Beasts of the Deep by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Libbey Publishing
Published: 2018-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Mermaid Spotting: the Rise of Mermaiding in Popular Culture

Maria Mellins

Since the beginning of cinema there have been a number of depictions of the mermaid in films like The Mermaid (director unknown, 1911), Mr Peabody and the Mermaid (Irving Pichel, 1948), Miranda (Ken Annakin, 1948), Splash (Ron Howard, 1984) and of course Disney’s Ariel from The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989). Currently, mermaids and their darker counterparts, sirens, have gained popularity and are emerging across different forms of media, fashion and lifestyle. Much like the vampire in recent years, there is an appetite for these human/fish hybrids, with films and TV series including Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Polish horror film The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczyñska, 2015) and Freeform’s television drama, Siren.

Reimaginings of the mermaid are not just confined to screen fiction, but can be found across wider lifestyle practices, as styling oneself as these beautiful creatures of the sea is no longer confined to screen sirens Annette Kellermann, Anne Blyth and Daryl Hannah, but has now been extended to high street trends. Mermaid fashion can be found across a number of popular clothing brands such as ASOS, which sells mermaid inspired merchandise carrying the slogans ‘mermaid hair don’t care’, ‘mermaid academy’ and ‘off duty mermaid,’ and New Look, which offers mermaid tail socks, ‘mermaid sparkle’ body glitter, as well as mermaid knitted blankets. Styling the sea is even disseminating into more DIY fashion, as teal blue ombre hair colours and crimped ‘beachy’ hairstyles have become popular.

Whilst the recent proliferation of mermaid products has indeed permeated popular fashion and lifestyle trends, a smaller group of people with a fascination for these fantasy figures have gone one stage further, as ‘mermaiding’ has become a legitimate leisure activity and business opportunity. Mermaiding is a lifestyle, crafting process that is often linked to cosplay. It involves using a combination of free diving methods and underwater dolphin kick techniques, with the swimmers’ legs bound together in a monofin tail. The WeekiWachee showgirls of Florida are perhaps the best known mermaid shows, and have been performing at the springs since the 1940s. However, currently a rapidly growing number of women and men are reaching for their fabric and silicone tails. In fact the U.S. Bureau of Labour statistics states that there are one-thousand professional mermaids working on a full time basis in America and whilst the UK mer-community is smaller, it is on the increase, and is supported by a developing British mer-industry. A growing number of mermaid swim schools have emerged, such as Mermaids UK in North Devon, and Mono-Fin Mermaids in Hastings, as well as tail makers and party planners. There are also lots of opportunities to get together and swim with other mermaids, take part in splash mobs, as well as attend larger community events like Brighton’s annual festival, March of the Mermaids, and London based convention, Merfolk UK.

Through a combination of methods including questionnaires, interviews and online observations of primarily UK and North American mermaids on sites such as the

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