Since today is the 25th Anniversary of The Little Mermaid, I thought it would be nice to talk about why this movie is so wonderful – and refute those claims that The Little Mermaid isn’t feminist.
It’s bothersome when people write off Ariel as “anti-feminist,” a “bad role model,” and complain about her giving up her voice for a man.
So here are 25 reasons why The Little Mermaid is awesome and way more feminist than you thought:
1. Ariel is confident in herself. One of the things that I’ve always loved about the Disney Princesses is how so many of them are filled with self-confidence, and confidence in their own abilities. Ariel definitely fits the mold. Even without her voice, even in a world that is nothing like hers, Ariel doesn’t change who she is. She’s out of her element, but doesn’t try to blend in, or minimize her personality. Ariel is wholly herself, on both sea and land, and I think her self-confidence makes her a great role model for girls.
2. She has hobbies! This might seem like a weird addition, but if you really think about it, how many of the Disney Princesses have hobbies? Not many. Belle has her love for reading (but Belle came after Ariel), Cinderella designs clothes for the mice, and we don’t get to see much hobbies-wise for the other princesses. Ariel is the first princess we have with multiple hobbies. She’s an explorer, she collects human relics, and she even sings in the choir with her sisters. How’s that for a well-rounded list of extracurriculars?
3. She’s adventurous! When a princess starts a movie looking through a sunken ship and facing off against a shark, you know she’s an adventurous badass. Like Belle, Ariel wants adventure in the great wide somewhere, but her somewhere is above land, and she ends up getting exactly the adventure she wants in the end. Everything Ariel does is an adventure, whether it’s facing off against evil sea creatures or figuring out how utensils work on land.
Watch how she takes a simple carriage ride:
4. Contrary to popular belief, Ariel didn’t go on land for Eric; he was just the final push she needed. When people call The Little Mermaid anti-feministic, their reasoning is usually because she gave up her voice for Eric, and well, that’s not a very good value to teach girls, is it? But that reasoning is WRONG. Number #1: The movie makes it very clear early on that Ariel has been fascinated with going on land way before she even met Eric. She’s been exploring and collecting human relics for ages.
Look at that nook of items. There are a lot of things there, which gives us the idea that she’s been doing this for quite a while. Number #2: Listen to “Part of Your World.”
What would I give if I could live
Out of these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day
Warm on the sand?’
And this amazing:
Betcha’ on land, they understand
Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters
Bright young women, sick of swimming
Ready to stand
It takes place before she even meets Eric, and you can already feel Ariel’s burning desire to experience life on land. The song makes no mention of finding love. The things she wants to experience aren’t related to Eric. True, it is meeting Eric that spurs Ariel to go on land. But he’s not the only reason.
5. She isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and her beliefs, even against her own father.
6. She makes mistakes, but more importantly, she owns her mistakes.
When the deal fails with Ursula, she finds a way to defeat her and save her father. She also makes things right with her dad after their fight.
7. She has a really awesome group of friends. Granted, those friends are a pelican, a fish, and a crab, but if you think about it, so many Disney Princesses have animal friends. Pocahontas had Meeko and Flint, Cinderella had her mice, Aurora had her forest friends… Ariel’s friends are basically the best though. They’re supportive of her, but honest; if they’re wary of one of her decisions, they’re not afraid to help her. And they’re right by her side whenever she needs them.
8. She has an amazing singing voice. Okay, maybe this isn’t a unique reason – pretty much every Disney princess can sing, and sings plenty of awesome songs – but Ariel is the first one for whom her singing voice relates to the plot. She sings in the choir with her sisters and Eric first falls in love with her voice when he hears her sing. Her voice is what Ariel has to give up so that she can go on land, and it’s also what Ursula uses to trick Eric and mess with Ariel’s deal.
9. Ursula is an awesome antagonist.
She’s an unabashed female villain, which we don’t get very often in the media, and she’s underhanded, and devious without any shame or remorse. “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is such a great song because not only is it just an awesome villain song, but also because it shows how manipulative she is.
