Op-Ed: I'm Not Dumb For Calling Myself A Fairy Or Mermaid

This Fairy Is Smart, Strong & Anti-Capitalist

By Luna Lark

When I quip that I'm a fairy or a mermaid, people—especially men—should not take me any less seriously. I am just as intelligent, capable, and strong as I was before I made that playful comment. I am entitled to my own fun and imagination. It does nothing to harm others and emboldens me with a sense of control as a woman in an unequal world. Fairies and mermaids have magical powers; I live in a society that doesn't believe I should have a say over my own body. Why wouldn't I want to inhabit some alternative reality? The possibilities on this planet look so dark and dismal. Morphing into a fairy or mermaid sounds great. Sadly, I still have to deal with the garbage of Trump's America.
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Let's just put this fairy thing into perspective: In the United States, the richest country in the world, more than half a million people were homeless last holiday season. You BET I'd live in some fairytopia where nobody paid rent. You could just crawl into a flower when you were ready to go to sleep. The flowers wouldn't belong to anyone in particular; they'd belong to everyone. You don't need that many personal possessions as a fairy. Your consumerist impulse is low and you can conjure almost anything you want with the right spell. There's no need for mansions, sprawling estates, or even storage units in fairytopia. Nobody would go hungry in fairytopia, either. Plants are everywhere and fairies are excellent gardeners. You'd never see fairies contributing to global warming!

Being a mermaid is equally appealing—unless I'm living as Hans Christian Andersen imagined mermaids (of course a dude would write such an unfortunate tale for a female mythical creature.) As a mermaid, I could swim around and run an ethical oyster farm. Swimming is excellent exercise and burns no fossil fuels. If a man raped me in mermaid land, I could sing and drive him to his death instead of dealing with the human judicial system. U.S. police officers were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period; that kind of shit doesn't happen in mermaid land. Yeah, I'll take matters into my own hands, or, rather, siren voice, thanks.

I'm not saying I'm a fairy or a mermaid because I want to give up my agency. It's really the opposite. I'm not dreaming of some sexist fairy tale situation. I'm not longing for an asshole Prince Charming who wants a subservient princess. I am not docile. I bow to no one. I make my own choices, at least as much as possible in a society that does not value women as much as it does men. I say I'm a fairy or mermaid because I dream of escaping my present reality. That does not necessarily mean all of the specifics of my personal circumstances, just the trash fire the world has become. I take responsibility for my own actions, but how amazing would it be to exist outside of Capitalism?

​Fairies and mermaids don't have to worry about oppressive systems.