You voted. You shared your opinions in the comments. You monitored the polls carefully and sounded the clarion of truth when you suspected voter fraud. And now, after a week and change of voting, we have a winner in the most exciting and fraught poll of your adult life.
The winner of Jezebel’s Next Top Creature race to unseat the mermaid from her fishy stranglehold on the beauty industry is....BABA YAGA.
Yesterday’s battle was between Baba Yaga (1), that lovable old crone who likes bones and hates people and the Siren (6) a beautiful creature who, in some iterations has wings and lives by the ocean and in others, is a goth-mermaid that lures men to their death. You voted and you voted and we whispered a secret wish into the night sky that my true queen Baba Yaga would win. Readers, you did not disappoint.
Baba Yaga, the lovable old crone who travels via mortar, wields a broomstick and hoists her home up on chicken feet, is the next beauty inspiration. She is beauty YouTube’s new lodestar: a wrinkled, possibly toothless old woman who travels the dark forest via mortar and pestle. A siren is the mermaid’s sulky cousin, the one that comes to visit for Thanksgiving and sits in a corner fastidiously picking runs into her black tights. A siren rolls up to karaoke and always sings Evanescence—only “My Immortal” and never anything else. Baba Yaga hates karaoke, despises most people and really, really wishes everyone would just leave her alone. She is a true inspiration and the rightful winner of this high-stakes competition.
Congrats to you, Baba Yaga, wherever you are. Please don’t eat us.