We’re all weird here…
..says Syrena, founder of the first mermaid school in Singapore, and a mermaid performer otherwise known as Cara Nicole Neo. As she sits on the pool step flipping her tail in the water as her students bob beneath the surface practicing their breathing.
I wanted to create a community where people who shared the same interests could come together.
The class starts with mermaid theory, where students sit cross-legged on the floor (tails don’t come out until the practical part of the lesson) and recite the mermaid school pledge:
The world is cold and harsh, but here we find peace and friendship…
We renounce bitterness, rivalry. We choose love. We choose acceptance… Strong, brave and free.
In this school, embracing your inner mermaid is just as important as proficiency in the pool with a tail. While there’s no formal accreditation for mermaid schools, Syrena has set a four-stage syllabus; from bronze for beginners, to silver, gold and finally platinum, where students learn underwater choreography.
The Home of Mermaids
For the last 70 years, the “home” of mermaids has been Weeki Wachee Spring, a theme park in Florida that runs its own shows seven days a week, every day of the year. The company’s public relations manager for 14 years, John Athanason comments:
We have a lot of girls who audition and very few of them would actually make it.
Of 50 women who attended the last audition, only two were accepted. And even then, both quit by the end of the first week of training.
When the mermaids jump into the spring — it’s cold — it’s 72 degrees Fahrenheit year round (about 22 degrees Celsius).
There’s also 117 million gallons (almost half a billion liters) of water right beneath them coming out of the spring, the aquifer. That’s causing a five-mile an hour current (eight kilometers an hour).
And then of course there’s the natural wildlife. There are the turtles that might be nipping at them, or the fish.
What’s It Like to Wear a Tail?
Imported from Germany, the fins are made of plastic and covered in a spandex stocking that’s best squeezed into with a small shuffle away from the pool.
Once in water, it’s very much like wearing normal fins — or flippers — except, of course, that your feet are held together and any motion needs to come from the waist.
You have kind of consciously not be bending your knees, or powering yourself from the wrong part of your body — that was the hardest part.
says Natalie, one of the students who describes herself as an average swimmer.
Former Singapore national swimmer Nicole says:
To be actually swimming as a mermaid, you’re already escaping the normal social boundaries and fulfilling a lot of things that a lot of people don’t get to do.
And the only merman in the group, Nigel believes that as a mermaid/merman,
You go into a state of mind where you can be whatever you want to be… so you feel accepted and you feel loved part of a big community.
Though only a few months old, and with a handful of students, Syrena is hoping her school will spread the love.
Once you learn to see your own inner beauty and learn to love yourself, then you have a responsibility to extend that love to the community around you.
This is not a self-centered, selfish mermaid community. It’s one that gives back and makes a change.
