Life as a mermaid isn’t always glamorous. “You have to tolerate chlorine and salt in your eyes and keep them open like it’s no problem,” says Linden Wolbert, a self-described “entrepremermaid” in Los Angeles. “There are times when I get out of the water and I can’t even see to drive home.” Wolbert also has to hold her breath for minutes at a time, smile without swallowing water, and swim in a silicone tail that weighs almost 50 pounds. (She usually has spotters.) Other than routine physical torture, being a mermaid for hire is “merrific” and “mermazing,” she says. She’s been one for more than a decade, working private events for celebrities such as Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, and Justin Timberlake. Her “merformances”—events at which she swims mostly in pools, though sometimes in the ocean or at aquariums—start at $1,000, and she says she earns “more, hourly, for some projects than many lawyers I know.” Her YouTube channel brings in four figures a month.
Hiring mermaids has been popular for years, as has pretending to be one. Lady Gaga, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Katy Perry have all worn tails for costume balls, music videos, or publicity shoots. Their passion has helped inspire a “mertailing” industry to support aspiring sea maidens, and it’s thriving: In October, Walmart Stores ordered 58,000 of the Mermaid Linden kids’ monofins—flippers like the kind you use to snorkel but fused together—Wolbert makes with outfitters Body Glove International. Wolbert and Body Glove also teamed up to make a spandex children’s tail that’s patterned on a parrotfish. (The tail doesn’t come with any kind of flipper attached.) “We think it’s going to be incredibly successful,” says Body Glove President Russ Lesser.
The larger mermaid economy is as diverse as sea life itself. Schools teach aspiring sea maidens in the Philippines, France, Spain, and the U.S. (In Omaha, a two-day class for adults costs $210; a two-day teacher-training class at New York’s Coney Island is $375.) The three photographers and “host” mermaid who run the Mermaid Portfolio Workshop charge as much as $3,000 to shoot would-be mermodels in the Bahamas and Isla Mujeres, Mexico. “The classes are internationally popular,” says Chris Crumley, one of the photographers.
Mermaid Melissa (her legal name), in Orlando, says she’s built custom tanks and hired a school of mermaids to meet party demand. “Clients want something specific,” she says. “Like, ‘We want an African American mermaid. We want her in a gold tail.’ ” And in Crystal River, Fla., Eric Ducharme, aka the Mertailor, says he sells thousands of tails annually, charging $120 for a stock version and as much as $5,000 for custom. (Thirty percent of his customers are male.) His tails appeared in this year’s The Nice Guys, with Ryan Gosling. “When movies come out, people get obsessed,” says Ducharme, 26. “It’s a sexual thing, but not in a perverted fetish way.” The obsession lives on: A live-action Little Mermaid and a Walt Disney remake of Splash with Channing Tatum as a merman are in the works.
Wolbert, who’s in her 30s, has always been a strong swimmer. After majoring in film with a minor in environmental science at Emerson College in Boston, she traveled with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors as a scuba diving model. She learned to hold her breath for five minutes and to free dive, plunging to 115 feet without an oxygen tank. While filming a documentary in 2005, she found her calling. “I was watching divers swimming up and down wearing monofins, and they moved like mermaids,” she says. One day she borrowed one. “I jumped into the water and took off.”
All she needed was a convincing tail. But back then, they weren’t available commercially. Luckily, her friend Allan Holt, who works in Hollywood in special effects, helped her make one out of silicone. Seven months and $20,000 later, her scuba diving and film friends began shooting videos, which she posted online. She started booking gigs.
On a recent Friday, Wolbert sits poolside in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., preparing for a Body Glove photo shoot. She slathers her legs with hair conditioner to help ease into her blue tail. “Oils dissolve the silicone,” she says. Lesser’s 9-year-old granddaughter and two of her friends will arrive shortly to take part in the shoot, and Wolbert doesn’t want them to see her tailless. “It’s important not to break the illusion.”
The collaboration with Body Glove began in 2013 after she met Lesser, a fellow board member for the Reef Check Foundation, a nonprofit focused on saving the ocean. He was impressed with her skills and passion. “She’s not just a mermaid, she’s a super athlete,” he says. “I met with Michael Phelps last year and challenged him to have a 100-yard swim [against Wolbert] from a standing start. He declined.”
To contact the author of this story: Caroline Winter in New York at cwinter10@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bret Begun at bbegun@bloomberg.net.
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