She never really lies during the song when she tells Ariel about the deals she makes, or the consequences: she just highlights the reward over the risk, much like a crafty saleswoman. She also knows exactly what she’s doing when she takes Ariel’s voice, because she knows that even if Ariel manages to catch Eric’s attention, she can use Ariel’s voice to distract him, because it’s what Eric originally fell for.
10. “Part of Your World.” It’s Ariel’s “I Want” song of the movie, and it’s amazing. It’s one of the most relatable “I want” songs because think about it: haven’t we had that feeling like we don’t quite belong? Or that we want something more out of life?
Ariel does, and she has the drive to follow through and pursue her dreams of stepping on land.
11. Triton and Ariel’s relationship is wonderfully realistic and heart-warming. A father and daughter who don’t see eye to eye? Story of pretty much every parent-child relationship. We all clash with our parents, and Ariel and Triton happen to clash over their opinions on the world above their own. Ariel wants to see more of it, Triton insists it’s dangerous. Both of them make a mess of things. Triton destroys her relics, basically throwing a temper tantrum, and Ariel runs out without so much as a word to him about where she’s going, which terrifies him. (Bonus: The Broadway version expands on this conflict a bit more on Triton’s side with the amazing song If Only. Listen here.)
But ultimately, the two of them make things right in the end. Triton even gives Ariel his blessing (and restores her legs) so that she can live on land. When she hugs him and says “I love you, daddy,” you know that all is right between these two, and it warms your heart.
12. Eric is an amazing Disney Prince. He’s not my favorite (because no one can top the Disney Prince of my heart, Aladdin), but he’s a close second. Eric is kind, funny, sweet, charming… and most importantly, he loves all of Ariel. He initially falls in love with her voice when she saves him, and spends a lot of the movie wondering about the girl who saved him, but when Ariel turns up on land sans her voice, he starts slowly falling for her all over again. When he realizes the melodic singer that saved him and the voiceless girl who’s charmed him are one in the same, it’s such a great moment for us the viewer because he realizes what we knew all along: he’s fallen for all of Ariel.
And when Ursula is thwarted and Ariel is dragged back under the sea by her, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to take her down and save his beloved. He never asks Ariel to give up her place in the sea, and he never asks her to change; more reasons I love him.
13. Ariel saves Eric. A Disney princess saving her man, say it ain’t so! The Little Mermaid is the very first Disney movie to feature a princess doing the rescuing. In that moment a ship is sinking, she’s just seen fire for the first time and realizes it is dangerous, and a serious storm is brewing. She’s been separated from her friends. Yet, she saves Eric. She pulls him out of the water and brings him to safety. At the end of the film, Eric jabs his ship into Ursula, creating a balance between them. Ariel doesn’t always need to be the strong one because she has an equally strong man at her side. There is a give and take in their relationship. Having that equilibrium is healthy and important!
14. Sebastian. Let’s just talk about Sebastian’s character. You know that friend, the one who’s always like “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” or “maybe we should think this through?” The one who keeps the group from getting into chaos? That’s Sebastian. Other reasons Sebastian is awesome: he has a song all to himself (“Under the Sea”) and it is amazing, he’s the mediator who keeps the peace between Ariel and her dad, and despite his stern attitude, he really cares about Ariel. He also gives some hilarious dating advice.
15. We can’t talk about Sebastian without talking about Flounder. He’s an adorable sidekick, super loyal to Ariel and super sweet as well. He’s naturally skittish and shy, but he’s not afraid to stand up for Ariel and help her out however she needs him. These two have true friendship. ❤
16. The Little Mermaid is one of the earliest examples of a princess with siblings who aren’t horrible to each other. (Cinderella’s step-sisters don’t count, at least not initially, because it takes a few movies for Cindy and Anastasia to bond.) We don’t get a ton about Ariel’s sisters, but her, her sisters and her father seem like a fairly close-knit family unit. Her and her sisters even sing together! That’s true family bonding. I thought their A-themed names were cute, and I think part of why Ariel doesn’t feel belonging is because she’s a part of a huge family unit, and she wants to be a part of something that’s hers alone.
