Professional mermaid dreamed of a tail. So, what’s reality like now that she has one?
It’s a pretty typical Thursday morning at the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center: kids learning to swim, triathletes logging laps, grandmothers bopping through water aerobics.
Typical except, perhaps, for the three mermaids in the warm pool.
And thanks to hundreds of hours spent in the best custom-made swimmable silicone mermaid tails money can buy, these women do as good a job of bringing the mythical creatures to life as humanly possible.
The leader of the pack – or rather the pod (that’s what you call a group of mermaids, I’m told) – is Shannon Dawn Rauch, who identifies on LinkedIn as a “pro mermaid performer” and was one of three original founders of NC Mermania, a convention for “merfolk” taking place in Greensboro this weekend.
Rauch, 37, of Charlotte, has popped in for a swim with local friend Margarita Martinez and Ariel Stein of Orlando. (Yes, the out-of-towner really shares the same name as Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”)
Their plan was to head up to the second annual Mermania event on Friday night, although Rauch is no longer involved with organizing it. She abstains from diving into details, but hints at a falling out; in other words, yes – even in the seemingly benevolent world of mermaids, there is drama.
But I digress. You’ve probably got a million questions right now. Like everyone else who finds out how Rauch makes a living.
“It’s not something I talk about unless I’m asked about it,” she says, sitting in the center’s lobby, wearing a seashell top and a towel around her waist. “Because then it dominates the conversation. You get questions like ... ‘Are we going to have to have mermaid bathrooms now?’ ”
Answers (to other questions):
1. She fell into this line of work, after feeling like – forgive the pun – a fish out of water in the corporate world. Rauch (pronounced “Rowwwr”) is a former Realtor and former flight attendant. She was working as a social media specialist for WJZY when it and Sea Life Aquarium at Concord Mills decided to put her in a tank as a mermaid reporter to hype Sea Life’s early-2014 opening. She bought a $30 spandex tail, but parted ways with Channel 46 before the stunt came together. But she kept swimming. As a girl, she says, she would tie her feet together with goggles and use the sun to make a mermaid shadow when she swam. So this made her feel young again. And it got noticed: Kids’ eyes would turn into saucers. Random adults would whip out their cellphones to take photos. Eventually, a parent asked if she did birthday parties. “I was like, ‘Wait, I can make money doing this? Hmm.’ ”
2. Yes, she really can make money doing this and call it a career. As “Mermaid Shannon,” she and business partner Kym Cox have a team of five mermaids that work the Carolinas, and they charge up to $300 for a two-hour appearance at a children’s party. They also serve as “ocean ambassadors” of ocean conservation efforts, and Rauch self-published a children’s book (titled “Turtles Want Teammates”) that promotes solutions to “the marine debris situation and the animals that succumb to it.” And she’s worn $5,000-$6,000 custom-made tails in appearances at the Caribbean Mermaid Academy in St. Thomas and at Downtown Aquarium in Denver, Colo.; and for underwater photo shoots in Mexico, where she free-dove “in character” with 15-ton whale sharks in the Caribbean Sea.
3. She can hold her breath for more than two minutes in optimal conditions. “We don’t use tanks or anything.”And she’ll keep her eyes open no matter how much chlorine is in the water. “You acclimate to it,” Rauch says.
4. All that said, it’s harder than it looks. Her high-end tails weigh upwards of 50 pounds. They’re neutrally buoyant in water, so they don’t sink like rocks but they don’t exactly float, either. “I have never had a scary stuck-in-tail incident, but I am a very strong swimmer,” says Rauch. Bottom line? “It is not safe for someone to put on a mermaid tail without supervision who isn’t a strong swimmer. Kids must always be supervised.” (In a smattering of U.S. towns and in a handful of countries, mermaid tails have been banned from public pools due to safety concerns.)
5. No, she doesn’t think she’s a real mermaid; no, she doesn’t believe mermaids actually exist; and no, frankly, she doesn’t care what you think about her. “I’m always prepared to see comments from people making fun of us, saying, you know, ‘You guys need to get a real job.’ That’s gonna happen with this article,” Rauch says. “But it’s OK. I’m not trying to impress those people. I mean, people will take their kids to see Santa Claus, right? Just relax, everybody.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 9:53 PM with the headline "Professional mermaid dreamed of a tail. So, what’s reality like now that she has one?."