Why I Hate Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid

Before I start I must make this clear, I am talking about the animated Disney version which came out in 1989, not the live action remake. If you want my thoughts on the Live Action casting, I only have one sentence: mermaid is not a race or ethnicity and white isn't the only danish race and yes, black people can have red hair!

But I digress;

So, why do I hate Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989)?

1. She is a stupid brat.

Ariel is an undersea creature version of Caillou, but goes through female puberty without the monthly bleeding. She has tantrums when she doesn't get her way like Caillou and has a whiny voice and is a smart mouth to her parents like Caillou. Sure, she's brave and curious enough to go beyond the sea and disobey her father, but there is a difference between being adventurous and being stupid. Being adventurous is doing something without risking the lives of others. Stupidity is doing something trivial you know is wrong and still doing it anyway, knowing what harm it may cause. Yes, all teenagers are stupid (As being one myself not even a full year ago, I will contest that I was a stupid teenager.) But, Ariel knows the risks of agreeing with Ursula's contract and still continued to do it because she "needed" the prince.

2. She is a bad role model for younger children.

Say what you'd like about the princesses before Ariel they had traits for little girls to learn from. {Save Aurora, she doesn't have any traits for women to be wary of or to learn from; except maybe stranger danger, but then again that could go to all of the princesses in the whole line up.) Ariel teaches girls that as long as they ignore their parents warnings and only act on the interest of themselves then they'll get their happily ever after.

This is wrong for so many reasons, Obviously, do not just wish on a star to get a happy ending. Do not tear down people's lives to get a happy ending (Unless its a villain). She also teaches children that not having vocal opinions is one of the things that makes women attractive. It might just be me, but I believe that having a voice is apart of having a personality, having opinions is apart of identifying a personality. Since Ariel does not have a voice, she can only do actions to portray her personality. I think don't think any guy would fall for someone who only acts out their personality through curiosity because that's what babies do. Ariel gives away her voice for a man she only saw twice for a minute or so and only spent three days with. I don't think younger children should learn that giving away their voice equals to happily ever after.

3. She doesn't learn anything of substance.

Through out the whole 83 minute running time, what did Ariel learn in this whole journey?

Selfishness can be rewarded with happiness.

Let's talk about the ending, Triton makes a sacrifice to save Ariel by giving up his trident and takes Ariel's place in turning into...whatever he turns into. Even with this and even though Ariel tries to stop Ursula, she doesn't learn anything, and she doesn't get punished by Triton for doing what she did and almost cost a whole kingdom to her trivial obsession.

In the end, she still gets what she wanted and marries Eric. She doesn't own up to her actions and gets rewarded for it! Going back to my other point, this is another bad lesson for kids. It's the equivalent of teaching kids if they lie about stealing a candy they get to keep it. They'll never get punished for it from any authority figure; Ariel is the same thing. She does something really terrible, she apologizes, but doesn't get punished or learns from her mistakes, (I will argue that people can apologize and still not learn from their mistake or still think they are in the right), and gets rewarded for her dangerous stupidity.

(In the book, she didn't have a name but for content sake her name is also Ariel), In the book, Ariel doesn't get the guy in the end and dies due to the agreement she made with the sea-witch, but she learned something about herself. In the book, she had a chance to survive if she killed the prince. She isn't able to do it and she lets herself die instead as it was agreed in the beginning. She learns to be selfless by dying for love. In the Disney version, she is a stereotype because princess characters can't die, they make her selfish and stagnant.

So those are the reasons why I hate Ariel in The Little Mermaid.