Reimagineering Tourism: Tourist-Performer

Style at Disney’s Dapper Days

VICTORIA PETTERSEN LANTZ

DISNEY THEME PARKS IS NOT ONLY TO GAZE, IN THE SENSE

T
O TOUR
described by sociologist John Urry, but to fully engage with a
staged and often immersive environment. Urry explains that a
critical part of the tourist experience is difference: “[Objects] must be
out of the ordinary. People must experience particularly distinct plea-
sures which involve different senses or are on a different scale from
those typically encountered in everyday life” (Tourist 12). Disneyland
in California and Walt Disney World in Florida create for tourists
the idea of life on a different scale. Each of the four Walt Disney
World parks offers visitors objects, spaces, performances, and rides
that defy the everyday. In the newly opened Toy Story Land in Hol-
lywood Studios, for example, the size of objects like plants and toy
blocks encompass tourists within fantastical staged spaces. I frame
the tourist experience of dressing up and playing with park attire as
an extension of Urry’s idea that tourist locations are out of the ordi-
nary and out of scale in relation to typical Disney tourism and Disney
fandom. Disney parks move beyond or exceed everyday experiences
for tourist pleasure, and in turn subsets of park goers exceed everyday
dress by presenting stylized, historically referential, or character refer-
ential dress. Dapper attire and DisneyBounding allow tourists to
indulge fandom in highly personal ways in the prescripted environ-
ments of the American Disney parks.
Given Disney’s status as a cultural influencer, it is not surprising
that Disneyland and Walt Disney World draw regular visitors who
return throughout the year to not only experience the pleasure of dif-
ference but also to express their interest in Disney pop culture

The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 52, No. 6, 2019

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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phenomena. Wearing costumes helps tourists self-identify within the

parks and in relation to the parks, and not just through the variety of
Mickey and Minnie ears. Customized t-shirts and similar articles of
clothing carry standard Disney company iconography (images of or
associated with Disney/Star Wars/Marvel characters) combined with
made-to-order text (e.g., “Jones Family Vacation 2018” and “His
Minnie/Her Mickey”), as a practical way of finding your friends and
family in an extremely populated area or expressing a personal pas-
sion for the parks or characters. However, clothing also encompasses
two growing and overlapping subcultures of fandom in the parks:
DisneyBounding—in which fans assert a sense of style through Dis-
ney-inspired clothing—and Dapper Day dress, in which fans don per-
iod clothing related to Disney eras.
Attire is a key element of the theme park experience, often a reflec-
tive tourist act of purchasing material in the parks to commemorate a
trip or a proactive act of displaying premeditated outfits in the park
to highlight trip planning (be it family themed shirts, fandom cloth-
ing, or themed experience attire). Tourists and park fans seek out
Disney Halloween events because they are rare times when the prop-
erties allow visitors to wear costumes. Costuming and cosplay repre-
sent a growing, popular subcultural of fandom that the Disney
company struggles to account for when it comes to park visitors and
fan tourism. American parks limit costume experiences, but for years
Tokyo Disneyland has celebrated cosplay culture from early Septem-
ber to October thirty-first. “Disney Halloween” in Tokyo Disneyland
encourages cosplayers to show off the skill and detail of cosplay dress,
but beginning fall 2019, Tokyo Disneyland implemented new rules
that limit the cosplay experience in the park. For example, park goers
must now only dress according to the list of Disney intellectual
properties provided by Tokyo Disney Resort and must “dress in a
manner that suits the image and appeal of the Disney character”
(Dress Up). By placing these rules on the Halloween experience,
Tokyo Disneyland, previously flexible in terms of how tourists
present cosplay, disrupts or confines fan inflected interpretations of
characters or dressing up. These limitations come at a time when
more and more tourists use their park-going experience to explore
selfhood, fandom, and style through creative styling.
Invoking Henry Jenkins’s idea of embodied fandom, costuming
activities in the parks transform tourist into performers, presenting a
1336 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

