Jesse Jackson IV

Haiya Eliza Rodriguez

February 2025
words & photographs, jesse jackson iv

• 

Judging by the bubbles I exist within on the internet, it seems everyone is engaged in some sort of creative act.

You’ve felt it - everyone is a ‘DJ’ now, or ‘photographer’, or ‘creative director’, or ‘model’; whatever multi-hyphenate du jour is in vogue. Everyone has a clothing brand, or a podcast, or a YouTube channel. Everyone is an ‘influencer’. Who among us has not made a disparaging remark or two regarding a new entree into the fields to which we have dedicated ourselves? I am not without sin, and thus, I do not cast stones. I have caught myself doing much the same.

I suppose this disdain stems from a sense of inadequacy, or perhaps insecurity, about the available space there is to occupy within a certain niche. For some, each new practitioner represents a new competitor for a limited resource, a threat to which you must respond, from which you must defend. In a number of ways, this is true, but it is also irrelevant. The only element over which you have any degree of control is yourself. Occupying your limited time endeavoring to keep people out means that you have less time to spend getting to where you want to be.

There is always room for great.

No matter how many films you watch religiously, no matter how many records you have on constant repeat, or books you read and re-read, should another come you find you must have, hear, hold, you will find a way. After all, regardless of the perceived similarities in these individual stories, they remain interesting.

The people remain interesting. The stories remain interesting. There is a shared struggle among many of these creatives, a shared compulsion to bring a thing to life, that immediately resonates with kindred spirits. In seeing ourselves in these struggles, we may also see ourselves in these triumphs. There is a call in each, a call to keep going, keep pushing; a reminder that it is possible. What follows is, for me, one such story.

Towards the beginning of 2025, I sat down with Haiya Eliza Rodriguez, stylist and founder of HERcurls, to discuss her fascinating path from All-American gymnast to creative tour de force behind a thriving salon – and what comes next.

I hope you enjoy.

• 

JJ: I didn't know you were from Miami.

HR: Yes, I'm from Miami. Uh, I.. so, my dad’s from Cuba, my mom’s from Bolivia. They met there, had me.. I grew up until I was about, like fifteen? Then I moved to Cincinnati.

JJ: Wow, like that, that's a big change from Miami to Cincinnati.

HR: In every way. From people, to food, to weather, like, everything is way different. I did gymnastics, that's why I moved there. I was a gymnast for 15 years.

JJ: Oh, wow. Yeah, cause it's like, from a very early age, you have to be very good, yeah?

HR: I started when I was three. So three until eighteen.

JJ: Wow.

HR: I moved from Miami to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Dallas, all for gymnastics. I was an Olympic level gymnast, so I competed all over, like the country, internationally.. I was part of the United States National team. Like, it was just like a whole, whole thing.

JJ: Tell me about growing up in Miami. What was that like? Do you remember much of it?

HR: I do remember. I grew up in Hialeah. Hialeah is like, predominantly, like Little Havana. I feel like I definitely enjoyed the culture, and getting to really like.. I'm always very grateful that I got to be around that. Growing up around my Dad, he’s Cuban, and obviously being in Miami, I grew to love the Cuban culture. Growing up with my mom, who raised me, like, the Bolivian side is the side I always felt a little closer to. Just because that's just like what was instilled in me more. I love both cultures, but the Bolivian side feels more like home.

JJ: My wife immigrated from Mexico when she was three. I don't know a lot about the Cuban experience in Miami, but I know that there's a long history of that happening. How did that influence you growing up?

HR: I love that it gave me a background, a culture. In a way, I was influenced by their strength. I just think the strength it takes to start; seeing in them the resiliency and the strength. My mom's strength, especially. My mom is the hardest worker I know. So I think that, like, I really got a lot of that from her. On my dad's side, just seeing him come up, that come up story. He really came to this place with nothing, $35 bucks on a boat from Cuba to Miami escaping Fidel. It's just kind of seeing them, their strength. I'm glad I didn't grow up in, like, a super cooking cutter environment.

