The Mermaid

In 2010 I decided to change my image, at the time I was rocking a David Bowie inspired mullet and I wanted to play with a colourful image. I used the colour Cerise to dye my hair, it was a product by Directions Hair and I lived for the richness of it. When I began to wear extensions, people just started to associate my image with a mermaid. It was completely undeliberate but we took some images for my promos and my friend entered me into a Facebook contest that Limecrime had advertised. It was called the Mermaid image and the image with the most interaction would win. Long story short, my image was shared in excess of 50,000 times just on that profile. It was reblogged consistently for five years across hair, beauty and more.

When I later discovered the origins of Hans Christian Andersens story of the Little Mermaid, it was obviously more of a metaphor for his own sexuality than just a colourful myth. I think so many trans women have felt like that mermaid character and the Disney version doesn’t highlight the tragedy in the story. But either way, for ten years I was fortunate enough to receive thousands of hand drawn, sculpted, rendered images of me as a mermaid and it’s the most wonderful testiment to my work as an artist.