Wait…the Little Mermaid was trans? (part 1 of 4)
It won’t cost you much…JUST YOUR VOICE
Look at this face Isn’t it neat? Wouldn’t you say my transition’s complete? Wouldn’t you say I’m a girl? A girl who has…almost everything?
This article owes just about every inch of gratitude I can spare to the phenomenal writer, poet, and champion for anyone who loves to sing: Jenny Starr. Her ideas, insights, and experiences helped all of us at Transgender Soapbox see The Little Mermaid in a new way.
As for me, I’ll tell you how to support Transgender Soapbox at the end.
LET’S GET STARTED!
“I will make you a girl, but you will give me your voice.”
Nothing filled Ariel’s soul like SINGING. Every pitch, every resonance, every inflection, each sound her voice box made filled her with a feeling like she’d just come home.
So long as she stayed under the sea.
“When the sardine begin the beguine, it’s music to me.”
Under the sea, Ariel was simply a mermaid. With each passing birthday, nothing happened to reveal that her body would one day follow the same path as that of her father — King Triton.
And so long as she stayed underwater and the secret protection of her father’s spell to contain that side of her, to sustain the puberty blockers that were only possible through his Trident…
Everything would remain at peace. Quiet. Stable.
Safe.
But Ariel was caught in-between two worlds. She could look like a youthful mermaid forever. Her father’s trident would hold time in place.
But in exchange, she had to live under his sea-roof. Make her home on his ocean bed. Accept his rules. His limits. His demands.
“As long as you live under my ocean…”
King Triton accepted everything about his youngest daughter, including the fact that she was his daughter. After six other girls, he’d hoped this last one would be a son. Aries, he’d wanted to name him. He loved Ariel just as much.
But he required her to choose one path. One role. One gender. And it had to match the path chosen by the two genders of his Kingdom.
The problem, as ever, was her voice.
The problem, as ever, was her heart.
The problem, as ever, was when the two spoke together.
“Don’t you take that tone of voice with me.”
Like most fathers, King Triton didn’t know half as much as he thought.
Kids let parents think they know so much, but they all have secret lives. Just as their parents have secrets of their own.
Ariel’s body may have been held in place, but it was still a boy’s body. Well, the mermaid equivalent. When she made friends and sometimes playful attempts at more-than-friends, she knew what would happen now, tomorrow, and forever after if things went too far.
Eventually, they would see what her father had helped her hide.
“Have you noticed Ariel has been acting peculiar lately?”
Even when singing with her sisters, Ariel didn’t use the voice she loved. The one that came most naturally to her.
From a young age, her voice touched low notes, buzzy resonances, deep tones to set a soul at ease. But she only sang with the light breeze her father said matched the girl he agreed she deserved to be.
It had taken her whole life for them to reach this uneasy truce. Could she really give THAT up too?
They’d argued ENDLESSLY until these recent years. Why was she such a strange mermaid boy? Why wouldn’t she stop wearing those sea-shell coverings for her chest? When would she pick up a wooden trident and learn how to rule —
But then her body had first undergone those sudden, irreversible changes, and King Triton’s iron will had melted.
His daughter had wept into his shoulder like no one else ever would or ever could. Not since Triton had wept when losing Ariel’s mother.
His son Aries…was no more. Had, in fact, never existed. He had a daughter, and her name was Ariel.
“Children have got to be free to live their own lives.”
It was her life. Her body. Hers to choose.
Her body was going in a direction that didn’t match the precious child she would always be to King Triton. He’d fought so hard for her to be a proper boy, but she would NEVER be a proper boy.
She could hide those other parts of her past, her body, her history…if the secrecy let her live as herself.
So of course it was in saving the life of someone else that she broke the secret holding her fragile existence together.
NEXT: WAIT…THE LITTLE MERMAID WAS TRANS?? PART 2 (of 4)
BONUS: SCENES FROM ARIEL’S CHILDHOOD
THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)
Hi, it’s Stephenie!
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