Welcome to #TransTuesday! I’ve mentioned before how we trans folks have to find what representation we can, because we so rarely see ourselves in media. So today’s topic (surprising even me) is: THE UNINTENTIONAL (?) TRANS ALLEGORY OF THE LITTLE MERMAID’S “PART OF YOUR WORLD.”
This is a revision of a thread from 70-some Trans Tuesdays ago, which was brought about this week by the release of the first teaser for the live-action Little Mermaid. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. I could barely hold back an onslaught of tears in the last twenty seconds of it.
https://twitter.com/DisneyStudios/status/156838448564918272
Before I dive into why that is, I want to say this is unequivocally not the place to spew your “Ariel can’t be Black” bullshit. Bigotry is bad and if you’re a bigot you should feel bad, and please eject yourself from this thread forthwith.
I’ve talked about how trans people have always existed, but we didn’t always have the terminology to describe it and it wasn’t (still often isn’t!) safe for us to be out and open about who we are. So there are likely a lot of trans people in history we’ll never know were trans. For more on that see TRANS HISTORY 1 (how and why we name trans people in history) and TRANS HISTORY 2 (trans people in history).
That’s also discussed a bit in the trans tuesday I did on the UNINTENTIONAL (?) TRANS ALLEGORY OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE‘S “NERVOUS MAN IN A FOUR DOLLAR ROOM.”
And I’ve talked about having to find our own representation in media because trans people actually appearing in our media, much less in a non-harmful way, is so incredibly rare. You can see that in the trans tuesday on THE PAST 2: THE NEW PAST (KJ and Paper Girls), and the nested essays within.
Okay so where did this entire idea come from? Well sometimes things blindside you in life. You just never see them coming, and your world ends up getting rocked. And this was all brought about by this tweet by comic writer extraordinaire, @GailSimone.
https://twitter.com/GailSimone/status/1345099507793448961
Read through the replies, some are very eye-opening. But the one that upended my brain was one from comic writer also extraordinaire, Magdalene Visaggio. The tweet’s since been deleted, but her reply was Part of Your World, and I need to give her credit for opening my eyes to it.
If you’re not familiar with the song or if you haven’t heard it in a while, take a quick couple minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXKlJuO07eM
You may be surprised, from the things I’ve said about my upbringing and what I was and wasn’t allowed to like based on gender, that I even saw this movie as a kid. I have five sisters and my mom was a Disney nut, so I guess “girly” Disney movies were okay? 🤷♀️
Anyway, it was never my favorite Disney movie, even though the performances are great and the animation is stunning and the songs are wonderful. But Part of Your World, in particular, always got to me. Like every time, it would almost have me in tears. Still does.
Now, yes, I have always been someone who doesn’t feel things in half measures. I FEEL things all the way (long before HRT entered the picture, so don’t go blaming that). So I always just chalked it up to super-empathizing with Ariel’s plight.
Well yes, that’s part of it. But the REASON is because I am transgender, even if I didn’t know it then, and this song cracked my soul open and spilled it all over. And I never knew that was the reason until I saw the aforementioned tweet.
My. World. Turned. Upside. Down.
I’ve told you in past threads how once I realized I was trans, I could look back and see signs all through my life that I just couldn’t recognize at the time. But look, not everything is obvious right away and it’s definitely a journey. We’re always learning.
So I’m going to take you through the lyrics here, and explain why this is perhaps the best trans-as-metaphor song I can think of. Let’s go.
Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?
Wouldn’t you think my collection’s complete?
Wouldn’t you think I’m the girl
Girl who has everything?
Starts off innocuous enough. Though when you realize I “collected” girly things, like the barrette I found in the street and would put in my hair when I was home alone… things from a group of people I wasn’t part of, but deeply wanted to be? Oh come on, WE JUST STARTED. 😐
Look at this trove, treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you’d think
Sure, she’s got everything
Okay, phew. Nothing new here, right?
I’ve got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
I’ve got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I’ve got twenty
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more
You mean that having all these little things you love from the group of people you deeply want to be part of is… still not enough? It somehow makes your heart hurt MORE because it brings you closer, yet you’re still so far away? Oh no.
It only gets worse (better?) from here.
I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see them dancing
This seems innocent enough until you remember my post on GENDER DYSPHORIA, and how it made me feel separate from the world, from everyone in it I cared about, never able to get close to them, never having them know the real me, and the pain and longing and loneliness it caused.
Walking around on those
What do you call ’em?
Oh, feet
These are the kind of feelings that come with gender dysphoria, of being in the wrong body, longing for the body you want, the body you SHOULD have, but don’t. “If only I had the things women had, I could be a woman too.” Um. Uh oh.
