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Phillip LeDuff Instructor Mary Wilson WGS 2500 11 April 2013 Even The Little Mermaid Was A Little Insecure The year is now 2013 and the times have drastically changed. We have had our first minority president in Barack Obama, the legalization of marijuana is a few states, faster cars, and smarter phones. However, one thing that has been rather consistent is the amount of responsibility put on women to look beautiful and sexy. This seems unjust but through the concepts of self-surveillance and horizontal hostility, I argue that the main reason that women continue to have issues of body image is simply because of the pressures that women put on themselves and onto other women. This theory is exemplified in the video titled Poor Unfortunate Souls when Ursula convinces Ariel to give up her voice in exchange to become human so she could finally be beautiful or normal enough to win the man of her dreams. This is a clear example of how self-doubt in your own body image combined with outside pressure can influence your way of thinking and overall life. First lets start off by establishing who Ariel is. Ariel is the youngest daughter of King Triton, very beautiful, a princess and of course a mermaid. In the underwater kingdom Ariel was the crme of the crop and destined to a life of royalty. When Ariel was finally old enough to swim to the surface she saw something that changed her life forever, a human. It wasnt just any human, it was Prince Eric. After Ariel saw Prince Eric for the first time, he soon needs her help after almost drowning in a severe storm attempting to save his dog, Max. So after Prince Eric is saved by Ariel and brought onshore to safety, he is haunted by her voice because that is the only

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thing he can remember when he wakes up. Upon first sight, Ariel immediately thought Prince Eric was very handsome and really wanted to be with him for the rest of her life. However, instead of approaching him in her mermaid form in fright of Prince Eric not being accepting, Ariel decided to hold on to these insecurities and went on the search for advice. This is when she came in contact with Ursula and the deal was made. The deal was for Ariel who was already beautiful, to give up he voice, the only distinguished thing the Prince knew about her, in exchange for a nice pair of legs. Ursula preached to Ariel that in order to win the guy all that was needed was for her to look her best and that a voice was a mere nuisance and would only hurt her chances. This kind of horizontal hostility convinced Ariel that her current body form wasnt beautiful enough to win the guy and that the only way she could ever live out her dreams would be to sacrifice her voice. This can be used to symbolize eating disorders and why women suffer more in general than men from the symptoms. A lot of times women use self-surveillance to judge how good they look. Its common to hear a lot of women say OMG, her hair is so long, Her skin is so smooth, or I wish my boobs were that big. From that it becomes clearer to see how women sometimes lose sight of what beauty actually is. A lot of women have a set standard as to what beauty is rather than accepting multiple body types as beautiful. The book refers to this concept as Culture of thinness (Shaw and Lee 231). Those individuals then call themselves ugly and tend to bring other people down as well with them. I argue this is what happened in the little mermaid. I feel that Ursula actually envied Ariel. Ursula didnt see herself as beautiful and this is evident when she turns herself human in the form of Vanessa and uses Ariels voice to sabotage the agreement that they had which would have made Ariel permanently human.

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Since Ursula had low self-esteem due to self-surveillance, she decided to disassociate herself with the beautiful people and became an avid user of horizontal hostility in hopes of turning those people into Poor Unfortunate Souls. It was found that over 95% of women overestimate their body size which is a clear indication that women are constantly negatively judging their bodies (Shaw and Lee 227). This train of thought is seen when Marni Grossman narrates her first-hand experience and says: In the beginning there was this: I am ugly. My certainty on this point was absolute. Three little words that were imbued with such profundity, such truth. I felt it in my blood. My bones. My marrow. Mostly I felt it in the pit of my stomach, that hole that never seemed to get full. (Shaw and Lee 241) If women as a whole felt better about their body images and told each other that they are already beautiful instead of filling each other up with you can look better if you did this it could be argued that the rate of eating disorders would tremendously decrease. Now that we have seen how self-surveillance can stimulate the growth of low self-esteem in an individual and can rub off onto others through horizontal hostility, its no longer vague as to how women suffer a lot more from eating disorders and overall dissatisfaction of their body images. In order for change to come more women need raise awareness of the statistics in general. By educating women more on the topic, more women may try to rectify the situation and become activist of the Every woman, no matter the shape or size, is beautiful movement. If more women knew the actually numbers on how many women in general suffered from body image issues, they should want to participate in making the women gender more confident and powerful as a whole. If women continue to bring each other down, how can the goals of feminism ever be fully attained?

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Works Cited Grossman, Mary. "Beating Anorexia and Gaining Feminism." Women's voices, feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 241-43. Shaw, Susan, and Janet Lee. "Systems of Privilege and Inequality." Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 42-104. Shaw, Susan, and Janet Lee. "Inscribing Gender on the Body." Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 213-278.