Professional Mermaid Explains Aches and Pains of Job (Exclusive)

Playing mermaids was the perfect way to pass an hour in the pool as a kid, but for Mermaid Elle, it’s some serious hard work.

Mermaid Elle is the brainchild of Elle Jimenez, an Orlando-based performer, writer and activist. She tells PEOPLE exclusively that when she first became a mermaid about 10 years ago, she didn’t even know how to swim.

Jimenez, 35, worked for years as a professional dancer and dance teacher. Then, she opened her own entertainment agency in Miami, and she started doing princess parties. But one party thrower asked for something unique — a mermaid.

“At the time, that wasn’t very common or popular at all, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how to swim. Absolutely not,’” she tells PEOPLE. She promised to find a mermaid performer for them, but couldn’t find anyone. 

“So I was like OK, I guess I will learn to swim,” she remembers thinking. She took swim lessons and even became scuba certified. But since Jimenez is a consummate performer, it wasn’t enough to be just any mermaid — she ultimately came up with the character of Mermaid Elle.

“I did my first performance, and then, from that, I got another one, and then I started getting bookings, and then I was booked every weekend, and it just took over my life,” she says. “I always say that like being a mermaid chose me. It just kind of landed on my lap.”

She was excited to do something “different,” and doing her scuba training gave her a new appreciation of the ocean — and the many threats it faces. “The ocean really needs a voice,” she says, and Mermaid Elle could be one. 

In 2020, when COVID-19 shutdowns forced her business to dry up, Jimenez started sharing her mermaid journey online. She now has 2.4 million subscribers on TikTok and over a million subscribers on YouTube.

But if viewers see her surreal mermaid videos and want to go out, buy a fin for themselves and hop into the pool, she has a lot of warnings. “The tails are challenging,” she explains. “Most tails are very heavy. We’re talking 20 to 40 pounds, so it definitely needs a lot of training.”

Going through free diving training helped her figure out her natural density and how to use the tail to her advantage to stay underwater. 

“It is not for the faint of heart, and it’s not for beginners,” she says of swimming with the tail. “It took me a long time to get to a point where I was actually very comfortable and I could live in the water, I could stay underwater for over three minutes, and it’s just a very, very peaceful place now for me.”

The physical part of the job, she says, is by far the toughest. “I am always sore out of my mind and bruised up,” she says. She also “can’t stop” doing her breath-hold training because if she stops practicing, her body “goes back to normal.” 

Jimenez wears wigs for her performances, applies waterproof makeup to keep her mermaid face bright and friendly and has to protect her hair and body from the sun, the salt and other chemicals in the water.

She also can’t walk with her tail on, and her boyfriend carries her in and out of most events. The water is often “freezing,” but she’s used to it by now, and even with toweling off, she still usually arrives home “soaking wet.”

Plus, mermaid swimming, even if you can stay underwater for three minutes, is tough. “It’s not really a normal thing for humans to do,” she says of the mermaid dolphin kick. “You have to have a very fluid back. I do a lot of yoga. I try my best to take care of myself because if I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to continue.”

“A lot of people have this little delusion that I’m a real mermaid,” she says. “I don’t, I’m a mermaid performer. There’s a real person behind this character that works really hard, so I don’t want to forget about that person.” 

But it’s worth it to connect with kids — and to connect those kids to the ocean. “I actually have a couple of kids [at an event] that are adults now that were like, ‘You were at my birthday party, and I just wanted to let you know how impactful that was,’” she says. “So it’s really, really amazing, and I do take my job very seriously.”

This June, she published her first book, a chapter book titled Mermaid Elle Saving the Seas that breaks down Elle’s backstory and journey. Jimenez described her as a combination of a superhero and a princess who is from a kingdom at the border of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Jimenez is Puerto Rican, and she says the character is her “inner child” come to life. 

In the book, Elle must complete her final mission to earn her crown, and it involves an encounter with a pollution monster. “There is a plastic pollution crisis at the moment, and the character was made to inspire kids to get involved and to start noticing,” she says. Jimenez has also founded a nonprofit, Saving the Seas, to continue to educate kids about the ocean. 

“If kids grow up loving the ocean and instead of fearing it, then maybe they’ll be the next ocean guardians in the future because our oceans are definitely going to need that,” she says.

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These days, Jimenez does a mix of birthday parties, corporate events, educational programs and adult parties as Elle. People of all ages love mermaids, she says, because of “the beauty and the mystery and the connection that mermaids symbolize.” 

“The best thing about being a mermaid is the extraordinary magic that it provides into a very ordinary day,” she says, “It just disrupts the rhythm of life.”