Bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to … consume? The construction of postfeminist femininity in Disney’s The Little Mermaid

Abstract

This study assesses how Disney’s The Little Mermaid can be read as a ‘postfeminist text’. It uses Gill’s concept of ‘postfeminist sensibility’ and McRobbie’s understanding of postfeminism as a ‘double entanglement’ of feminist and antifeminist discourses in analysing the text. Furthermore it aims at contributing to the understanding of postfeminism as a pop cultural discursive mode by focusing on the ways heteronormativity structures and presupposes it. In this sense, this reading of The Little Mermaid can be understood as a case study on the heteronormativity of postfeminist discourses and representations.