Wait…The Little Mermaid Was Trans? (The Full Collection)
It won’t cost you much…JUST YOUR VOICE
Originally published in four parts, now available as a single story with updated commentary at the end.
The Transgender Little Mermaid
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?
Part 1: “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 (YouTube).
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.
Part 2: The Sea Witch
The sea witch’s reputation preceded her. Ursula gave many what they wanted most. There was always a cost, but Ariel’s body had taught her everything else had a cost, too.
Did they really think that whatever she sacrificed for Ursula would be worse than what she got in return? No one got to choose the terms available to them. At least not unless Ursula empowered them to do so.
She offered people an impossible choice to change their fates.
Whatever the cost, it would be worth it.
Ariel would finally be a girl. And not just in the limited ways available to her.
She would escape what for her had become an eternal limbo. Because finally, her heart had found something it loved as much as her own voice.
And he had a name.
“But Daddy, I love him!”
The storm had rocked the ship. Broken it into pieces. Sent its prince into the sea and into her arms.
“Eric.”
She stayed with him until he woke up. She held his head in the crook of her arm and sang to him in her sweetest, lowest tones. After only using that girl-toned voice for so long, this buzzy one felt somehow like freedom.
All because she’d come to the surface. Taken a chance on this human. And sang to him with the truest part of herself.
But she knew how this worked. Her father had told her over and over and over. She could be whichever she wanted, but she had to CHOOSE.
Boy. Girl. One or the other. Her sisters and her father and anyone else who knew her secrets would still love her.
But anyone else? A boy outside her tiny bubble?
She only had to remember her father’s reaction to her dysphoria for her to see what had to be done.
“Life’s full of tough choices, isn’t it?”
Ursula rolled her eyes. “Sure, but why listen to him?”
Ariel just looked at her. “Well…he’s my father.”
“You could still see Eric without breaking your father’s spell. Have your crab cake and eat it, too.” She shrugged her shoulders and her tentacles. “Maybe just go home, little girl.”
Never had Ariel thought she’d feel hurt being called a girl.
A quiet, sunken feeling opened up in her stomach. This wasn’t what she’d wanted. Not at all.
Wasn’t the sea witch supposed to want a new victim?
“I want Eric to love me for who I really am,” Ariel said.
“That’s what I’m saying, darling. Swim up to the shore twice a year and let Eric love you for who you already are.”
A heated fury like a broken crack in the sea bed rose out of Ariel. “No!”
Ursula took a tiny step back. Even a sea witch could feel intimidated, it seemed. “I’m listening,” she said.
After a moment, Ariel said, “It isn’t just my dad. It’s everyone. It’s everything.”
Ursula’s tentacles wrapped around her in a comforting embrace, ready for a story that could make the difference in what happened next.
Part 3: “Ariel, dear, time to come out.”
After saving Eric, Ariel had gone home and told one of her sisters. And do you know what they said?
“Aries, no boy is ever going to love a limbo-lady like you.”
To Ariel, “limbo-lady” was as stupid an insult as calling someone a carp-harp or a newt-flute. But her deadname?!
Aries.
A shudder ran through Ariel’s entire body.
Bad enough that her sisters used that name. Now Ariel had broken her vow to never use that name herself, not even in her thoughts.
Her deadname triggered all of her worst fears and the certainty she’d secretly dedicated herself to trying to avoid.
She turned to Ursula, her arms outstretched in desperation. “I can’t live like this. Please help me.”
Ursula smiled with such instant greed that the little mermaid almost changed her mind.
Almost.
“I’ll turn you into a real girl,” Ursula said. “I’ll make sure no one ever mentions your deadname again.”
If only Ariel had known the true cost.
“It’s she who holds her tongue who gets her man.”
A difficult journey brought her to the shore of Prince Eric’s castle.
He found her, saved her, held her. Their eyes met — and it was everything Ariel had hoped for.
She felt like she was home. She would be his princess. He would be her prince.
“It’s you,” he said.
“It’s me,” she said, then put her hand over her mouth, startled by her own voice.
It was just as Ursula said. This new body was everything she needed her body to be. All it had cost her was her voice.
This new one didn’t just sound lighter. It had no other option. She couldn’t quite explain it…but the buzzy undertones were gone. Trapped beneath the water with her discarded heritage.
