Rodriguez 1
Melanie Rodriguez
Professor Kylee Pastor
Marshak 417N
28 September 2022
Women In Society Portrayed By Men
The Little Mermaid has multiple stories but all of them lead into these main subjects, being submissive and sexualized. As far as history goes, women have always been excluded,sexualized, and prohibited to do stuff by men but it has also been taught and normalized at a young age for females. A great example can be Disney’s The Little Mermaid or the popular notable book made by Hans Christian Andersen called The Little Mermaid(1837). In the scripture a young beautiful mermaid has just turned 15 and wandered above the sea to look at the human world. She meets a prince whom she saw drowning from a ship and had saved his unconscious body to land. Ever since then she had fallen in love at first glance and wanted to be part of the human world just to be with him. The Little Mermaid makes a mistake and has gone to a witch just so that she can be turned into a human. She sacrificed her voice and has put her life to risk just to be up in the human world with a man who she doesn’t know of. She was sure her beauty would captivate him and he’ll love her even if she doesn’t have a voice. She went to the human world and he fell in love with her beauty at first glance, well at least she thought so. She had been informed that he would have to marry a princess and he reassured her he wouldn’t but as they met he was convinced that girl was the one who saved him. He falls in love and The Little Mermaid was saddened because she had known she would die the next morning. She had the option to kill the prince and gain her life back but has decided to just die as
Rodriguez 2
she could not bring herself to it. With the overall summary of the story it is noticeable that women are pictured as clueless, hopeless, sexually beautiful, and submissive. My overall essay will not only provide information/sources to my claim but I will provide my information and the overall understanding of women in society.
Many little girls or anyone have grown up watching princess movies but do parents know the harmful effects of it? Princess movies, just like The Little Mermaid, have not only shown a toxic conception of love but it can also give anyone a false unrealistic beauty standard. An example can be, “All of Triton’s daughters are represented in strikingly sexualized ways and adhere to a very limited and limiting beauty ideal. Ariel, like her sisters, and typical for Disney’s 1990s heroines, has a Barbie-doll-like figure: tiny waist, large chest, large eyes and long, flowing hair. Bodies that do not fit this rigid norm, or in other words ‘ill-disciplined bodies’.”(Beatrice F). Just like what the author had said, the creators had given not only Ariel but her sisters the most unproportioned bodies which are based on sexualization. This is a good example on how it has harmful effects on women as it gives them false hopes of how men would want your body to look like and stereotypical beauty standards. In another article it states, “Disney movies present the idea of beauty that society seeks, but then also increase the negative influence of the “ideal” body type”(Begum, S. ). As everyone knows, there was an age in the U.S where women wanted to keep up to the males perception of beauty just to be accepted and this movie is a great example of it. Not only did they want to alter themselves for men but would
Rodriguez 3
want to act how men would want them to be, and it truly shines in The Little Mermaid. The author of this article states, “The movie tells the story of a young woman becoming a permissible and intelligible feminine subject in patriarchal society by objectifying herself. What makes Ariel an adult woman and a subject at the same time is that she becomes a consuming subject but also a commodity herself: both subject and object of consumption.”(Beatrice, F) As the author had stated above, this film just shows us that she’s degrading herself by simply changing everything in her life for a man, this was created with the mind of a man. This simply shows that this is what men expect from women and has used the chance of fairytales to show us their insulting views of women and how a woman should look,act, and think. This movie and overall story shows that fairytales don’t necessarily focus on what’s within, if you have the beauty and looks you’re automatically soon to be married off to a prince and live happily ever after.
In other cases there’ll be others saying that The Little Mermaid or any other Disney princess movies don’t necessarily have an effect on children and it rather helps them physically. The opposing side article states, “Moreover, children who engaged more with princess culture had higher body esteem, again especially children of low SES. Themes in newer princess movies often revolve around princesses overcoming obstacles and celebrating achievements instead of their appearance. These body positive themes may encourage children to feel good about their bodies”(Ellwood, B). As the author noted, some studies have been made and found no effects on children with disney movies and it rather helps them with body esteems but it doesn’t necessarily mean that other children are like that. In another article it states, “The study also shows that girls with worse body esteem engage more with the Disney Princesses over time, perhaps seeking out role models of what they consider to be beautiful”(Mcbride, J). Overall even if studies are made
Rodriguez 4
to disregard or support claims about the sexualization of women’s bodies in The Little Mermaid and so on, It’s still a fact that they’re showing the most unproportioned body in a kids film which is completely made out of the ideal images of a woman for a man. It has become normalized for women in so on films look or act like sexual ideal subjects. Women in society have been portrayed as nothing but horrible in these films/scriptures but it’s an extent in The Little Mermaid.
