Hair-Raising News: Disney Policy Not What Some Expect

Attention, Disney workers: Don’t throw out those razors just yet.

The company did scrap a 43-year-old ban on facial hair, allowing theme-park employees to wear mustaches, but they must be neatly trimmed and fully grown.

As one employee put it: “You can hire in with a mustache, or you can go off on vacation for a couple of weeks and grow one. But you can’t grow one on company time.”

Disney spokesman Ray Gomez said, “We don’t want the unkempt look of a half-grown mustache on stage while our cast members are working with our guests. Our guests have told us that that’s something they don’t want to see--they want to see a cleanshaven face or a neatly trimmed, fully grown mustache.”

Gomez said an employee’s mustache must not cover his upper lip or hang below the corners of his mouth.

Some male cast members reportedly stopped shaving their upper lips after the announcement that the company was lifting its ban. Responding quickly to what it perceived as the potential for a growing horde of unkempt whiskers, Disney management issued the one-page memo.

“It’s all spelled out,” Gomez said.