrolet was so blandly inoffensive it was being described as “a little bit like every car ever built”.  It proved a great success.

1960 Chevrolet "bubbletop" Impala Sport Coupe (left) and 1963 Ford Consul Capri (right).  On the 1960 Chevrolets, the memorable “cats eye” taillights were replaced by round units, three aside for the top-of-the-line Impala, two for the less expensive Bel Air & Biscayne.

For 1960, Chevrolet made the batwings a little less “batwingish” and the idea travelled across the Atlantic, Ford in the UK applying the scaled-down motif to their Ford Consul Classic (1961-1963) and Consul Capri (1961-1964), the latter a two-door coupé which the company wanted to be thought of as a “co-respondent's car” (ie the sort of rakish design which would appeal to the sort of chap who slept with other men’s wives, later to be named as the “co-respondent” in divorce proceedings).  Whether or not the “batwingettes” played a part isn’t known but neither the Classic nor the Capri were successful.