17. During Ursula’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” she brings up men’s views on women, which sadly we still deal with in this day and age:
The men up there don’t like a lot of blabber
They think a girl who gossips is a bore
Yes, on land it’s much preferred
For ladies not to say a word
I personally think it’s pretty brave of Disney to tackle societal issues like this, and it’s important for young girls and boys to realize that you should be who you want to be, not what society expects of you.
18. And do you know what else is awesome about The Little Mermaid? The movie subverts Ursula’s assumptions by having it not be true for Eric. Eric is the exact opposite of that. He falls in love with Ariel despite her lack of voice, but that’s because Ariel is so expressive that she still finds a way to showcase her voice to Eric without saying a word. I think voice or no voice, Eric still would’ve fallen in love with Ariel, and part of what Eric loves about Ariel is how expressive and enthusiastic about life she is. He loves her, with or without her voice, with legs or fins, in a dress or a conch shell bra.
19. Also, just as Eric subverts Ursula’s expectations of men, Ariel doesn’t bend to Ursula’s version of what women should be. Ursula tells her to be “withdrawn”, and that “it’s she who holds her tongue that gets the man”, but those things go against the very core of Ariel’s personality. So does Ariel follow her advice? Not a chance.
20. Ariel is resilient. Her father destroys all of her relics and tells her to never go to the surface? Well, she’s not giving up on her dreams, no matter what he says, and she finds another way to get there. She doesn’t have her voice to win over Eric? She uses her extroversion to win him over: she’s naturally a bubbly, expressive person, and she uses that to her advantage. Ironically, one of Ursula’s bits of advice proves to be helpful for Ariel: body language helps her communicate with Eric, despite her lack of a voice. Ursula messes with the people she loves? Ariel fights back to make things right. She’s someone who doesn’t give up easily, and all of her persistence and hard work pays off in the end when she finds her happy ending on land.
21. She proves that women don’t have to give up everything for a man. One of Ariel’s big worries is that she’ll lose her father and sisters if she goes up on land, but Ursula tells her that she’ll have her man, and that life is full of tough choices. Like much of what Ursula says, this turns out to be a lie, because in the end, Ariel learns that she doesn’t have to choose between both worlds. She can live on land with Eric and still keep close ties with her family. The Little Mermaid is all about worlds uniting, and how Ariel can still hold onto her home and family while embracing her place on land with Eric. She also doesn’t have to change who she is for Eric. Yes, she gives up her fins, but that doesn’t mean she has to give up on where she came from or who she is.
22. Ariel is not afraid to cry, but then she can get right back up and fix her problems. After Triton destroyed the grotto, she was emotional, but then she took a visit to Ursula and found a way to get what she wanted.
When “Vanessa” arrived and Eric was going to marry her, Ariel was heartbroken, but when she found out Eric was being tricked and the marriage wouldn’t make him happy, she jumped into the water and saved him (again!). There’s nothing wrong with crying when you need to! Crying is natural and it makes you stronger if you can let your emotions out. Ariel is a fully formed woman: she’s not a weepy do nothing, but she’s also not this impossibly strong person. That’s a great message for girls (and boys).
23. Ariel is our first non-human princess, or at least, she starts out that way. Her world is vast and filled with gorgeous scenery, and there’s also some interesting world-building there as well. It’s such a wonderfully thought out world, and I love the fact that so much of the movie is focused on the differences between both worlds, and how the human world is just as fascinating to Ariel as the world under the sea is to us.
24. There’s this super interesting hinted at backstory with Ursula and Triton, because Ursula mentions once living in the palace and being banished. So what exactly did she do to get herself banished? And if we consider the fact that the original plan was for Ursula to be Ariel’s aunt, how much more twisted and interesting does that make this movie? (I personally like to imagine this as canon that’s not mentioned, because it adds some really interesting depth to the plot.)
25. Finally, one of the things I love about this movie is that Ariel is 16, and it’s clear in her personality that she’s still growing and developing.
She’s playful and sometimes naïve and stubborn and I think people get grated by her sometimes because of her immaturity, but think about when you were a teenager. Teenagers tend to have this “I know best” mentality, even if we don’t, and I think Ariel really personifies that. But she learns from her mistakes and matures greatly by the end of the movie without losing her sense of self or her sense of fun and adventure. She becomes the best version of herself, essentially, and isn’t that supposed to be what love is? Finding someone who brings out your best qualities, doesn’t try to change you and makes you want to be your very best self?
