Today we’d like to introduce you to The Blixunami.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
As a little guppy, I grew up on the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Always been obsessed with mermaids since I had a conscience. Every waking moment in my childhood was dedicated to merfolk. Drawing them at school on every paper I got. Even got in trouble once in elementary school for drawing my field trip underwater & making everyone merms! The obsession carried well into high school & passed it. Once I started working jobs, I was able to finally invest in my mermaid doll collection. Pacific oceanly, black mermaid dolls. Growing up looking at my mom’s black barbie collection definitely inspired me to do it. Once 2012 hit, I was granted my first mermaid tail as a gift! You couldn’t catch me at the pool without a tail on! With having a tail my passion & gumption grew stronger by the day. Fast-forward to 2015 and I got my first bday party booked & swam at Dallas Southern Pride. I told myself I HAD to continue getting out there because there was NO black merms being hired or even seen publicly! I didn’t have a “me” to look up to growing up as a Lil black gay boy so I knew it was my mission to become the “me” for all those that look like me no matter their age!
From then on I got in contact with & did an interview with Davey Wavey who at the time had 4 million subscribers. The video skyrocketed my merm life. That 1 interview lead me to be talked about on talk shows, Huffington Post, VH1, & a few other online articles. Another big moment was my episode on Tosh.0! Did the cover of BEAU magazine & I even got flewed out to Italy for a 7-day art festival, Santarcangelo & was featured all over the town it was held in. People got out of their cars to take pictures with me out there. It felt like I was Beyoncé 😂! After that, I did more events & got featured on a Billboard in Times Square! Now my main goals are to continue taking over the world with my own Blix dolls, music, and tours so everyone can see that they can do anything they want as long as they truly believe in themselves! Even though I consider myself a merm since birth, I’ve only been swimming in the professional scene for ten years. However, there’s way more years to swim into & I’m so excited to take all my suga stars with me on this splashy adventure!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The Seas are not always calm. It’s tough swimming in white girl-dominated waters but I took my stand & held my ground because I knew, as a black merm that we are the actual original merms! You can’t tell me otherwise. Then pregnant slave mothers that were thrown overboard gave birth to merms! Just think about it…The struggles of following your dreams wholeheartedly is like a storm at sea & can get deadly, but for me, it’s nothing to keep on swimming to my goals no matter how rough it gets! I’ve been through too much suga honey iced tea to let anyone or anything stop me from where I’m going. I’m my only competition because nobody else on this earth can compete against me! Mental awareness is key & the life I’m living definitely got easier to deal with once I started going to therapy. Which is something I wish more black folks would get into so we can release the generational trauma we all suffer from in our culture & swim towards a more healed future for ourselves & the next generations.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I love drawing. Rather it’s pencil & crayons, painting, or digitally on my phone, drawing has my heart. The arts in general have my heart. Even started playing with music to make my own songs! As of right now, I specialize in making my own custom black merfolk dolls for myself! I love cutting off the European hair they come with & reroot them with yarn to give them locs! To be honest, I’m mostly known for merm dolls! Every so often someone will send me a picture of a merm doll & say they thought of me looking at it. Which to this day is such a humble & grateful feeling. The fact that people sea merm merchandise & think of little old me makes my heart full! I’m most proud of all the mermaid dolls I’ve collected/made over the tides of my adult life! Even more proud to say that at the beautiful age of 30, the first two official mermaid doll lines, Mermaid High(discontinued) & Mermaze Mermaidz put me on their PR list to get free dolls! My obsession with the dolls is what sets me apart from a lot of the other merms across the world! I was dubbed THE Mermaid Doll Influencer since I Influence the influential on everything mermaid dolls!
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Folks can work with, collab & support me by hitting me up on my social media @the.blixunami or swim over to my Gmail! I’m always excited to collaborate with others as long as it’s merm related! If it’s not merm related, forget! A lot of 2leggas don’t understand or can comprehend how much of a merm I really am & how serious I can be about it!
Pricing:
- A 4 hour swim at a party is $700. Which doesn’t include travel & hotel if needed for said party.
- A 2 hour swim at a party is $500. Which doesn’t include travel & hotel if necessary for said party.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TheBlixunami
- Instagram: @the.blixunami
- Facebook: Blixunami The Geechee Merm
- Twitter: Blixunami
- Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pNoZHIWb8
- SoundCloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/N9AgH
Image Credits
All photos were taken by Merlin Michael. His instagram is @warlockgoonie
