Some girls dream of becoming mermaids. In fantasy settings, a character becomes a mermaid either by magic spell or by getting themselves wet. However, in Real Life and some settings in which mermaids either exist or don't exist, the alternative is to dress up like a mermaid and swim like one.
This particular term is known as "Mermaiding", in which you put on a mermaid tail and go for a swim with it. However, swimming like a mermaid is very complicated because you are wearing a monofin on your legs making your movement very limited, and sometimes it could result in drowning. It is highly recommended you practice swimming with a monofin before you dress up as a mermaid.
Mermaid swimsuits in media can be used for Fanservice, especially if the character in question wants to become a mermaid, or is performing as a mermaid at aquariums. Or even more interesting, it is just a costume for a singing performance, calling attention to the depiction in folklore that their singing is enchanting to those who hear it.
The typical Mermaid Swimsuit would usually consist of a Seashell Bra or a regular bikini top, and a mermaid tail. Professional mermaids would go for the more expensive silicone tail option while beginning mermaids would have a fabric tail. The monofin is the most important aspect of the mermaid tail, as it allows the wearer to mimic the movement of a mermaid. Usually characters who have a mermaid swimsuit are shown to be very good swimmers.
This trope only counts if the mermaid tail is part of the swimsuit or costume. This is not "Swimsuit has a mermaid pattern on it".
Compare Our Mermaids Are Different, for the various ways fantasy merfolk achieves this effect. If the person actually becomes a mermaid without the need for a costume, that's Mermanity Ensues or Magical Species Transformation.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: In the second episode of the OAV, Kyusuke hands Nuku Nuku a bikini with additional gadgets and a monofin named the "Mermaid RX-24" that allows Nuku Nuku to swim (being a full body cyborg, she sinks like a stone otherwise). For further comedy, the TV version of the same scene has Kyusuke noticing that the swimsuit's floating devices are battery-powered and he had not charged them before giving them to Nuku Nuku, so she swam in the subsequent action scene purely because the swimsuit acted like a Magic Feather.
- One of the items Cube from Petite Princess Yucie can call forth is a magical version that gives the wearer the normal abilities of a mermaid of breathing underwater, withstanding heavy water pressure and unobscured vision. Yuice wore one in the later part of Episode 11.
- Pokémon: The Original Series: The episode "The Misty Mermaid" has Misty playing the role of The Magical Mermaid, and she wears a mermaid costume throughout most of the episode. It consists of some hair extensions, a pink Seashell Bra, and a cyan tail with a yellow star on it, as a Shout-Out to Ariel. The getup wound up being so popular with fans that Pokémon Chronicles brought it back for a post-Johto story involving Misty.
- In Ranma ½, one mini-story has Principal Kuno trying to teach Akane to swim. One of the things he comes up with is giving Akane a motorised mermaid tail swimsuit. It doesn't help whatsoever.
- In the 6th episode of Time Bokan 24 second season the main cast end up traveling to 19th Century Denmark where they find Famous Author Hans Christian Anderson partaking in the practice with Calen and Bimajo starting a contest to inspire him to create The Little Mermaid and drag the boys into drag to accompany them. fitting in with the anime's central humor themes the cast without time travel all use outfits more aligned with 21st century designs obtained locally.
Film — Animated
- Barbie in a Mermaid Tale: Merliah is given such a swimsuit by two actual mermaids Kayla and Xylie who are fashion designers to disguise the fact that she's human hiding in a mermaid city. The mermaids seem to wear them over their real tails as humans would leggings or trousers but they give her a loaner. She later gains her own actual tail as she embraces her own mermaid heritage she got from her mother's side of the family.
Live-Action TV
- Hawaii Five-0: A late-season episode opens with an underwater shot of a hotel swimming pool in which about a dozen mermaids are synchronized swimming. The Victim of the Week is an Avon representative Expy on a corporate "mermaiding" retreat with her colleagues. Tani admits to a childhood wish to be a mermaid, and at the end of the episode Junior treats her to a more budget-friendly version.
Video Games
- In Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Chuck Greene and Frank West, respectively, are given an optional side mission to rescue Tammy Blaine, whose job was to dress up as a mermaid in the Atlantica Casino. When Frank/Chuck reaches her, she says that she was doing her job of entertaining the gamblers when "Terror is Reality's" zombies got loose and infected Fortune city. Chuck/Frank tell her that they can reach the shelter quickly if she takes off the tail end of her costume, only for Tammy to say she's "going commando", forcing Chuck/Frank to carry her through a zombie horde.
- Flower Knight Girl: Nerine is a Flower Knight who holds a strong fascination with mermaids, wishing to be able to swim as well as them — if not outright be one. Which is why for Nerine's June Bride form, whenever transformed via Bloomed Evolution or using her water-summoning skill attack, she has her own mermaid costume made from a custom-cut kimono. It doesn't help her become any better of a swimmer, but she's still evoking the dream.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, one of the items you can find is the Mermaid Suit, an upgrade for the flippers (which allow you to swim on the surface of shallow water). Wearing it allows Link to swim faster, swim safely in deep water, and turns his Super Drowning Skills into Super Not-Drowning Skills. It's implied it's at least partially magical, but still functions as a costume Link wears to use.
Western Animation
- Craig of the Creek: In "Beyond the Rapids", the Merkid wears a mermaid tail with flippers because they like pretending they're an ocean mermaid. They even wear webbed gloves and have been salting the creek water.
- In The Deep (2015), the Mimic Knight is an EVA (extravehicular activity) suit used for deep-sea exploration and marine research. Due to its appearance, the frame is also called a "Mermaid Suit", with the wearer's legs housed in an articulated fishtail. the suit has the best speed and maneuverability of any of the Knight. Prior to its official use by the Nekton Family, Fontaine secretly tested the prototype suit by pretending to be a mermaid in order to prank her little brother. This was done by using seaweed as a wig. Will also repeated this prank on Ant after the suit was recovered from the pirates.
- In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Ocean Commotion", Dee-Dee is wearing a swimsuit with a mermaid tail, and she is pretending to be one while at the beach. She then gets captured by pirates, and Dexter has to go and rescue her.
- Izzy from Jake And The Neverland Pirates has a mermaid costume in which the tail is made out of leaves.
- LEGO Friends, the Season 5 Episode "Dive in" focuses on the five main girls taking part-time jobs at Heartlake's Pool and Sports center with one of the roles (Mostly Andrea) being Mermaid Performing which makes use of Andrea's singing talent and interest. Notably a brief flashback showed Emma attempting to try waitressing in her tail.
Real Life
- In 2018, Russian swimmer Marina Kazankova broke the Guinness World Record for longest distance swam underwater (female division) while wearing a monofin which, coupled with a body stocking for her legs, made her look like a mermaid. Here is Guinness' official video of the event.
- Professional mermaids such as Hannah Fraiser wear a realistic mermaid tail for underwater performances at aquariums. A notable example of a location with mermaid performers is at Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida.
- Mermaid Schools are a series of classes that teach you how to swim like a mermaid. A well-known location is the Manila Ocean Park in the Philippines.
- Prior to CGI and mo-cap, mermaids and mermans in films are generally done in this manner to varying degrees of success. Some are clearly costumes fitted to human legs, like in The Thirteenth Year, while others are more seamlessly natural, like the tails in H₂O: Just Add Water. This practice, however, has declined in high-budget media, which opts for mo-cap suits in water scenes to allow more for natural-looking tails and more complex stunts.