• 

JJ: It's crazy to think about, especially now, having watched my in laws who have very similar story – coming into this country with nothing, and like, what they've been able to enable their children to do, and my wife.. the work ethic that instills in people. I know that that's kind of a cliché thing, but I think it's so true. That immigrant story, seeing that actually happen, then inspires children to like, go really far.

Well, it can sometimes. it's individually driven, but I think it's crazy to see how much that drive influences people to believe that it's possible to do what you do. You know what I mean? To not take the safe route and instead say, no, I'm gonna start my own shit.

HR: I think it's definitely takes a certain drive to be able to do that. Also, growing up with gymnastics, like… gymnastics taught me so much. Discipline. Hard work. Building a schedule. Physically, mentally; in every single way. There's so many things that you're having to do, and it's all important. Otherwise you can kill yourself. Consistency. Gymnastics, you're going all year, there's no ‘well, I'm gonna take this season off, three, four months and you come back next year’.

No. It's all you’re doing. I've always said it's one of the hardest sports. One of, if not the most underrated, and one of the hardest sports. It's so all around, there's so many different things. That taught me so much carrying into my adult life now and like, being able to take those risks and not being scared. Another critical thing it taught me was visualization. As a kid, like, I was like five, six years old doing this. Every morning. I would wake up, pray, and then sit there for 5-10 minutes visualizing doing my skills – literally putting myself in it doing it. Carrying that on as an adult and visioning like, okay, a business. How do I envision this? Really being able to picture it. I’m very big on… I think that if you can envision something, you can make it happen. If you can't even envision it, like how are you gonna make it happen?

JJ: I love that, that’s super interesting. Wait, so how did you get into gymnastics?

HR: My mom. She didn't even know anything about gymnastics, but I was always flipping around and trying to do stuff at home. I think one of her friends told her, hey, you should put her gymnastics, at least they have a place to land. So, she just found a little local gym nearby and then put me in it. I started, I was good at it; the coach told my mom I was really good at it, young. I kept doing it, kept getting better. I was ahead of my age. Eventually, we went to another gym that was a little better, and then just kind of like kept going.

• 
• 

JJ: I think you're right. I mean, gymnastics is one of those sports that you have to be super good, super young, and you have to be so disciplined. I agree that it is really underrated. Of course, I think, Simone Biles and what she's been able to accomplish, alongside other gymnasts, has caused that profile to rise somewhat, especially recently, but it's crazy. That grind is insane.

HR: Simone is a beast. That girl is like… because I've done it, and been on that level, like, I understand that she is literally one of a kind. That is literally the greatest athlete of all time. I'm sorry, I know, Kobe, Lebron, all that, but like, they're not doing what girl does, like, at the consistency at the level, how long she’s been maintaining, like, it's just crazy to me.

I love that she has really changed the culture of gymnastics, or is helping to change the culture of gymnastics, because it was so, like… if you're on that elite level, like you're training every single day you're not going to almost school, you're just, you're training twice a day, you're nine years old doing that's it's very, like hard as a kid, and I feel like now you're staying, gymnastics are go a little bit older now versus, like, 18 was like, you’re old. You’re done.

JJ: That's fucked up, too, how that makes you think about age when you're that young. You're old at 20. Sports have done that to me too. I'm 33. They talk about like professional athletes at that age like, ‘Oh my God, how is he still so great at this age?!’ I’m like, I barely feel like I'm just getting shit figured out.

HR: No, for sure! And it’s not even just the sport, but your body and stuff, too. No, yeah, now you see things a little more… like, the Larry Nassar stuff. He was around when I was at training camps. I remember him being there. Just, you know, finally seeing that stuff came to light and be just a little bit more recognized, a little bit more seen. Hopefully, gymnastics culture just keeps growing in a positive way, just because there were so many dark secrets or things that were just always hidden finally coming out.

JJ: So you homeschooled then trained two times a day, all that? Would you describe your childhood as normal, or not?

