Inked Mag Staff
May 26th, 2023
Tremendous ‘The Little Mermaid’ Tattoos
Venture Under the Sea to peep some of our favorite Little Mermaid tattoos before watching the live-action adaptation
Disney’s live-action of “The Little Mermaid” will be hitting theaters this weekend. Now, we could give you a lengthy essay as to why this is a bad idea—just look what they did to my beautiful Flounder! After all of the uproar that followed the horrendous “Lion King” adaptation I thought Disney would have given up on destroying our childhoods with CGI, but it turns out that these movies basically print money. It’s safe to say they’ll never stop, even if I were to pen a scathing review here on Inkedmag.com, a true tastemaker in the Disney community.
Instead, let’s celebrate the 1989 animated classic and all of the gorgeous tattoos that were inspired by the film. For starters, it’s pretty weird that Disney found a way to make “The Little Mermaid” work as a children’s film. If the film stayed true to the fable by Hans Christian Andersen, the third act would have been hit with a NC-17 rating. In Andersen’s telling, there’s a dagger, a plot to murder the prince as he lays next to his new bride (who is not the mermaid), suicide and something involving the mermaid turning into foam upon death. Trying to make sense of it all scrambled my brain and left me confused and wobbly, sort of like when we see Ariel take her brand new legs out for a test drive.
“The Little Mermaid” was never my favorite Disney film, but I saw it for the first time during that sweet spot of adolescence where all of the art you’re exposed to gets etched into your soul. This is why I, a 42-year-old man, still tries to use a fork as a comb every once in a while. It’s why I break out into song every time I cook fish for dinner. And I’ve called at least 3,873 different things a “dinglehopper.”
Down below you’ll find our gallery featuring all of the best tattoos under the sea. And don’t worry you poor, unfortunate souls, there are plenty of tattoos celebrating Ursula, Disney’s greatest villain.
Ariel
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Flounder and Sebastian
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Ursula
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