‘Below Under the Foam’: Mermaids and Genital Anxiety.

Nadine Wills, Film Media & Communication, Griffith University, Nathan

electricnadine@hotmail.com

The image of the mermaid, the perniciously divided female monster, a creature inherited by the gods only down to the girdle. Below, under the foam, the swirling waves of lovely skirt, her hidden body repels, its shapeliness armed in scaly refusal, its oceanic interior stinking of uncleanness. (Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes New York: Viking Press, 1978. 61)

In the nineteenth century, as Western cultures began to move off the beach and into the water, it became increasingly difficult to keep women’s bodies concealed. It was also during this period that female genitals became understood as problematic and in need of a variety of social and medical cures. The introduction of bathing suits for women was a particular site of anxiety because of these changes. Previously, the ideal woman was often portrayed without genitalia in nineteenth and early twentieth century popular culture; mythical imagery was one way in which this genitalia-ness state was achieved. Images of mermaids were often used to portray women on the beach before World War II (and after in Esther Williams films). However, mermaids represented both the allure and the hazardous, abstruse aspects of female sexuality. This paper will explore how the trope of the mermaid related to anxieties that surrounded female genitalia up to World War II.