Why Mermaids?

Why did I suddenly get interested in mermaids? I'm not sure. It started when I read some news reports about girls and women buying expensive mermaid tails as swimming suits. I also became aware of professional mermaids who come to festivals. I saw a few in August at a pirate festival.

What really amazes me is that there is an entire mermaid and merpeople community. Just going through relevant entries on Youtube seems endless. There are even series produced in homage to H2O, Just Add Water by young girls. I thought that there were two or three of these but I found some more last night. I think that there are around a half dozen although I'm not sure that all of them made it past the first episode. None of them are really watchable to an adult.

Then there is H2O, Just Add Water. I've been watching it on Hulu. Originally I only planned on watching an episode or two but I got hooked. It is much better written than I expected and the requisite wacky situations never go over the top. If you pay close attention, the character growth is very well executed.

I'll have more to say about this later.

So, what's the attraction?

I'm not sure but somehow the half human/half fish is a powerful image.

Of course mermaids were not always a happy image. Sirens who lure sailors to their death are often shown as mermaids. In other myths, sighting a mermaid was a sign of bad weather or other misfortune. I know a couple of sea shanties about this.

That image seems to have vanished during the 20th century. Now they are neutral or helpful.