The grief of it let her know they’d need to talk later. But she let that grief hear that it was worth it. Because now? She had Eric. The one she’d given it all up to be w —
Then she saw his face.
And it was wrong. All wrong.
“At this rate, she’ll be kissing him by sunset.”
Ariel had once worried she’d never get rid of that voice. Now she couldn’t believe it was so easily gone.
And with it, her chance with Eric.
She couldn’t believe she’d gotten it so wrong.
How had this happened??
She’d believed her father. King Triton, he called himself. The only authority in the sea.
He’d told her any man would require her to be a traditional girl. The sort of mermaid that would open a concert for her sixteenth birthday with a voice that might never feel like it belonged to her, even if the body finally did.
In her desperation, she leaned harder into those lies. But with every false note, she lost sight of hope. She yearned for Erin with her eyes, but his downcast smile broke her heart.
She could see it in his face. She’d already lost him.
There had to be a way to fix this. A way to put things back to the way things were.
Hadn’t Ursula suggested just as much? A way to keep her mermaid body, her authentic voice, and the human who’d won her heart?
But as she turned to the sea, a sickening realization fell on her.
No matter what Ariel decided, things could never go back to the way they once were.
Part 4: “Well, angelfish, the solution to your problem is simple. The only way to get what you want…”
Years later, Ariel could hardly believe how that decision had come to define her. Sometimes in all the ways she needed. Sometimes in unexpected ways she’d never dreamed.
There were, occasionally, heartaches. There always were. It was her responsibility to prepare her own family for those kinds of obstacles.
When she was younger, her love story with Eric had meant something so different. Now that she was older, it could mean something else again.
So much of what she’d “wanted” had been a reflection of what her father had demanded. The frame he’d set for her, as though his fulfillment mattered more than her exploration of her own feelings and limits.
Her voice, for example. King Triton had told Ariel that any man would only love her if she sounded like her sisters. He’d been wrong about that. Very, very wrong.
Just as he’d been wrong about so much else.
Just as SHE had been wrong about so much else. She’d swum in the ripples of his fin, after all. An observation her mother had often made before the worst had come to her.
The biggest truth her father had lied about? That the daughters of a king “needed” to find their prince. That a princess needed a prince. That a boy needed a girl. A girl needed a boy.
To think of all the time she wasted trying to satisfy the impossible.
She could change her body, but she could never change that inner part of herself. The one that was truest and loudest. The one her mother had held before she was even born.
That was the part of herself she knew to care for these days. The part that existed before it had a body and all the complications that came afterward.
That part was a pure soul. A pure life. One that simply deserved every opportunity that came with existence.
And finally, after these wonderful years spent reclaiming herself from the sea witch’s bargain, she understood more about love now, too.
In the breathless abandon of true romance, she understood that love trumps ambition. Or at least, they inform each other. She’d learned her heart could belong not just to a prince, but to another princess.
The feeling made itself known regardless of whether Ariel pursued it. As for whether she did? She deserves a few secrets…
But Ariel also thinks this one last secret is too good not to tell you. She likes secrets, yes, but she’s also gotten to know you so well. So she wants to tell you something else. She wants to confess —
Then she hears the gentle knock of two old crab claws at her door.
Years ago, she let Sebastian down.
She’s not going to again. Not this time.
This time, she will take her position on stage.
This time, for better or worse, she will use the voice that now belongs to her.
This time, she will sing.
The end
Commentary
Looking back over this story, I found myself swept up in the thrill of having forgotten what happens.
I love love love that a vital part of Ariel beings trans is her voice. And not just any voice — a gender non-conforming voice.
She doesn’t want to sound like a traditional girl. She wants to sound like a traditional boy. She wants to talk like one, sing like one, and ultimately win true love like one.
But sounding like a boy doesn’t make her a boy. She is a girl. She always has been. She always will be.
Indeed, sacrificing that traditionally masculine voice was what almost cost her Eric’s love. It was only when she let him see her as she truly was, only once she let him hear her true voice, that she overcome the greatest challenge of her life and earned a Happily Ever After.
Note: 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 me see The Little Mermaid in a new way. Her poetry helps me find a new way to see everything else.
The end
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