HR: No, not at all. My childhood was not normal at all. I never went to public school. I've always homeschooled. I first went to Montessori for a little bit, then started homeschooling and had like, a tutor come. When I was I was probably nine, eight.. seven? Maybe starting around seven, I was training about four hours a day. Eight, nine, ten, I was training twice a day. In the morning, and then in the afternoon. In the middle of the day, we would have a three hour gap, so we had school in that time, and then I’d go back to the gym to train. Training would be Monday through to Saturday, so six days a week, every day except Sunday, all year long.

• 

JJ: That's incredible. That’s such a grind.

HR: It was, but the thing was, I got to travel so much. I traveled more than most kids, you know, going to different things, learning different things, so that was really cool. The cost was the sacrifice of like, your normal childhood and your regular day to day activities that kids do. And, going to school. But I also don't feel like I missed out on anything. I don't ever feel like ‘aw, I wish I would've got to the public school’, or ‘I wish I went to prom’ or did all these things. I'm like, I’m actually really glad I didn’t. It's not really my thing.

JJ: I had a similar experience, not the same, not to the same level, but I played basketball. I went to college for basketball, so my whole life is about basketball. I played baseball until I was 12, and then it was like alright, you have to focus on basketball. Then, you just play all year and that's kind of it. I transferred schools to play, and played during the summer, but not to the same extent. I still went to public school for the most part, and I transferred to a private school to play for a specific coach. Okay, so you grew up in Miami, and then you went to Cincinnati. Why did you do that?

HR: For gymnastics. To train with a different coach. I had one in the gym that I was training at. Another girl and I were the top two of the gym, and it was kind of like, okay, he could only take us so far, and we had finally reached that point. I remember, the ’96 Olympics, when the women won the first Olympic Gold as an all around team; Kerri Strug, and Dominique Dawes – the whole Magnificent Seven. I remember seeing that.

Amanda Borden and Jaycie Phelps were on the team, their coach Mary Lee Tracy. She was the head coach for the team at the Olympics. I really liked her, I think, because she was a woman; most of my coaches were always men. That, and I felt like I liked her style of coaching. I decided that I really wanted to train with her. My mom was like, okay, let’s see how we can see make this work. I just reached out, you know, and I told her I was like really good for my age already. They’ll take young girls coming up to train them, you know.

JJ: How old were you at this point?

HR: I was like… gosh. You know, I think I left Miami way younger than I thought I did. I was like, I think I was in Cincinnati when I was 13/14. So, yeah, I moved at 13. My mom didn’t move yet, so I was there for like a year before my mom moved up. I lived with, like, a host family.

JJ: Wow.

• 

HR: That's another part of it, too, like… when you're there, most of the time your parents can't just pick up and go. They have jobs, a house, or whatever. So yeah, I moved, and I was staying with them, so it was interesting, too.

JJ: So you were on your own from a young age.

HR: I was. My mom always worked. Being able to, like, pay to put me through home schooling, and paying for a tutor, and gymnastics isn’t cheap, either, so paying for that – all the things, and the traveling, you know? My mom was always working. My mom lived in houses and nannied, so she was constantly like, doing that. I’d see her early in the morning, and then in the evening I would be in the gym doing stuff. I was very, kind of independent, very young. Thankfully,I got socialized through gymnastics, so I wasn't like a weird… super weird home schooled kid. You know some people you get.

JJ: Super weird, yeah. So what was Cincinnati like? From Miami to Cincinnati?

HR: Winter, yeah. First time I saw snow. Snow was cool, until you have to start shoveling. I just… I it was cool. It was different, definitely. It was just different. Gymnastics was good there, gymnastics is really good there. I really liked training with Mary Lee. I learned a lot. I was training with some of the girls from the Olympics, and then the 2000 Olympics was coming up while I was there. I was way too young for that, but I remember seeing the girls like the seniors – we were the juniors, so the seniors above us –training for the Olympics. That was a really cool experience seeing that, and like, I don't know if you remember from the 96 Olympics, but there was Dominque Moceanu; she was the youngest one. She was like 13 or 14.

