Does a hijab really clash with Disney’s "early 1900’s theme”?

Pink Slip assiduously, or mostly assiduously, avoids politics and religion. Yet when business and religion crossed paths last week in an article I saw in the NY Times, I was a bit tempted.

The article was about how Muslims are increasingly filing complaints about workplace discrimination – which, while not pleasant to hear, is no surprise at all, given tempora et mores.

My first thought when I read the part about a young Muslim woman who is in a dispute with Disney about whether she could wear a hijab (head scarf) on the job was: tough luck, honey. If you want to work in a restaurant with an early-1900’s theme, which is what Disneyland's Storyteller Café claims it has, well, you have to dress like someone from the early 1900’s. Which means you’d look like you stepped out of Meet Me In St. Louis, not Mulan.

But then I thought, ‘hey, I don’t want to sound like some knee-jerk, nativist, jingoist yahoo here.’ And, Disney being Disney, I thought I’d take a deeper look into just what they meant by their early-1900’s theme.

So  I took a virtual stroll through the the old Storytellers Café to see for myself how a restaurant hostess wearing a hijab might detract from it.

Now, when I think early-1900’s motif, I think gas lamps, stereopticons, girls in middy blouses and boys in knickers. I think horsehair stuffed couches, upright pianos, claw-legged tables, swaggy drapes, and big pots of 50 year old sansevieria. Disney has a somewhat different take on the scene – with what appears to be a plastic table cloth and a garish Western tableau along the back wall. Apparently, they also see a grownup dressed like a raccoon stopping by the breakfast table. 

What might that raccoon be there for, you ask?

It’s part of something that Disney must characterize as authentic and true to the era. They invite us to join a:

… lively Chip 'n Dale Critter Breakfast for an unforgettable experience filled with music and lots of interactive fun featuring some of your favorite woodland friends.

I have to say that, even though I do on occasion crack myself up, for the most part I like my fun to be interactive. And what could be more interactive and fun than having both Chip and Dale appear tableside at their very own echt turn of the way-back century,eponymous breakfast. How early-1900’s is that?

Truly, the entire place just so, so, so screams period authenticity – almost Mad Men like in its scrupulosity. I can see why they wouldn’t want any of it marred by a hostess wearing a hijab. But what’s that I spy behind the sneeze guard in the buffet set up, no doubt rigorously copied from an all you can eat buffet from 1905? Is it someone wearing plain old food server whites? Perhaps food service workers aren’t considered cast members – as, apparently, hostesses are – and can get away with less than period-piece garb.

Cast members – and what a creepy, bogus little conceit that is when they’re talking about Disney workers who aren’t dressed up like Chip, Dale, or Mulan, but are just doing work-work - “agree to comply with [Disney] appearance guidelines.”

I get that.

Disney has every right to expect that Mickey won’t show up one day in a yarmulke, or that Cinderella will start wearing a WWJD necklace. And someone who signs up for one of these jobs knows what’s expected of them, and – if they don’t like it, well…

The article doesn’t say, but if this hostess was wearing otherwise early-1900’s clothing, and decided to add the hijab for Ramadan, it probably looked pretty stupid. It does seem like creating and pushing a non-issue (rather than accepting the job transfer Disney offered).  Again, that’s if the hostess was in period costume, however Disney-fied and bogus it might be. If she were wearing 21st century civvies, or a Disney uniform, what difference would the hijab make? Most of the women who work at “my” Dunkin’ Donuts wear head-scarves under their DD caps. Who cares?

And whatever the early 1900’s looked, sounded, felt, and smelled like, I’m guessing it wasn’t quite as bland and insipid as Disney would have it.