The next time anyone scoffs at Ariel you’ve got 25 awesome comebacks ready!
What do you think? Can you think of anymore reasons The Little Mermaid is an awesome feminist film? Leave them and your opinions below in the comments!
Cheers!
-M&M
Happy 25th Anniversary to one of the best Disney films.
For the Love of Stories 
Interesting! thanks for sharing 🙂
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What a great post – it’s true, Ariel really deserves much more credit than she actually gets for all of these reasons! I’m looking forward to reading more of your posts!
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Pretty good read, and agreed on a lot of your points. She definitely deserved much more credit than she is getting (in fact, Belle barely even deserves much of the credit she’s stealing from Ariel. For goodness sakes, even Belle reading characterization was predated by Ariel in Part of Your World).
I do have a few things to suggest for improving the article:
1. You might want to make sure to specify which kind of “Feminist” you’re meaning regarding how The Little Mermaid was Feminist, as someone who reads the title will probably assume that you might mean “feminist” as in the rather horrid feminist ideology promoted by Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Freidan, Gloria Allred, and the like that basically demonizes men and traditional marriage, makes a lot of lies about women’s suffering (by that, I mean like claiming women couldn’t get any education or literacy at all until the 1960s when women “took power” and all of that), bra burnings, promoting abortion, and all of that (and believe me, I’ve actually experienced that in College fairly recently, and that was a nightmare), even going as far as to call a homemaker job basically a concentration camp. It’s clear within the text of the article that you’re meaning more the Susan B. Anthony Suffragette-type feminism, but we need to make sure people don’t get the wrong idea. Personally, I consider Beauty and the Beast to be of the second-wave feminism or even third-wave feminism (and I don’t mean that in a good way), especially when Belle basically does a lot of bad things in her film, not to mention plenty of idiotic things as well, and she was written that way so Katzenberg would have a “feminist twist” on the tale thanks to Ariel getting a lot of needless hate by so-called “concerned parents” who called her cloyingly sexist just because she actually liked Eric and wanted to be with him, ignoring a lot of other proactive things she did.
2. Regarding the Social Issues bit, you might want to take note that the person identifying this was the villain, meaning that she’s effectively lying when talking about the social issues in question.
3. You probably should also note that The Little Mermaid was the last Disney film to actually treat marriage as a good thing, as starting with Beauty and the Beast, Disney seems dead-set on trying to demonize marriage whenever it can, and even if the characters get together with the love of their lives, they neither show or even hint at them marrying, assuming of course they even marry at all. In fact, we don’t even see a wedding in the Disney Princess films (I’m not counting sequels or stuff like that, and the Disney Sequels if they do have some redeemability are that they at least tried to show weddings for all the DPs at the time, except for Belle for some reason) until Tiana in The Princess and the Frog, two decades afterwards. Even the Suffragettes had no problems with marrying and in fact they encouraged it.
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Hi Eric,
I wanted to comment about something specifically in your response: “Regarding the Social Issues bit, you might want to take note that the person identifying this was the villain, meaning that she’s effectively lying when talking about the social issues in question.”
Personally, I don’t see how Ursula being a villain automatically means she’s lying to Ariel. She’s making humans seem awful, which would discourage Ariel from making a deal. We don’t know how much contact she’s had with humans since the movie makes it clear there is no relationship between land and sea, so she may actually believe these things.
But, fine, I’ll play. She’s a villain so she’s lying. She who holds her tongue gets her man, importance of body language, men don’t like a lot of blabber, they dote and swoon and fawn on a lady who’s withdrawn; Ursula says all those things. By your reasoning, Disney has the villain mouth these which make them untrue. But by my reasoning, by having her say those things, Disney is putting forth the message it is WRONG to think this way.
And to this point: “…Disney seems dead-set on trying to demonize marriage whenever it can…”
I don’t believe that at all. Just because there was a shift in how they ended their films does not mean they “demonized” marriage. One, it probably got predictable ending all their stories the same way. Two, Times were a changing! Not everyone was getting married so young. By abstaining from something, that does not mean you’re demonizing it. Disney has never said one word against marriage.