JJ: Oh, really, okay.

HR: After that, they changed the rules, but she ended up being like my mentor.

JJ: Oh, wow! That’s insane.

HR: Yeah! Cincinnati was a lot of like, being in the environment, of being with a lot of other elite gymnastics. At the other gym, it was like, I was the, I was at the top. So being in an environment where I could see others being even better, that was really cool. That was it. Cincinnati was Cincinnati, honesty. I feel like I just did gymnastics and came home. The apartment where we lived, I could walk to the gym. I would just like walk there, across the street, walk back.. Yeah, it was really a lot of gymnastics.

JJ: You were just there to work.

HR: Yeah.

JJ: How long were you there?

HR: I think I was there for close to two years. And then I went to Texas.

• 

JJ: Did you go back home often, or were you just like locked in?

HR: I was there. Locked in.

JJ: And then you moved to Texas?

HR: Then I moved to Texas. Dallas, then Mesquite. I was training in a gym there. I left Cincinnati because there was this coach there, Steve Elliot, and Steve was like… Mary Lee was the main coach, and Steve was the other coach.. he was like 10x world tumbling champion. Really good. I was really good at tumbling, floor and vault. The way he taught just clicked to me. He ended moving to Texas, to Dallas to this gym that I went to. I was doing really well with him. I went there, moved. There's another gym here in Dallas called WOGA. It's a really big gym. Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin; you know, Olympic champions. They were my teammates.

I was there, at the Mesquite gym with Steve, maybe a couple months into there. This whole thing comes out that like, I guess he’d been doing some Peeping Tom, like, weirdness thing that he was doing with the girls that he would travel with for competitions. There were some incidents that had happened that came back. USAG banned their from gymnastics and all this stuff. I was like, what the heck. Like, I had private lessons with him all the time. It’s just weird. Like, afterwards, you're like, whoa. I never had to experience anything, but looking back, you’re like, what the hell? Anyway, so he got banned, so I end up going to WOGA. I go to WOGA, was where the epitome of elite gymnastics was, like, our coaches were Russian. Eat, sleep, train, gymnastics. Super hardcore. Have you ever watched Athlete A, on Netflix?

JJ: I have not, no! Tell me more.

HR: It's a documentary about the Larry Nassar thing, but it also explains, like, gymnastics culture, what it’s like when you're on that level, and all of the things that go with it. It feels like a very accurate documentary about it, and it gave a sense as to what gymnastics at WOGA was like. Really crazy. So, that's how I got here, to Dallas.

JJ: When did you get to the end of gymnastics?

HR: A couple of years after I got here. I was just really burned out. I wasn't I wasn't enjoying it anymore. It took a good two years of feeling like that I decided on doing something about it. Even when I would try to say, oh, I don't know if I want to do it anymore, you know, you put in so much time into it, and like, your coaches, my mom.. you know, gymnastics is why we moved here, and obviously there’s pressure that comes with that. She was in love with it too, you know. Your coaches are just so in it, and the Olympics are the number one thing. You're just so set on that. Eventually, I was just like, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not in it, I’m mentally checked out.

• 

JJ: Yeah. That's a big moment. Like I said, when I went to college, I went to play basketball. My whole life was basketball. When I got to East Texas State, I went on an academic scholarship, so I didn't have to basketball anymore. I was free. it was like, what if I just don't do this thing? I was like, I don't wanna wake up at 5 AM and do all these workouts, then go to school, and then come back and then practice, and then do it all over again and play in front of hundred people.

I eventually came to the realization that like, I could just be a regular student. Go to class, come home come back to the apartment, smoke weed with my friends, play fucking Xbox and like, just chill. Like what's that shit like? So I did that, I was like, I'm done with basketball. But it’s the same, like, vibe, like, my whole identity was basketball. That's who I was, that's what I did. My parents, my brothers, they were all like, oh, shit, like, you're kind of shocked, because that's who you are. So I'm sure you had that kind of moment as well where you were like, what do I do now?

