Meet Your Mermaid Host

Hi, mermaids! I’m Laura von Holt the Fairy Boss Mother of Cinderly, and now, the host of the Mermaid Podcast! If you’re new to this sparkly corner of the interwebs, I usually cover the latest news on unicorns, celebrities, and you guessed it, MERMAIDS!

I grew up in Hawai’i, and some of my earliest memories involve swimming in pond, pools and oceans, pretending I was a mermaid. At the beach, I would beg my parents to bury my legs in sand make me a tail made out of sand. I was also obsessed with the movie Splash, starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah as Madison the mermaid. Now, I live in New York City, and I completely credit that movie with putting that idea in my head. I think, deep inside, a part of me really believes that if you live in New York City, you can find true love and be a mermaid. Which leads me to my other passion: romance novels! Under the pen name Laura Lovely, I write short romances featuring mermaids. (I should warn you, those are not stories that are appropriate for children. They are, however, very appropriate for people who like mermaids and looove. You can hear more about that venture in this episode!)

Over the past few years, I’ve also noticed that recently, we seem to be more and more obsessed with mermaids. A lot of people who are adults now grew up watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid. It seems like every day there is a new mermaid product or meme. There is even a whole mermaid industry. In the US alone, there are over 1,000 professional mermaids and mermen. There are fast-growing companies who make mermaid tails. You can now purchase inexpensive tails for the casual mermaid, or order bespoke tails that thousands of dollars. There are mermaid exercise classes, mermaid schools, mermaid clothing, mermaid makeup, mermaid movies and mermaid fantasy photo shoots. In 2015, Fast Company declared, “the mermaid industry is booming.” And it is.

Part of me wants to know why are we so interested in mermaids. What makes them more enduring in our imagination than other mythological creatures, like unicorns and dragons. Part of me wants to know if there is some deep psychological reason why we are drawn to mermaids – what is missing in our everyday life that makes want to be or know mermaids? And the other part of me says, WHO CARES? Mermaids are fun! Let’s just have fun with all the mermaids we can!!!

That’s what we will be exploring on The Mermaid Podcast. I will interview professional mermaids, mermaid experts, people who write books about mermaids, people who used to be mermaids, mermaids throughout history….if they love mermaids and have anything to do with mermaids, I want to talk to them. No, really. Give me their names so I can find them.

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