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Interview with a mer-tail maker: PART 1 ~ The Mer Community
One of the people I got to know when I was tutoring in Holyoke last fall was stillwater_fx, who has an amazing side job: he makes tails for merfolk. They’re incredible works of art, and you can actually swim in them, if you’re skilled.
(Here is his own aural introduction for you—just a 13-second hello!)
I’m going to present the interview over three posts. If you have questions for stillwater_fx, post them here! Be patient about answers, though—he’s been doing a lot of caregiving for vulnerable family members during the pandemic.
asakiyume: How did you first get introduced to the idea of mer people? What made you love them?
stillwater_fx: The first merperson I ever heard of was an Orisha, a deity. Her name is Yemaya. She is considered to be the ocean mother, also commonly depicted as a mermaid. You see, my family has an old history with voodoo and Santeria, and so I was introduced to the tales of all of our pantheon. In that way our beliefs and traditions are passed down. What you would call a Bible for us is a collection of stories about times long past and warrior gods. On the other hand, growing up on a tropical island did fuel that fascination that I had with the water. I remember even back when I was a child, I never did play in the sand with all my siblings. I would always go swimming all the way out to the buoys, and looking back at the beach, I would try to swim down to the bottom and see the fish, and in this way I fell in love with the sea and all its creatures.
asakiyume: How did you discover the community of mer-crafters?
stillwater_fx:
I discovered the mermaiding community through an online forum called Mer.Yuku. This was in my teen years. The site has been replaced by themernation.com, a better, more organized version of the old forum. On the mer network you can find all sorts of mermaid-related information. The site is basically an online archive of the mermaid culture. You can find DIY threads on everything from how to make tails to how to become a professional mermaid as a full-time job.
All merpeople love to look shiny, and many of us are crafters. Some of us make tails. Tails come in many different types for different budgets. From least expensive to most expensive, we have fabric tails. Fabric tails can be priced anywhere from $70 to $200. Then we have neoprene tails, which, like the fabric tails, can have a printed pattern of scales and colors. Neoprene tails are priced anywhere from $300 to $600, depending on design and the tail maker. Then we have silicone tails, which are what I make. They can be priced anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000, all depending on design and the tail maker.
But although the mermaid tail is a huge part of the mermaid transformation, mermaids, usually the female kind, need their tops, and the tops usually need to match their mermaid tail designs. Other accessories include crowns, wigs, body paint, jewelry, and etc.
mermaid top
mer crowns
Sometimes we mermaids, we need to come on land. So we need a land outfit. Some of us just wear regular human clothes, but others, we like to still look mystical and magical, usually for mermaid conventions or mermaid parades. So we’ll make a skirt piece with seaweed and just discarded fabric, and we would use our tops. So if you are a girl, and you have a mermaid bra, you would use the same bra that you would wear with your tail, have a skirt or a tutu that matches the colors of your scales and your top, and wear every other accessory that you have in hand for your mermaid costume. You can have a wig, a shell crown, shell accessories, etc.
We merfolk, we come from all walks of life, all ages, and all sizes. We do not discriminate in each other. Most of us, we do this as a hobby. Others, well, others are lucky and talented enough to have this as a job, and they make good money on it, but not as good as you might think. But for most of us, being a mermaid or a merman is about therapy, is about feeling yourself, it’s kind of like what makeup does to some people, whereas, when you wear makeup you feel like your true self, and you feel truly happy and you feel confident enough to walk outside or any other trauma that people may have—well a lot of us, we have trauma. So being in a mermaid tail, it’s like—it’s a liberating experience in a way that you can truly feel like yourself, and you can truly feel like you’re in control of the moment, and you’re living life to the fullest.
Here you can listen to stillwater_fx’s remarks about the community as therapy.
STAY TUNED FOR PART 2: CREATING A MERMAID TAIL
(Here is his own aural introduction for you—just a 13-second hello!)
I’m going to present the interview over three posts. If you have questions for stillwater_fx, post them here! Be patient about answers, though—he’s been doing a lot of caregiving for vulnerable family members during the pandemic.
asakiyume: How did you first get introduced to the idea of mer people? What made you love them?
stillwater_fx: The first merperson I ever heard of was an Orisha, a deity. Her name is Yemaya. She is considered to be the ocean mother, also commonly depicted as a mermaid. You see, my family has an old history with voodoo and Santeria, and so I was introduced to the tales of all of our pantheon. In that way our beliefs and traditions are passed down. What you would call a Bible for us is a collection of stories about times long past and warrior gods. On the other hand, growing up on a tropical island did fuel that fascination that I had with the water. I remember even back when I was a child, I never did play in the sand with all my siblings. I would always go swimming all the way out to the buoys, and looking back at the beach, I would try to swim down to the bottom and see the fish, and in this way I fell in love with the sea and all its creatures.
asakiyume: How did you discover the community of mer-crafters?
stillwater_fx:
I discovered the mermaiding community through an online forum called Mer.Yuku. This was in my teen years. The site has been replaced by themernation.com, a better, more organized version of the old forum. On the mer network you can find all sorts of mermaid-related information. The site is basically an online archive of the mermaid culture. You can find DIY threads on everything from how to make tails to how to become a professional mermaid as a full-time job.
All merpeople love to look shiny, and many of us are crafters. Some of us make tails. Tails come in many different types for different budgets. From least expensive to most expensive, we have fabric tails. Fabric tails can be priced anywhere from $70 to $200. Then we have neoprene tails, which, like the fabric tails, can have a printed pattern of scales and colors. Neoprene tails are priced anywhere from $300 to $600, depending on design and the tail maker. Then we have silicone tails, which are what I make. They can be priced anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000, all depending on design and the tail maker.
But although the mermaid tail is a huge part of the mermaid transformation, mermaids, usually the female kind, need their tops, and the tops usually need to match their mermaid tail designs. Other accessories include crowns, wigs, body paint, jewelry, and etc.
mer crowns
Sometimes we mermaids, we need to come on land. So we need a land outfit. Some of us just wear regular human clothes, but others, we like to still look mystical and magical, usually for mermaid conventions or mermaid parades. So we’ll make a skirt piece with seaweed and just discarded fabric, and we would use our tops. So if you are a girl, and you have a mermaid bra, you would use the same bra that you would wear with your tail, have a skirt or a tutu that matches the colors of your scales and your top, and wear every other accessory that you have in hand for your mermaid costume. You can have a wig, a shell crown, shell accessories, etc.
We merfolk, we come from all walks of life, all ages, and all sizes. We do not discriminate in each other. Most of us, we do this as a hobby. Others, well, others are lucky and talented enough to have this as a job, and they make good money on it, but not as good as you might think. But for most of us, being a mermaid or a merman is about therapy, is about feeling yourself, it’s kind of like what makeup does to some people, whereas, when you wear makeup you feel like your true self, and you feel truly happy and you feel confident enough to walk outside or any other trauma that people may have—well a lot of us, we have trauma. So being in a mermaid tail, it’s like—it’s a liberating experience in a way that you can truly feel like yourself, and you can truly feel like you’re in control of the moment, and you’re living life to the fullest.
Here you can listen to stillwater_fx’s remarks about the community as therapy.
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Thank you and stillwater_fx for this wonderful interview. I wish I could have told Luis Yglesias about his work. His first mermaids were orishas, too.
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This seems like something you could enjoy a *lot*--or at least some aspects of it.
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I'm very curious about the rest of the interview—I had no idea that the mer community had a significant proportion of people healing from trauma. But my experience of the Pagan community was that there was a lot of trauma history, there, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.
Thanks for posting about this!
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I had no idea there even *was* a mer community! This was all so new to me!