In The Little Mermaid, being submissive and risking everything is basically the main message throughout the whole story. She had given up not only her family but risked her life for an attractive masculine man. They had fallen in love with little to no chemistry at all and it was all based on looks too. In both movies and film you can see that the only thing that kept them going was their looks and eye chemistry. It was all about looks for him and it was the same for her, they hadn’t known each other and they had still fallen in love just through their appearance. The author of this article had written, “Ariel’s first comment about Prince Eric is not that he’s intellectual or charming but that he’s “so beautiful” and, within minutes, “falls in love” because she finds him handsome. Eric proceeds to do the same, and within three days, the couple gets married”(Rizvi Rania). As the author said, it wasn’t about what’s on the inside, it was only about beauty and the way you act. Even if she didn’t talk he felt like she was the one he needed to marry and didn’t even use much time to know her, he was simply into her appearance which is showing a toxic conception of love and a toxic way to think in general.The same source also includes, “”The Little Mermaid” is not a story about a young mermaid who falls in love with a
Rodriguez 5
man who brings out the better in her, but rather, an ambitious woman that is brainwashed into selling her identity for the validation of a man who only values her for her appearances”(Rizvi Rania).No woman should feel like they have to leave everything behind for a man who would only care about their looks, it’s basically the main message behind this movie and it’s being mainstreamed as if it’s normalized. People may not find a problem with this but how can you have a problem if films,cartoons, and books you’ve seen growing up only pictures the same exact concept repeatedly, it’s expected to see this problem as normal in society.
My overall message wasn’t just to talk about The Little Mermaid but it was to show how the film and book have contributed so much to women in society. This film and book was created by a man. A man that used his ideal image of women and put it in a book which then became popular with a film. The film shows the same exact message but in a “clean” way. The overall story still screams the same problems even if it’s about doing anything for a man, showing children a toxic concept of love, the sexualization of a young female, stereotypes, the ideal image for a man, etc. All fairytales give us a lesson and the lesson we can get from The Little Mermaid is opposite from what they showed us, it’s to never act a certain way for a man or look a certain way for a man as it’s all made up and toxic. It’s a fairytale for a reason but who’s really out here giving their children a lesson to never view themselves and act that way for a happily ever after? Wouldn’t you be upset if they thought their happily ever after would turn out that way?
Rodriguez 6
Works Cited
Begum, Shakira. “He Said, She Said: A Critical Content Analysis of Sexist Language used in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) and Mulan (1998).” Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, Jan. 2022, pp. COV1+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A695168359/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=201fcfd4. Accessed 29 Sept. 2022.
Rizvi, Rania. “Ruining Your Childhood: Why ‘the Little Mermaid’ Is Regressive, Sexist.” The Daily Targum, 30 Oct. 2020, https://dailytargum.com/article/2020/10/ruining-your-childhood-why-the-little-mermaid-is-regressive-sexist.
Mcbride, Jon. “Study Finds Disney Princess Culture Magnifies Stereotypes in Young Girls.” Phys.org, Phys.org, 20 June 2016, https://phys.org/news/2016-06-disney-princess-culture-magnifies-stereotypes.html.
“Body Image.” The Rhetoric of Disney, https://therhetoricofdisney.weebly.com/body-image.html.
Ellwood, Beth. “Longitudinal Study Suggests Disney Princess Culture Has a Positive Impact on Young Children’s Gender Development.” PsyPost, 19 Dec. 2021, https://www.psypost.org/2021/12/longitudinal-study-suggests-disney-princess-culture-has-a-positive-impact-on-young-childrens-gender-development-62267.
Rodriguez 7
Beatrice, Frasl. “Bright Young Women, Sick of Swimmin’, Ready to … Consume? The Construction of Postfeminist Femininity in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, 29 Apr. 2018, https://doi-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/10.1177/1350506818767709.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
