According to the blogger at Sociological Images, these items look like magazines, but they're not. They're framed images meant to be hung on the walls of a girl's room. They blend the tabloidy, ladymag celebrity culture with the Disney brand into the ultimate mindscramble of a fantastical dreamland with no basis in reality pretending to be real.

Ariel, with her impossibly narrow waist, is next to a "cover line" which reads "swimsuits that fit every shape." It's meant to be amusing, but "dress for your shape" stories are often an epic fail in women's magazines. Do little girls need Disney's help in looking forward to that? One of Snow White's cover lines, "Stepmothers: Evil Or Just Misunderstood?" is supposed to be a joke, but what if you're a kid who has a stepmom? Don't even get me started on Sleeping Beauty's line, "Find Your Prince."

The blogger writes:

The product suggests that while it is all well and good to be a princess, you should aim to be a famous princess. In addition to occupying castles and fantasy forests, you should grace the covers of magazines. You should aspire to inspire the lust and admiration of the masses, not just your prince.

Aren't little girls who think that tabloid popularity and a man will make everything better little girls with unrealistic expectations? Can't they wait until theyre older for this kind of brainwashing? When they watch Carrie Bradshaw get the man who buys her a shoe closet, everything will seem quite clear.

Modernizing The Fairytale [Sociological Images]
Earlier: Vogue Swimwear
In Which We Explore The Ridiculousness Of "Dressing For Your Shape"
Lucky's "Best" Swimsuits Also The Smallest, Least Supportive
Having Conquered Girls, Disney Moves On To Boys

Ariel:
Verdict: If you can't have fins, there's always tiers?

Belle:
Verdict: The website says that the flower detailing at the waist is in reference to Belle's "generous spirit." We still don't get it.

Cinderella:
Verdict: Cinderella. Full skirts. We get it.

Jasmine:
Verdict: What would Edward Said say about the Jasmine looks having "unique" necklines? Probably that same ol' thing about the romanticization of the Other for consumption by the West.

Sleeping Beauty:
Verdict: Apparently Sleeping Beauty likes bows.

Snow White:
Verdict: If you're gonna be in a glass coffin, you might as well accessorize with some tulle and ruching.

Earlier: Disney Bridal: For The Fairy Princess In None Of Us
Disney Bridesmaids Dresses: For The Fairy Princess In None Of Your Friends

Ariel: Verdict: Wow. They're all sea-colored. Deep.

Belle: Verdict: At least one is yellow like the dress Belle danced with the Beast in.

Cinderella: Verdict: Perfect for wicked stepsisters.

Jasmine: Verdict: Just me, or does this model sorta look like Atoosa Rubenstein?

Sleeping Beauty: Verdict: But no way in hell would the 'Toos wear one of these short flouncy things. Maybe the long black one though? She does have a goth side.

Snow White: Verdict: Oh now I remember: Hair as black as coal, lips as red as cherries, skin as white as snow.

Earlier: Disney Bridal: For The Fairy Princess In None Of Us

Verdict: Mermaid tails. How, um, literal.

Verdict: Has Kirstie Kelly woman ever seen Beauty and the Beast? No bookish geek girl worth her library would be seen within spitting distance of this much tulle underlay.

Verdict: Oh come on: Would it have killed her to do at least one of those in that Cinderella blue? Think outside the box, ladies. And by that we mean, translate your cartoon idols as literally as possible.

Verdict: Because in Arabia, they accentuate their hips?

Verdict: Notice how all these styles have sleeves of some sorts. After all that time sleeping, we guess Beauty wasn't afraid to play it coy at the altar.

Verdict: Is it weird that the oldest cartoon yielded one of the more modern looking dresses? I mean, at least that middle one isn't a princess dress.

