Disney's The Little Mermaid's sexual coming-of-age story, as told by her hipster meme

The Little Mermaid is my favourite Disney movie. No, I am not a dirty old man. I was 18 years old when I went to see the film in the cinema with a 16-year-old female friend. We arrived at the show pretty intoxicated, and proceeded to laugh ourselves silly over all the overt sexual references in the movie. (Yeah, we were smarty pants teens.)

The movie has already been hilariously deconstructed as really bad advice for girls about how to get a guy by completely compromising yourself.

But back in the '80s, I saw more than that. As a teenage boy, dealing with teenage girls as both close friends and occasionally romantic interests, I was fascinated by how the movie seemed to capture the physical and emotional turmoil I saw among female peers as they went along the rocky road to maturity, from age 15 to about 25.

I was reminded of all this when the Hipster Little Mermaid meme started making the rounds of social media. You can generate your own captions on Meme Generator. But instead of making her talk about mainstream culture and Pitchfork magazine, I thought the older, wiser, and bespectacled Princess could walk you through Disney's most awkwardly sexualized classic.

Yeah.

 Little Mermaid lyrics.

 She really does.

Link to the "humanizing" sequence.

I actually sympathize with the guy. I was that clueless as a teen.

 Really. Those Disney animators were pretty pervy.

 In Polish, but you get the gist.

For some unknown reason, my favourite urban legends debunking site, Snopes, insists that the penis tower illustration is unintentional. I have a copy of the original VHS release. Towers are usually less veiny than that...

It's the middle one. Click to enlarge. (No pun intended.)