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. Glad the article elicited strong feelings!
Cheers!
-M
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“Personally, I don’t see how Ursula being a villain automatically means she’s lying to Ariel. She’s making humans seem awful, which would discourage Ariel from making a deal. We don’t know how much contact she’s had with humans since the movie makes it clear there is no relationship between land and sea, so she may actually believe these things.
But, fine, I’ll play. She’s a villain so she’s lying. She who holds her tongue gets her man, importance of body language, men don’t like a lot of blabber, they dote and swoon and fawn on a lady who’s withdrawn; Ursula says all those things. By your reasoning, Disney has the villain mouth these which make them untrue. But by my reasoning, by having her say those things, Disney is putting forth the message it is WRONG to think this way.”
Villains generally lie to the heroes. They may not be blatant lies, but that’s the point, as they need to be clever in how they deceive the heroes, like exact words that are also ambiguously stated. It also shows how it is wrong to think that way as well, so I agree with you on that as well.
“And to this point: “…Disney seems dead-set on trying to demonize marriage whenever it can…”
I don’t believe that at all. Just because there was a shift in how they ended their films does not mean they “demonized” marriage. One, it probably got predictable ending all their stories the same way. Two, Times were a changing! Not everyone was getting married so young. By abstaining from something, that does not mean you’re demonizing it. Disney has never said one word against marriage.”
First of all, they would have broken tradition by actually showing a wedding at the end of Beauty and the Beast if that’s the reason (since traditionally, every odd-numbered Disney Princess film doesn’t have a wedding shown on-screen [Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and now, Beauty and the Beast], while every even-numbered Disney Princess film did show a wedding [Cinderella and The Little Mermaid]).
Second of all, they don’t even hint at Belle and Adam even marrying (even Sleeping Beauty and Snow White at least hinted at a marriage with the ending narration as the book closes). What makes this even worse is that the only time a wedding was shown in Beauty and the Beast was the one Belle ruined by throwing the groom into the mud as a sick joke (ironically, having that wedding set up was actually extremely unnecessary, especially regarding highlighting how much of a jackal Gaston was. The musical actually omitted it and yet still made sure Gaston was a jackal despite otherwise proposing to Belle in a more traditional manner). They could have shown the marriage between Adam and Belle just to show not all weddings are bad, but instead they just not showed it, not even hinted at it, either. And by “demonizing marriage,” I mean how they seemed to largely treat marriage as a bad thing for most of the film (Aladdin may possibly be the only exception to this rule, and that’s only because of Jasmine explicitly choosing to marry Aladdin [thus at least implying a marriage in the future], and even then, throughout the film, it was made very clear she didn’t want to get married to anyone), and not even attempt to show any good in marriage by actually showing or in some cases not even hinting at a marriage in the near future or having occurred. For example, Beauty and the Beast, as noted above, basically not only failed to even show a marriage between the two leads in the ending, the one marriage they even attempted to show was the one Belle ruined, which gave the implication that marriages are bad. Pocahontas basically treated marriage to Kocoum as the worst nightmare Pocahontas would have, and they didn’t even have her marry at all thanks to her only love, John Smith, basically being returned to Great Britain for immediate medical treatment thanks to Ratcliffe shooting him, and Mulan basically treated the entire marriage process in a bad manner in the opening where she basically ended up ruining her chances, plus not even showing Shang and Mulan marrying (heck, it’s not even a guarantee that Shang will ultimately be Mulan’s husband, as for all we know she’ll go with some random nobody like Pocahontas ultimately did). In fact, barring Beauty and the Beast (which never featured any weddings between Adam and Belle at all in the animated canon, only appearing in books, especially those the DP Weddings franchise), they don’t even show the weddings until the sequels, and even then, one of them was not even to the same person they loved in the actual film (case in point, Pocahontas in the sequel doesn’t even marry John Smith, but John Rolfe, which was controversial enough that even Disney had to ignore the sequel for merchandising for the Disney Princes/Disney Princesses).
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Well this got got very off-topic.
