Princess or not, some of these ladies were role models and heroines of mine growing up, namely Ariel, Jasmine, and Belle. But how did that impact me as a teenager, and later, a woman?
I want to look a little closer at the stories of these women and explain why not all of them are on my favorites list anymore.
First, let’s look at Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Ariel is 16 year old girl that is fascinated by the world beyond the sea. She dreams and wishes and hopes with all her heart to leave the cruel, cold, dark world, and join humans, whom to her look happy, warm, and fun. (The grass is always greener, I suppose.)
What Ariel doesn’t realize (and what her father is unable to express to her) is that she’s got a wonderful life with a half -dozen sisters, and she’s a famous and well-loved singer in the Kingdom. We immediately notice Ariel’s lack of direction and inability to tolerate criticism and scolding, maybe because her mother isn’t present during the film (did she die when Ariel was young?). This could be your average 16 year old’s whining and temper, but I see no empathetic woman role models in her life. All she knows is that she wants to get away, and this “other world” seems to be the best way to do it.
We know the story, selling her voice to get legs and lungs, meeting the Prince, and after some violence, getting the man of her dreams.
There’s a reason Disney made it like that. The traditional (read) version of this tale ends with a slightly more depressing end, but highlights a significantly different vein in the mermaid’s personality: she’s innocent and selfless.
This Ariel, poor girl, accepts body transfiguration and mutilation in order to be accepted by the man she loves.
Think about it this way. You see a boy at a birthday party and you instantly crush on him, hard. As in, you want to get married to this sucker and you haven’t even talked to him yet. The only way to get his attention is to get rid of your natural beauty and adapt to the mainstream idea of it, so you bargain with a witch (more like ask her timidly) to give you legs in exchange for your voice.
Now you’ve gone through a (no doubt) painful, tail-splitting experience, nearly die getting to the surface of the ocean (since you now have lungs), and cannot speak a word, not to mention lack any knowledge of the written language to write your beloved a letter explaining your undying love.
Several critics are quoted as saying that Ariel is truly “independent” and “stronger” than other female Disney characters. She’s different (yeah, she’s a mermaid), and she begs to ask audiences, “Why didn’t you fight for what you wanted most in life?”
But my problem is this: When women use men as THE qualifying object for their entire lives– building themselves up around them, getting lost in the attraction and romance of the idea of love, mutilating themselves with plastic surgery (or witchcraft, in this case) to makes themselves more sexually attractive, and literally leaving behind their own loving albeit protective family to run away with a man they haven’t even had a conversation with (unless you count singing to a half-conscious sailor as a conversation)– they cease being independent, intelligent, and brilliant women!
Having a man in your life does not discredit you as a wonderful woman, don’t get me wrong. Throwing away everything YOU love on a whim with someone you don’t even know, that does.
This kind of behavior from a Disney Princess scares me because, even if she’s just an animated character on the screen, little girls will look up to her. They’ll think about how romantic her story is, how beautiful her body and voice are. They’ll think about what they need to do to be like her. And if they make those connections that I made, especially the one about self-mutilating to become attractive, they won’t be able to recover very easily. Their self-esteem will fall so far, it’ll land into Ariel’s cavern at the bottom of the sea, just like other little girls before her.
All I ask is to show your daughter how beautiful, smart, and amazing she is…and reassure her that she doesn’t need a man to make her feel that way!
Everything "Rae" 
Okay, first off I love Ariel. But here are some things that especially bothered me about your article. The little mermaid is NOT written down by the Grimm brothers, it was the danish H.C Andersen who wrote that one, at least check your sources properly (though most of the Disney movies are based on Grimm). Second, she DOES know how to write, because she writes her name on Ursulas contract, so at least she knows how to spell her name,
So, she is a teenager, her father makes a classic mistake amongst Disney-parents (Ariel does the same in that awful sequel). HE DOES NOT EXPLAIN ANYTHING! One would think that a 16 year old, no matter what species, would be able to see the problem if someone TOLD her about it, but no, sheltering her and thus driving her to want to discover it for herself, seems to be the way to go. Don’t tell me you didn’t do anything wrong when you were 16 that your parents disliked.
About the rolemodel-thing, I do agree that she made some pretty stupid mistakes and that the prince ended up being the reason she did what she did (which she probably would have done at some point anyway). On other points she is a pretty good rolemodel (don’t argue about her body-proportions because Jasmine’s is even worse). She stands up for herself, she wants to know things (Part of that world – before she sees the ship and the prince), she wanted it all along, we know someone we are attracted to make us do stupid things and let’s face it, it was her first crush ever most likely.
Ah yes, you are correct. It was Hans Christian Andersen, and I’ll have to fix that right away.
You make it sound like I said something about her not knowing how to write, but I’ve checked the article and don’t see that mentioned anywhere! Maybe you should explain what you mean by that.
There are parts about Ariel, no doubt, that can be seen as role-model worthy. She is independent, goes “for the goal”, wants to be knowledgable about the world. My argument is that she used bodily manipulation to chase after a man she had never really met.
I personally think you’re looking too much into what was written, but thank you for writing a comment.
I found where you put she couldn’t write “not to mention lack any knowledge of the written language to write your beloved a letter explaining your undying love.”
You opened my eyes to the things that she did that I didn’t see before, thanks.
Just that she wanted to be on land way before she seen Eric, he just gave her more incentive to go to the surface and actually meet him. Me being the teenager that I am would have do the same. Also being rebellious against her father was another. She wanted to know for herself why he didn’t want her up there. She most likely would’ve done the same even if her father told her (all explained in the third movie).
Ariel “got rid of her legs” to walk and blend in with the humans because she wanted to be “apart of there world”. It was for herself and like i said before Eric was just more incentive, I mean who would want to get to know that hunk? You do know that Eric is madly in love with Ariel, so he would love her fin or not? If he couldn’t they wouldn’t have married on a boat so her family can watch/ be there too.
Oh they go back and tell Ariel’s childhood in the third movie. You should watch it if you haven’t already it was good.