In a rendition of the selkie tale by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the selkie—a mythical being that is part woman and part seal—has a son with a fisherman. The son discovers his mother’s sealsuit one day, and “as he hugged the sealskin to his face and inhaled her scent, her soul slammed into him like a sudden summer wind.”
We love this issue of the zine because it asks, in a beautiful variety of ways, What is the relationship between our hairy skinsuits and us? Does one harbor the other, fend off would-be attackers, carry her to the tops of mountains? Or is it more tangled than that—does our fur carry secrets of the soul, expressions of our inner wild?
Some selkies found freedom and redemption in growing out their hairs, others found it in chopping hairs off. All these pieces explore the most magical and confusing relationship we all have—our relationship with our breathing, sweating, bag-of-chemicals self. Keep at it, selkies, you are gorgeous, resplendent, bulletproof.