The Little Mermaid

In Grimm Fairy Tales the character is used to show the dangers of exploiting the female body at the expense of their minds.  The Little Mermaid is contrasted against a young woman whose mother is being manipulated by Belinda.  The young woman has lived in poverty her whole life but her mother thinks it is time that she start paying her back for her own years of suffering.  Despite the fact that the young woman is working hard in university, her mother insists that she try to seduce a professional basketball player.  The story has some similarities to the classic fairy tale though with some changes.  The Little Mermaid comes to shipwreck and while her fellow mermaids drag the victims to a watery death, she saves the prince from drowning and desperate to enter the world of men she makes a deal with the Sea Witch to exchange her voice for a pair of legs.  She meets again the prince and is wooed by him but without a voice she cannot convey her love to him.  She instead has sex with him to show her love, but afterwards she discovers that he has sex with any woman he can find.  Outside the Sea Witch chastises the Little Mermaid for her foolishness.  As the story continues it reveals the prince is to marry and the distraught Little Mermaid seeks any way to undo this and to make him love her again.  In the modern day the young woman is successful at seducing the professional basketball player fall.  The two begin a sexual relationship but eventually he deserts her coincidentally right after she discovers that she is pregnant.  Back in the fairy tale the mermaids sisters reveal to her she can break the curse of she kills the prince but she is eventually decides not to and is attacked by the Sea Witch.  In the modern day the young woman confronts her ex-boyfriend and almost actually shoots one of them before fleeing.  She is arrested outside and is later shown in jail and still pregnant.  At the end of the story another mermaid ventures into the realm of the sea witch to make a bargain to allow her to pursue a human.