Little Wannabe: My Childhood Obsession with The Little Mermaid

From an early age, I would often fantasize about being my favorite characters from whatever film I had recently seen. The most vivid and passionate of which occurred when I was seven-years-old. I had just seen the film that resurrected Disney’s 2-Dimensional animation squad in the late eighties, The Little Mermaid, and had finally found the Disney Princess for me.

Now I have never been a “girly” girl, but I had been know in my younger years to play Sleeping Beauty. I would lie on my bed pretending to be asleep, awaiting my true love’s kiss. Of course, nothing would ever happen; but that pretty well sums up the Disney Princess experience pre-nineteen-eighty-nine. A beautiful girl who was always good and virtuous would have to wait for a Prince or the intervention of some sort of conjurer to get her inevitable happy ending. This is a great message to send out to little girls- very realistic. For me it never completely jived, which is why I never took to any of the “classic” Disney heroines. That and the fact that they were all blondes (Snow White doesn’t count. Keeping house for seven troglodytes is not a recipe for idolization).

That all changed when I entered the theatre and was introduced to the first Disney Princess I could actually relate to. Yes, I had a girl-crush on Ariel. Here was a character that actually got into trouble, was not afraid to talk back to her father, rescues the man, makes a conscious decision to follow her dreams (albeit a man should never be the ultimate goal for any woman, but you can’t win them all) and takes the necessary action to do so. There were consequences for these actions, as there are in real life. Ariel takes a risk and follows her dreams, and by doing so achieves them. And she wasn’t a blonde! I was in heaven.

For months after my first viewing I would go around singing, "Part of Your World". When I would go for swimming lessons I would fantasize about saving whoever it was that I was crushing on at that point and serenading him with my beautiful voice. I was a girl obsessed. It was an arduous wait for the VHS to finally some out, but the day my mother told me she had bought it at the local Video store was the apex of my life at that point.

You know what? Twenty years later, it’s still a fun film. Sure, I don’t watch it every second day like I once did, but it’s still fun to pop in the DVD now and again to relive old memories and watch a sweet movie. The songs are catchy (upon viewings in later life I realize how much I really like "Kiss the Girl"), the colours are vivid, and the characters memorable. This is a fun animated movie that kids and the romantics at heart can enjoy. I know that if I had a daughter, I would rather they idolize Ariel over Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.