Loved the shoes. Loathed the show .O.K., I exaggerate. I didn't like the shoes all that much. But the wheel-heeled footwear known as merblades, which allow stage-bound dancers to simulate gliding underwater, provides the only remotely graceful elements in the musical blunderbuss called "Disney's The Little Mermaid"...The whole enterprise is soaked in that sparkly garishness that only a very young child — or possibly a tackiness-worshiping drag queen — might find pretty....Come to think of it, the motto of this production...could be, "You can never go broke underestimating the taste of preschoolers."

You won't see water. In fact, you won't even imagine water—which, in a fish story like this one, is an ominous sign...I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention. The big scenic flourishes and bland storytelling never got my imagination firing—never persuaded me to think that the actors scooting around on their Heelys really were mermaids or evil eels or any other freaky aquatic beasts.

There are lots of questions to ponder while being otherwise unengaged by Disney's new stage version of "The Little Mermaid." How can a merman and a squid be brother and sister?...If the sea witch is so powerful, how is she so easily dispatched? How does King Triton maintain those abs?...And while we're on that track, did no one at any point worry that the designs for this show are just plain ugly?...In a musical for which children are the primary audience, clarity of representation is fundamental. But...we often require explanation to know what we're looking at...What's surprising is how underwhelming the movie's most delightful numbers are here. The joyous calypso frolic "Under the Sea" and gloriously romantic "Kiss the Girl" are wonderful songs but [director Francesca] Zambello has compromised both with chaotic presentation, not helped by Stephen Mear's uninteresting choreography.

Somewhere out there in the choppy foam...the creators...let the compass slip overboard. In director Francesca Zambello's confused production — a morass of mechanical characters, syrupy new songs and gaudily irrelevant set pieces — all the warmth and charm of the film manages to get away. The bloated, 2 1/2 -hour show — an hour longer than the 1989 movie — represents a low watermark for the Disney-on-Broadway franchise...."Mermaid" ends up feeling less like a product meant for Broadway than for another sphere of entertainment: Disney on Ice.

[W]ith...breathtaking vulgarity and equally breathtaking confidence...this "Little Mermaid" [has] a certain...almost calculated mediocrity....Underneath all this baroque ornamentation was a tiny, tinny little musical struggling for its life.... There isn't much I can say of the cast - all swimming upstream with a kind of grinning gallantry. Sierra Boggess was sweet enough as the beached Mermaid; Sean Palmer wasn't quite sweet enough as the bleached-out Prince Eric... Sherie Rene Scott, with a Medusa wig and enough tentacles to make an octopus demand a recount, was an appropriately bitchy Witch Ursula, even if she overdid the drag-queen-in-drag bit. And the clowns - Eddie Korbich, Tituss Burgess (as the crab Sebastian), Jonathan Freeman and John Treacy Egan - clowned their hearts away to the audience's content. And, well, I think that's it, as Shakespeare said when he buried the last body in "Hamlet."

You try singing and dancing while wearing a tail. More than a little difficult. Yet "The Little Mermaid" — tail intact — amiably swims along on good cheer and charm....his musical, buoyed by one of the best Disney film scores and a delightful new leading lady, succeeds as enjoyable family entertainment. And, yes, the sets are big, but then, so is the ocean.

I'm guessing this marriage lasts 18 months, tops, because real relationships outside of retardo fantasy world aren't about glass slippers and shit. They're about mortgages and mewling babies and peeing with the door open. (Even Teri Hatcher knows to leave Disney fantasies behind: "You're responsible for what you bring to a relationship, so I think the idea of Prince Charming is someone who can take care of everything, and I don't think that's it," she recently said.)

In addition to credit card-wielding adults — yup, there's also an Ariel Visa card! — Disney is hoping women will pass on their fairy-tale tastes to their infant daughters, with diaper-changing mats and cribs festooned with Belle and her bitches coming out next year. And although the childhood love of princesses doesn't seem so bad, isn't wasting your grown-up purchasing power to indulge an antiquated dreamworld pretty pathetic?

Princess Power [Newsweek]
Disney Reaches to the Crib To Extend Princess Magic [Wall Street Journal]
Related: Teri Hatcher: 'I Don't Believe in Prince Charming' [Extra]