HR: Yeah, that's yeah, for sure. I've always said that I wish there was something that could, I don't know, almost like help what transition, cause that's such a crucial time in your life, you know? You’re like, what do I do next? The same thing happened to me, when I stopped. That was my whole life growing up, that's all I knew. Olympics, Olympics, Olympics, training, gymnastics. I never even thought about what I wanted to do afterwards. If I did, it was more of, like, I would love to be a surgeon, just because I love that kind of stuff, but like, I hated school. Was I really going to do 15 years of school? I was like, I don't know what I wanna do. That was a big transition, for sure. Figuring out like, now what? Like you said, like that's your whole identity. That was my whole identity, gymnastics. Suddenly, I was moving into something else. Then, also, adulthood!

Figuring out like, how am I gonna survive? Like, everything. That was a big moment. Figuring that out was definitely a moment of being completely lost. I was totally lost. I don't know how I thought about it, but one day I was like, I think I want to go to cosmetology school. I have no idea what made me think about that. As I think about it, in gymnastics, I know I was picky about my hair. We used to have to do the perfect slicked backed ponytails, like ballerinas, and I was always super perfectionist about it. I don't know, I just decided I wanted to go to cosmetology school. My mom was like, hell no. You need to go to college. I could have gone to college, I could have got a scholarship for gymnastics. I just didn't want to. I was like, four more years of this? Even if I had gone to college, I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. I would have been that person to be, 10 years later, still switching it up, figuring out what I want to do. I feel like that's the correct way. I'm glad that I was able to be very firm my decision of like, no, I'm not going. I'm gonna do this. I just saw something different in that. I just thought, you know, who does celebrities’ hair? There's more to it than just like, SuperCuts.

Of course, I understand where my Mom was coming from, you know, coming from Bolivia. You’re supposed to be a doctor, or a lawyer. That’s the American dream. This is something outside of that. She’s like, what? You’re going to do hair, you're gonna work at what, SuperCuts? You know. That was a big shift. I just was resolute. Like, I don't care. I just did it anyway. that that you know, that was the whole shift. Another chapter in life, really, because that was like a huge transition.

• 

JJ: How old were you when you were doing this?

HR: I was 18. Between 18 and 19. I went to cosmetology school, I moved out when I was 18. Yeah, when I was 18. Thinking back now, I’m like, who the hell rented me an apartment? I was a little girl! But I did, I had rent. I was working as the receptionist at the JC Penny Salon while I was in school. I got fired because I sucked at it. Yeah, it was just crazy, like that transition. Even then, I was going to school, but I didn't know what I was gonna do with it. I have no idea what the release was. Cosmetology school was kind of the school experience for me, like public school. It's a the school of different people, different ages. I grew up a lot. I learned a lot there. I had so much fun in cosmetology school.

I was like, oh shit, like drank for the first time, there. I was like oh, there's a lot of other things outside of this world that I've been in for so long. I started to explore more. I wanted to be in a high end salon after I finished school. I worked at the Salon at Neiman Marcus, at North Park. I worked as an assistant for maybe two months. I hated it. I hated it because of the people and the culture of it. It was like, pretentious cattiness. I was like, if I have to be around this, like, I don't wanna do this. It actually turned me off from doing hair, and I didn’t do hair for like years afterwards. In that time frame, I was just, like, growing up, trying to figure out, like, what do I want? Do I even want to do hair? What do I want to do? That whole time was a whole thing of its own.

Those transition times have been very special. From gymnastics into transitioning into being an adult, to figuring out what do I even do, what is my identity now, what do I even do? Now, 10 years later after finding that, I’m now feeling that shift, I'm feeling like another leg of like, okay, like now what’s next? It feels familiar, because I've kind of been in that, but now in a different way.

JJ: So you were at Neiman Marcus for a while, then you stopped doing hair. What were you doing while you weren't doing hair? Were you traveling?

