Weird: A Woman Dressed As A Mermaid Saved A Cow While Swimming To Raise Pollution Awareness

Today, in news that won’t affect your daily life whatsoever:

In case you weren’t already aware mermaid culture is a thing.

All over the world people enjoying dressing up as mermaids and playing pretend. They have conventions and everything. It’s a harmless, if eccentric, pursuit and I don’t want to come across as though I’m denigrating the people who enjoy it.

It’s a silly hobby, I’m sure they’re well aware of that fact.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me because I feel like the appeal of mermaidom would be living under the sea. ‘Cuz, you know, “life is better, down where it’s wetter.” So if you’re really into mermaids it makes sense to buy a nice monofin, take some freediving courses, learn proper technique, and enjoy flying through the water.

It’s not the exact same thing, but it’s as close as you’re gonna get.

Most of them don’t do that. They spend surprising amounts of money on sequined costumes that are a total liability if you’re actually submerged.

Like, if you loved centaurs so much that your free time was devoted to pretending you were one, wouldn’t you learn to ride a horse?

I, personally, wouldn’t, because I don’t care for the animals. But I’m also not infatuated with mythological half-man/half horse savages. And the case of centaur fetishists, which totally exist, the appeal seems to be horse cocks rather than the ability to gallop about.

But, back to mermaids, I don’t harbor any ill-will against the weirdos. It’s just one of those hobbies that makes me vaguely uncomfortable for some inexplicable reason. Like model trains, adults who are super into Legos, and kneeboarding.

Which brings us to Lindsey Cole, the ‘urban mermaid’ currently swimming the Thames, “in a wetsuit, tail and hat to draw attention to the environmental impact of single-use plastic.” She’s be accompanied along the 120 mile route by a canoe bearing a plastic sculpture of a mermaid.

It’s an utterly ridiculous idea. I don’t believe for a single second that a human could swim that distance in a mermaid get-up. Dolphin kick is terrible for long distance swimming and the cute little tail sheath is just going to absolute hell to drag through the water.

The very notion makes me unreasonably upset. Which, I suppose, makes me an anti-mer bigot. I might as well admit it. After all, where does the fish end and the human begin?

Luckily, it turns out that Ms Cole doesn’t have any actual pretensions toward being a mermaid. It’s just a nonsense label she appended to her project in order to get more attention. In reality she’s ditching the tail and costume each day and undertaking the journey while swimming freestyle. Like a normal human being.

The mermaid angle is just to get more eyes on the project. And it worked. It got me to write about her out of irrational anger, and other media to cover her because people, for some stupid fucking reason, love a story invented by sailors to justify fucking seals. Oh, she also saved a cow that had fallen into the Thames River while swimming.