The part of this week’s reading that interested me the most was a part of the section titled “Their Bodies, Our Anxieties,” which essentially covers how, throughout history, humans have always been “deeply unsettled” by mermaids and the liminality between humans and mermaids, which is what creates that anxiety. The book makes a great point about how humans’ anxieties about mermaids originate from our attraction to them. As I continued to read, we approached the issue of gender within the merefolk community. In early modern British culture, “a woman who oversteps the boundaries…[is] defined as monstrous” (xiii). It is ironic because then we see how in Odysseus’ interactions with the Sirens, he is considered a manly man who is heroic and strong for not falling prey to them. These stories that we will read about the merefolk will definitely bring up our expectations about gender within their community.

What I found to be the most bizarre is the interpretation of a mermaid’s tail when deciphering whether they were “available” or not. If they are “represented as having a single fishtail marking them as having some control of their bodies,” and “having two tails, perhaps suggesting sexual availability,” (xiii). Again, absolutely insane. The idea that something as arbitrary as the number of tails could be a coded message about a woman’s chastity or their sexual “openness” shows how much these myths and stories were shaped by patriarchal anxieties. People projected their fears and desires onto mermaids and ultimately reduced their bodies into a code to be deciphered and enjoyed by male viewers. Mermaids could have been represented as a symbolic or purely fantasical form, and they’re not; it’s very disturbing to realize that creatures as fascinating as they are were not exempt from being sexualized and categorized based on their supposed virtue. In a modern analysis of the situation of one or two tails is almost as demeaning as being asked, “How many bodies do you have?” That is quite literally what was being asked of mermaids..

The reading this week shows how different storytelling has continuously reinforced these cultural norms about gender and sexuality, it was normalizing the surveillance of women’s bodies and their behaviors through the most fantastical imagery; their literal tails. By placing such messages in myths and stories, societies have been hiding misogyny under the guise of such entertainment in storytelling.