By: Eric Zheng

Have you ever heard of MerMay? If so, you probably drew a mermaid last month. If not, this essay will introduce you to MerMay, the month where everyone submits drawings of mermaids!

MerMay was originally founded by Tom Bancroft in 2016. He posted a picture of 2 mermaids online, and because he works at Disney, they went viral quickly. After that, Tom Bancroft thought about the crazy idea to draw mermaids for the whole month. Hundreds of thousands of people started participating in the trend. This meant that people really enjoyed drawing mermaids every day! They could see other people’s drawings by clicking on the hashtag. If their drawing was chosen, they could win a prize!

Disney’s movie “The Little Mermaid” was a hit in 1989. Many kids that watched it in the past participated in the Mermaid contest. Some entered because they fell in love with it when they were just kids! One person named Liana Hee drew mermaids every year that she was offered to help with judging! According to the text, “Hee, who is based in Los Angeles, has done MerMay every year since it started. This year, she was brought on to help judge the contest.”

Unfortunately, artists like Felix d’Elon had their drawings be rejected, because Felix d’Elon wanted to show that not all mermaids are the same, so he decided to draw fat mermaids, queer and trans bodies in his work. This resulted in his income dropping by 60%. As reported by Society, D’Eon said he had his Instagram account deactivated after posting a painting of a fat mermaid. He sees this as censorship of bodies that aren’t accepted by society. People were not very happy with the drawings and most likely were offended.