style of playful pastiche—an expression of tourist pleasure. These

costuming activities are a kind of performed nostalgia and immersive
tourism, often involving gender-bending and historical fantasy while
indulging or reinforcing Disney narratives. Participation in Dapper
Day weekend and DisneyBounding in the American parks entails per-
forming layers of contradictions. The visuals of Dapper tourists may,
to some extent, embrace a bourgeois aesthetic, but fan culture is often
unconventional and nonconformist and pits amateurism against the
professionalism of Disney’s branding. The participants span a variety
of ages, ethnicities, nationalities, and abilities, while at the same time
indulging in nostalgia that obscures actual historical injustices. Cele-
brating particular characters means embodying difference and other-
ness—innocuously borrowing the signifiers of cartoon animals but
also more problematically appropriating from other cultures and
nationalities. Through dressing Dapper and DisneyBounding, fans
create a more immersive experience for themselves and other tourists,
enhancing the already themed, staged space. They publicly perform
their highly stylized fan subculture both their own and others’ plea-
sure (see Figure 1). These tourist-performers assert agency in the
parks as they redefine or reinforce historical, fictional, or cultural
identities.

The Trappings of Dapper Day

Beginning in 2011, fans of Disney and early- to mid-twentieth-

century fashion organized meet-ups and celebrations to show off per-
iod-inspired attire within themed settings like the Disneyland and
Walt Disney World parks, eventually leading to the event Dapper
Day.1 Most participants in Dapper Day weekends started as, and con-
tinue to be, people in online communities who share an interest in
historical styling and Disney parks. Eventually, the organizers or
early adopters of Dapper Day events trademarked the term and cre-
ated a website and online shop. Though they call themselves an orga-
nization, Dapper DayTM is a for-profit company that sells items
related to the events in the parks, runs an expo, and works with the
Disney corporation to host special dapper events. While most people
who come to Disneyland and Walt Disney World for Dapper Day are
not affiliated with the Dapper DayTM company, Dapper tourists
Reimagineering Tourism 1337

FIGURE 1. Project manager and Florida resident Cori Spruiell (Instagram

handle @ashappyaskings) riding the teacups on Dapper Day. Photo permis-
sion Cori Spruiell. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

believe in and often adhere to the company’s principles. Indulging in

the celebration of “whimsical chic,” Dapper DayTM embraces the gla-
mor of the original art and design work for Disneyland, encouraging
visitors to witness and wear a so-called “sophisticated style”
(“Frequent Asked Questions”). Unaffiliated with Walt Disney Enter-
prises, Dapper DayTM is a commercial enterprise—devoted to Disney
1338 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

tourism, event management, and costume sales—that holds an annual

expo for exploring historical fashion through coordinated attendance
in Dapper attire at museum and opera events. The organization does
not limit itself to style events at Disney theme parks, but their lar-
gest and most noticeable events are Dapper Day three-day weekends
at Florida’s Walt Disney World, California’s Disneyland, and Disney-
land Paris. Promotion of the Disney brand is central to the organiza-
tion’s activities, or at least their successes as a company, as items for
sale in the online shop incorporate or highlight Disney intellectual
properties. On Dapper Day in Disney parks, the company sets up
pop-up shops, barbers, and other nostalgia suppliers (milliners and
haberdashers, for example). The company’s website borrows a dic-
tionary definition to frame dapper as “neat and trim in appearance;
very spruce and stylish” (“Dapper Day”). Terms like chic, whimsical,
spruce, and refined provide the company and its clients with a visual
vocabulary of how to perform in the style community.
Dapper Day weekend is one of many unofficial2 Disney days or
weekends, meaning that they can arrange, for a cost, special events in
the park and the resorts, but the park will not officially promote the
events on Disney websites. However, Disney monetizes on the experi-
ence, featuring special foods, shopping, and attire only available dur-
ing Dapper Day weekend at the parks.3 Disney also provides
nostalgic paid experiences like flower arranging and picnicking dur-
ing these two days. Participants have the option to purchase special
Disney trademarked and Dapper Day trademarked items, purchase
special event passes, or just pay for park entry and spend the weekend
showing off their personal dapper attire. In this instance, the Disney
company encourages a different type of tourist experience for Dapper
Day, based on small-scale, highly personalized events compared to
general admission visitors who do not get access to picnics or Dapper
Day photo opportunities. When general population tourists move
through the parks, they do not create a conscious performance. For
Dapper participants, who have styled themselves into objects of aes-
thetic attention, their presence in and movement through the parks is
inherently performative.
Dapper Day, the three-day weekend, not the company, stands out
as an increasingly typical fan-based event, in that it creates a cyclical
engagement between Disney and the idea of being dapper, through
online forums (practicing style), live experiences (performing style),
Reimagineering Tourism 1339