But it seems like Disney “demonizes” arranged marriages, marriages not based on love, and the like. Marriage in Disney will be an upcoming topic and why there is so much emphasis on it, and why many times, it is a man demanding a woman marry (ie: The sultan, Gaston, Pocahontas’ father, Mulan’s father/family/culture, Prince Charming’s father (Cinderella) (the son was being pressured here and we didn’t even get to see him angst about it), and the fathers in Sleeping Beauty).
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“But it seems like Disney “demonizes” arranged marriages, marriages not based on love, and the like. Marriage in Disney will be an upcoming topic and why there is so much emphasis on it, and why many times, it is a man demanding a woman marry (ie: The sultan, Gaston, Pocahontas’ father, Mulan’s father/family/culture, Prince Charming’s father (Cinderella) (the son was being pressured here and we didn’t even get to see him angst about it), and the fathers in Sleeping Beauty).”
Problem is, the way they did it from Beauty and the Beast onwards, they basically failed to acknowledge even the benefits of a good marriage, even one actually based on love. Even Aurora at least managed to at least change her tune when she realized the man she met in the forest and Prince Phillip were in fact one and the same, and before Belle entered the picture, that was the closest we got to a hint that marriage may not necessarily be a good thing. At least Snow White and Aurora, even if we don’t directly see the marriage, are nonetheless mentioned to have married in the ending narrative as the book closes. We don’t even see a hint that Belle and Adam married at all, not even in ending narrations due to the decision to use stained glass windows instead of a book. Couldn’t they at LEAST try to show Belle and Adam marrying just so people got that they had in fact married? They didn’t need to show Ariel and Eric marrying, or heck, even Cinderella and Prince Charming marrying either, yet they still managed to show them marrying just to ensure the audience got that, yes, they did indeed get married. If they wanted to show that arranged marriages and marriages not based on love are bad, that’s one thing, but the problem is they didn’t make sure to offset it by actually showing a marriage based on love, or even implying it. Even Sleeping Beauty at least tried to hint that they got married by the end of the film. Beauty and the Beast doesn’t. That’s my main problem with how Disney movies starting with Beauty and the Beast handled marriage. It’s almost as if they can’t even show or hint at any marriages at all in a good light, even if it is between the main leads. Besides, why didn’t they just have Belle simply refuse Gaston instead of sending him into a mudbath? That would have worked without demonizing marriage.
And when you come up with the topic, I’ll make sure to explain exactly what I’m referring to.
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There’s no edit button so consider this an addendum to my prior post:
Besides, the situation Belle was in was definitely not an arranged marriage at all. It was actually more of the traditional sort, yet Belle still basically acted like a jerk to Gaston and we’re supposed to support it. Yeah, Gaston was a jerk as well, and I hated that guy, but did they really need to have Belle throw him into the mud and smirk while doing so? And this makes it even more worse, especially when we don’t see any hint at their being married (we don’t even see a wedding band on Adam in the ending, a surefire sign that he actually did marry Belle). Honestly, they should have done it like the 1989 screenplay, at least that actually made the rejection more justifiable. Why didn’t they show a wedding with Beauty and the Beast?
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Oh, forgot one thing. Ursula may have been Triton’s sister in a deleted scene, but she is not that in the animated canon, especially when Return to the Sea nixed that idea with Ursula and Morgana’s mom, who was clearly an octopid like her, plus the creation of the octopid race in the TV series.
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In response to Eric: “You might want to make sure to specify which kind of “Feminist” you’re meaning regarding how The Little Mermaid was Feminist”
There is only one kind of feminist. The one that believes that men and women should be treated equally. That is the definition. Please stop pretending it is anything else.
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A great post!
TLM is my absolute favorite and you’ve done it great justice! I’ve defended this movie with some of these points but you have waaay more than I could think of! If I had to say anything it’s that Scuttle is a seagull, not a pelican but I’m just being picky.
I hope to see more of your stuff! Followed!
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Thanks so much! Mel and I appreciate it. 🙂
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Well stated. The little mermaid is a landmark in animation. And all these points are phenomenal reasons why it doesn’t deserve the hatred people give it. I will defend this movie and Ariel until the day I die. And I have 25 reasons why to fight back against those who try to tell me wrong.
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