Mermaids Coast the Pop Culture Wave

September 25, 2012

Although vampires have ruled the pop culture roost for the past few years, with the sun finally setting on the Twilight saga, it's time for a new mythical creature to ascend.

This time from the briny depths ... mermaids!

From fashion, to book movies to beauty - as I discussed in this post (from 2010!) in which I gave you a HUGE heads-up on this watery trend just washing up now - mermaids are in the spotlight right now. "Mermaids are incredibly sexy," says Susan Rockefeller, an Oceana board member and director of *Mission of Mermaids* - a short film about preserving the oceans. "It's really about getting back into that beauty of being connected to the sea. In this fast-paced, Twitter-based world, we need a mermaid moment."

In *Fathomless*, teen mermaids (mer-teens) seduce mortals & steal their souls, while *Wrecked* features a mer-man who rescues a shipwrecked teen (man, those kids, they do love reading about the follies of mer-folk).

Hans Christian Anderson's *The Little Mermaid* has now inspired an action remake and at the Spring 2013 runway shows, Nylon mag noted the "mermaid braids" at Holly Fulton, fish scale prints at Monique Lhuillier and the fact that Zac Posen gave his red carpet frocks fish-fin-like flares.

And the Mama Canary in the monster pop culture mineshaft was recently sporting an anchor tatt described by Lady Gaga as her "Stamp of His Mermaid".

Mermaids even have their own Twitter hashtag #mermaidsarereal and people happily shell out $1000 for rent-a-mermaids to don their neoprene fins & blinged-out bras and entertain at events swimming around in the tanks at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa at events (they breathe through "hooka lines" from the surface).

- Lesley Scott

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