Flipping your fins you don’t get too far
Legs are required for jumping, dancing
Strolling along down a-
What’s that word again?
Street?
Unhappy with the body you have and idealizing the body you want but can’t attain, and imagining all the ways life would be different, and better, how you’d feel whole and complete and HUMAN if you just had that body and felt like YOU? Every day of my life.
Up where they walk, up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wandering free
Wish I could be part of that world
Well this part’s pretty fucking obvious, isn’t it. Especially if you go back to my post about dysphoria and how I even said it felt like drowning, sinking through an ocean of pain and nobody can see your struggle or help save you.
If only I could be up and OUT of that ocean of pain, with the humans (women) where I belong.
What would I give if I could live
Out of these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day
Warm on the sand?
This is the part of the song that always broke me. Still breaks me. I can feel the pain in my chest, the hollowed-out hole where my heart should have been. My eyes mist over. I would have given anything to spend just a day as a girl. Like… anything. ANY. THING.
Even now, so far into my transition, that pain and longing will NEVER leave me. It was part of me for my entire life, and only recently started to fade. As long as I live that feeling will always be haunting every memory and every moment from my past.
Betcha on land, they understand
Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters
Yeah, in that place where I could be a girl, I bet I wouldn’t get yelled at or made fun of for liking girly things. I bet it would be… fine. And nobody would say anything at all to me about it. Nobody would care. I could just be me. If only.
Bright young women, sick of swimming
Ready to stand
This one gets me too, again going back to that thread about dysphoria, and the feeling of being underwater and drowning. Unable to get to who and where I want to be, and the people I care about who are already there. Fuck.
I’m ready to know what the people know
Ask ’em my questions
And get some answers
What’s a fire and why does it-
What’s the word?
Burn?
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A GIRL? What’s it like to feel like you belong in your own body? In the world? And have the world affirm you are who you feel you are? How different is the real world that I’ve never gotten to exist in as my real self?
You can even see me finally finding this out when my dysphoria started to lessen and things I’d always hated before, I could now enjoy and experience fully, in CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.
And you can see it in how much the lessening of dysphoria allowed me to experience things I’d never been able to before, and all the ways it’s enriched my life in FREEING UP MY BRAIN (lunch with Tilly).
When’s it my turn?
Okay LISTEN some of this really speaks for itself.
Wouldn’t I love, love to explore that shore up above
Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world
SOMEONE HELP ME ONTO SHORE, I’M DROWNING.
I finally feel like I AM part of your world. And that was about ME accepting myself as I am, and feeling like I fit in this world. And the changes I was able to make that lessened my dysphoria. But cis support and acceptance can be vital to helping trans people get there.
I think this song is a perfect storm, the music is wistful and hopeful but a little melancholy, the animation is stunning and Ariel’s expressions help you feel what she’s feeling, and Jodi Benson’s performance is so emotional. You can FEEL her longing. I can, anyway.
And believe it or don’t, but I can feel it in those last twenty seconds of the live-action teaser sung by Halle Bailey. When I see this movie I’m gonna be a teary wreck, probably for days.
The song was written by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. Howard Ashman was queer, but there’s no evidence he was trans. Alan Menken by all accounts is a cisgender heterosexual man. But they certainly could have known trans people. Especially Ashman.
But the entire movie is based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen, who was most assuredly queer. Was he trans and just couldn’t be out or didn’t have the knowledge to understand that’s what he was? Again, see my thread on trans people in history. We don’t know.
I’ve not found anything to suggest he might’ve been trans, but I haven’t had time to do a deep research dive either. He wrote a lot of women leads… which doesn’t necessarily make him trans, but it could be indicative of him working through things, even subconsciously.
Even the Disney version is a massive trans allegory, but we don’t need to examine the whole movie because this one song distills the entire thing right down to its core. That’s why it hits me like an uppercut every single time I hear it. It’s the beating heart of the story.
So how much of this was intentional? Unknown. Maybe some of it, maybe none of it. Maybe it’s all chance. Maybe it’s just that the trans experience is a HUMAN experience so things like this happen sometimes.
But that doesn’t change its impact, or the way it speaks so very, very deeply to me and many trans people, and perfectly captures the pain and longing of dysphoria and wanting to be free of everything drowning us, so we can be present in the world as our true selves.
I want to go back in time and hug little Tilly and tell her it makes PERFECT sense why this song wrecked her. Why it ALWAYS would. Why something in this piece of music saw her heart and announced it to the world without her name on it. But she knew. In her heart, she knew.
Okay guess it’s time to build a time machine and cry for the next twenty years. Excuse me.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com