HR: I was traveling.

JJ: I saw something… maybe it was on your Instagram? You were in Cuba.

HR: Yeah, I went to Cuba. That was five years ago. I'm 36.. six years ago. Yeah, I just I was traveling at the time. I was doing hair in a strip club. Doing the girls hair in the back. I learned a lot. A lot about like adulthood, people’s stories. That life, that lifestyle. It was crazy. Partying, different things. I was in a relationship, so like adulthood in that too.. just a lot of, like, growing up.

• 

JJ: You have a really distinct style that I fuck with. When did you start to find that voice, like coming from where you came from, how you grew up, like when did you start to become who you are now?

HR: I would say when I started doing hair again. I started to finally find my footing. You know, you go through so many phases. I went through so many phases. One of my friends is always like, you have so many life times, you have so many great stories. I have just been through a lot of like different phases of trying things out, or just in different pockets of life and what you do, what you learn and go through, I guess.

JJ: Yeah.

HR: I was 20, I was 25, so.. yeah, I was 25 when I started doing hair again. That's when I got out of that relationship. In that relationship, I had a lot of solitude, so in within that solitude, I feel like it got me ready and prepared to like, okay, I want to do hair. I want to find the wrong the right environment for me. I just felt more… it brought in more sense of a sense of self. From that, like everything kind of started manifesting itself. I met this guy at a bar – well, I was outside smoking a joint. He was like, hey, I really love your hair, I'm a hairstylist. Or, something like that. I was like, oh, cool, me too. Where do you work? He was like, I have a salon downtown. I was like, oh, are you hiring? He's like, actually, we are looking for someone. Literally a week before that, I’d said, I want to find a salon that fits in my style, like the right sort of environment for me. I met him a week later.

You know, we’re at a bar, so I didn't really take it too seriously at first. He gave me his card. I looked at it, gave him a call. Long story short, I started working there a week later. That started, a new chapter, I feel like. At that salon, it just went from a whole other…, like, I did party and stuff, I’d only go to what I knew. So, hip hop clubs and like stuff like that. Then, I started going into like dance clubs, and different music, and, like house, electronic and different stuff, which I knew, but I wasn't around people like that all the time. So, being around more that, that opened up my eyes to a whole different culture, everything.

That is when I started just exploring different things, meeting different people, just expanding consciousness in different ways. Eating shrooms. Really exploring deeper to different things. That was a big thing. Just figuring myself out. I went through all my little stages. Finding hair, finding a niche, that’s something that just manifested. I had no intention being a curly hair specialist. I was doing everything. That happened, that whole story comes, the evolution of that, and like the journey that that takes you on, you know?

JJ: So when did you decide that that was time for you to go out on your own?

HR: As a stylist?

JJ: Or as a business owner.

HR: Pretty early on. When I first started, I was an assistant for a few months. I started building my own clients. All within like six months of that is when I decided to kind of go more independent. Instead of working commission at a salon, I was like… going on your own, you're independent, so it's essentially you doing your own thing. Now you're just paying rent to the salon. I started managing my own clients, booking my own stuff, doing all that. So, within probably six months into building it is when I decided to go out.

JJ: Wow! That was soon.

HR: Well, I started getting really busy, really fast. I started doing the numbers, and I was like, you're taking how much out of my paycheck?! That’s when I was like, okay, I’m going to do it. So that was the first step of me going independent. I did that, I went to a different salon in Deep Ellum for about a year and a half. Same thing, just independent, renting my chair out. From there, I went to this other spot. Same thing, rented it out. As far as finally saying like okay, I'm gonna have like my own salon, that was five years ago. I just wanted to have a place that I could curate how I wanted to. That was really the main reason. It wasn't even like I wanted to have a full functioning salon. I just wanted to create a space that I like and that other people can enjoy and experience. That's just kind of how it started.

JJ: That's where we are now. And now, we’re talking about figuring out what’s next.

HR: Yeah.