Decision That Was Right Under Its Nose
The Walt Disney Co. has rolled the dice.
Oh, the company may enjoy some short-term benefit, but compromising what one holds dear seldom pays off in the long run. And after standing on principle for more than 40 years, the weak-kneed giant has buckled. No doubt giving in to the faddishness of the modern world (and for what?), the once-proud symbol of American virtue has surrendered.
Disney has run its theme parks brilliantly all these years, but all of a sudden it makes a concession like this?
Ah, you’re saying, so the company has finally acceded to demands for major changes in safety inspections?
No.
This week, the company did something much riskier to its corporate well-being.
It announced that employees can sport mustaches.
At work, no less. In full view of the public, including impressionable young children.
For a place where dress code is more strictly enforced than anywhere outside the Vatican, one can only imagine the corporate hand-wringing under the portrait of Walt himself--he had one, you know--that must have gone into this one.
How many focus groups, how many polls, how many late nights with executives pacing the halls crying, “Please, God, give us a sign that we’re doing the right thing!”
Only time will tell.
Predictably, Disney isn’t telling us much. You don’t become as big as they are by blabbing everything to people.
But we do know the decision came from the top. Disney Attractions President Paul Pressler announced this week that the mustache ban, which officially dates to 1957 (two years after Disneyland opened), is over.
Not exactly the equivalent of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!” but historic nonetheless. A little too late for the company to hire Clark Gable, Groucho Marx or Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, but this is a whole new century.
Reprieves for Walt, Dwarfs
Understanding the natural curiosity surrounding such a decision, Pressler chose his words carefully in a memo: The park’s customers, he wrote, “felt neatly trimmed mustaches are consistent with what they have come to expect of us.”
Write this down. The Year 2000--the year in which America finally came to grips with mustaches.
It has taken the country a long time to get to this point. Luckily, Disney didn’t try to ram this thing down our throats. Over the years, despite pleas from a few self-proclaimed visionaries that the company lighten up on the fuzz ban, the company wouldn’t budge.
You talk about principles: In 1989 it fired the Queen Mary’s first officer after buying the company that operated it. The offense: wearing a mustache on company time.
As with all major pronouncements, this week’s Mustache Memo was preceded by wild rumors. Could the company really be considering it? If so, why? Was it prompted by competition for workers in a tight labor market?
As someone who has been to Disneyland many times and believes in what it stands for, I can only hope the decision wasn’t born of such craven motives.
I want to believe Pressler when he says that the parks’ customers “feel strongly about the importance of our Disney look and view our cast members as role models for their children.”
How confusing, then, it must have been for children to see a clean-shaven role model Disney employee and then be forced to walk around the park all day with their mustachioed oaf of a father.
Perhaps Pressler realized that and felt compelled to ease the inherent conflict it caused the children of America. Or, perhaps he honestly feels that with all it’s been through these past 225 years, the country simply is ready for mustaches on amusement park workers.
I pray he’s right. Honestly, I wonder.
I’m not going to tell Disney how to run its business.
Call it a hunch, but something about it doesn’t feel right to me. I can’t shake the feeling that this is a case of “too much, too soon.”
Call me negative, but I’m worried about the Happiest Place on Earth becoming the Itchiest Place on Earth.
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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.
