‘Tail down, they’re all the same’

Mermaids walk among us. Which is odd, since they don’t have legs. Ali Weinstein’s charming documentary follows a variety of humans who are living the mermaid lifestyle, in settings as diverse as Sacramento’s mermaid-themed Dive Bar and Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, where mer-formers sometimes undertake 35-metre deep dives.

“It is the most whimsical job,” says one of the Dive Bar employees. But as Weinstein finds out, many mer-people use their enthusiasm to help them deal with abuse, heartache and loss in their lives. “I feel safe; I feel invincible” is a common refrain from those who don the tail.

Almost worth her own documentary is Julz, who was born a human male but transitioned to a woman, and sometimes to a mermaid as well. The film doesn’t overplay why a transgender person might also relate to the mer-body transformation, but Julz sums it up nicely when she notes that when it comes to mermaids, “Tail down, they’re all the same.”

The doc runs a brief 76 minutes, meaning there was certainly time to add something about the history of mermaids; instead, we get little more than a taste of ancient Russian folklore. But there is a fun aside with Thom Shouse, who worked on Daryl Hannah’s tail for the 1984 film Splash; he continues to work in the narrow but important tail-making industry, and has even coined a term for the reactions of mermaid aficionados when they first put on fins; a “mer-gasm.”

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