MERMAID BEAUTY at EVERY AGE

Model Jessica Dru (see here) arranged this surprise “Queen of the Sea” shoot with photographer Cassie Fuertez for her mother’s sixty-second birthday to shine a light on her beauty.

Cassie Fuertez: © Jessica Dru

IT’S CLEAR, DEAR READER, THAT WE’RE SO DAZZLED by mermaids that we tend to represent them in art as lithe young creatures with long locks and dewy adolescent and usually pale skin; in other words, we often default to traditional Western beauty standards when depicting them. But the mermaid comes in every size and shape and color, as we well know, especially landlocked ones who might spend their days driving cars and shopping at supermarket chains but in fact are filled with a deep yearning for the sea.

The truth is that mermaids do not age the way regular humans do, no matter where they reside on land or in water. An example comes from Florida’s longtime mermaid attraction Weeki Wachee Springs, founded in 1947 and featuring an underwater theater built into the limestone of the spring. While the main performing mermaids at Weeki have usually been women in their late teens, a team of alumnae mermaids ranging in age from their fifties to their early seventies came together for the park’s fiftieth anniversary in 1997. The show was so popular that it became a regular feature, and today, in addition to seeing daily shows starring the current crop of mermaids, visitors can see monthly shows starring some of the very same women who came together for the fiftieth anniversary. “We still awe people with our underwater talents,” says the oldest working mermaid, Vicki Smith, who recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of her first mermaid show.

Part of their secret? The weightlessness of being underwater, where time slips away completely. Each of the former mermaids talks about that quality of being weightless and feeling in the spring exactly as she did when she was a teenager back in the day, working as a mermaid. “My favorite memory,” Smith says, “is not cutting the ribbon for the new million-dollar theater with the governor of Florida in 1960, nor is it swimming for Elvis Presley the year after. My favorite memory is from when I was seventeen and I was sitting on the platform getting ready to dive into the spring. The pink azaleas were in full bloom. I remember feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, then diving into that fluid aquamarine world that looks like liquid diamonds. When I’m at the spring now, I’m seventeen again, about to step into that crystal water for the first time.”

Vicki Smith performing at Weeki Wachee Springs at age seventeen.

Courtesy of Vicki Smith

Since 2010, these fabulous mermaids have run the two-day Sirens of the Deep Mermaid Camp for adult women. Every summer, women from all over come to the park, put on a tail, and learn to swim on the famed Weeki underwater theater stage while their friends and family take photographs of them through the glass.

There, the former mermaids have become stars in their own right. As Smith said, “This lady approached me as I came out of the back dock. She told me she wanted a picture of me. I explained that there would be a beautiful young mermaid posing for pictures after the next show. Then she said, ‘No, I want a picture of you. I cannot believe you women are still doing this after all these years. I am fifty-two years old and you have shown me that I have a lot of good years left.’ And that’s what got me going. I told her, ‘Don’t stop moving! No matter how deep the water, no matter how strong the tide, just keep swimming!’ The other girls were coming out, so she got a picture with several of us and left. I didn’t get a chance to tell her how the ancient water of Weeki is the magic that feeds our mermaid souls.”

Sixty years later, at seventy-seven, Smith performing in the same waters, captured here by Andrew Brusso.

Andrew Brusso