Monday, November 07, 2011

Mermaid Hair


Would you look at that hair! Mermaids, it would seem, have a lot of hair. I was wondering why that might be.

It's not just the Raise the Roof mermaid. Check out Emerald Mermaid and A Fish Tale:


And it's not just mermaids I'm stitching: There's a suggestion that cultural ideas about modesty resulted in  portrayals of mermaids with hair long enough to cover their bare breasts. I suppose once one guy paints a mermaid with hair covering her breasts Darryl Hannah's tresses are inevitable, as is the trend in giving yourself mermaid locks (so 2009).


I probably should have read Dorothy Dinnerstein's The Mermaid and the Minotaur in grad school. Then I could say fancy and interesting things about this. But the reality is all I got is that short hair just isn't that sexy underwater.

8 comments:

Jennifer said...

Long hair isn't either.....it tangles!

Sun City Stitcher said...

Must be the magical way it ebbs and flows under water??? Which of course leads to tangling!

Erin said...

LOL I think I wrote a similar post about mermaid hair, back when Mermaids of the Deep Blue was in my rotation (yeah, they've migrated to UFO status at this point). I was annoyed because as a swimmer, long hair is totally impractical underwater!! I suppose it is fun when you are a kid and you flop it all to the front and then back again to pretend you're George Washington, but on the swim team? Not so much.

Miriam said...

Long hair underwater? Nooooo way. I think if you were a salt-water mermaid it would end up as dreadlocks anyway.

Casa Pearl said...

May not be sexy but as everyone points out, much more practical. Just think about all the sea junk that probably got tangled in the long mermaid hair!

Donna said...

This is why those darn mermaids are frequently seen holding a comb and a mirror!

Jodie said...

You're right, they DO all have long hair! But why? It's totally impractical. It would be such a pain, always being in the water...it would constantly be a great big knot!

doris said...

This post reminds me of how my younger daughter watched Disney's "The Little Mermaid" about a thousand times. She loved, loved Ariel, especially the way she used a fork to comb her hair. At age four, when she came to the table to eat, she picked up her fork and ... I'll bet you can just picture it.