and social media (presenting style). Online forums run by fans of

dapper stylings (Facebook groups4) tell participants how to make or
buy clothing and hairstyles through community events, Etsy shops,
and YouTube tutorials. This aspect of Dapper Day encourages fans to
research and present research of their own. The theme park events
allow individuals to shift from this mode to a community-based prac-
tice of performing style in a visible subculture. The clothing signals
to Dapper participants who is and who is not stepping out in style,
making it easy to identify other members. Someone wearing head-to-
toe but off-the-rack Disney clothing might stand out on the street
but not in the parks, where they are surrounded by professional actors
wearing Disney costumes. Dapper participants in these same spaces
stand apart as their typical attire includes, for example, 1940s era fas-
cinators, gloves, pin curls, bow ties, and dress jackets.
In Costume: Performing Identities Through Dress, remove italics from
comma Pravina Shukla shows that “costume—like dress—is the
clothing of who we are but that it signals a different self, one other
than that expressed through daily dress” (3). Dapper visitors and
bounders express their honed and practiced “performance identity” of
different versions of self (3). This self-conscious selfhood enacts pre-
scribed performances in themed spaces, referencing time periods and
locations and fictional characters in their outfits and mannerisms.
They are never not performing when inside the different Disney
parks. Not surprisingly, Dapper Day creates a huge influx of social
media posts presenting style (on Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, and
Facebook), which leads to online viewers liking, commenting, or
being introduced to the event and community. These three forms of
style—practicing, performing, presenting—work together to perpetu-
ate interest in the group and extend the performative identity.
Jenkins, in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Cul-
ture, reminds us that fan culture is inherently interactive and commu-
nal. He states, “fan reception cannot and does not exist in isolation,
but is always shaped through input from other fans and motivated, at
least partially, by a desire for further interaction with a larger social
and cultural community” (76). The number of meet-ups and events
indicates that Dapper Day weekends follow this structure of commu-
nal fan experience. The online and in-person interaction allows for
input from other like-minded fans to help encourage more types of
styling, and the events are the result of the desire to move the fan
1340 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

subculture into larger communities that appreciate the artistry of

dressing up. Dapper Day weekends demonstrate Jenkins’s point that
fan experience does not exist in isolation, as a central feature of the
group is the desire to meet up and step out in style together. The
group also places great value in personal style, but the overall concern
is to promote a sophisticated, chic presence that adds to the Disney
brand.
Cori Spruiell’s public Instagram post (Figure 1) highlights how
Dapper Day for her is inherently performative, part individualized
practice and part communal experience. She posted this image to her
Instagram, tagging it with: “One month until Dapper Day! . . . Who
else is going?” (Cori Spruiell). As her audience responds, she encour-
ages Dapper Day participation, reinforcing the communal aspect
while promoting her own self-expression of chicness. In the pho-
tograph, Spruiell’s dress matches the pastel color scheme of the Mad
Tea Party ride, but her stillness contrasts with a ride known for
dizzying speed. The detail of her costume stands out: her 1940s curls,
the cut and pattern of her dress, and the flower in her hair. Her per-
formance uses the ride’s teacups as a set. Matching the aesthetic of
the ride, she is far more visibly chic than the other tourists wearing
everyday clothes.
The Disney company expects outside groups to comply with park
rules. Dapper DayTM makes this point clear on the website. The group
publicly states it follows Disney’s rules, which prohibits most cos-
tumes for anyone over fourteen years old: “Our events celebrate great
style from yesterday and today and are not costume or cosplay gather-
ings. . . . We work closely with Disney to ensure our events happen
smoothly” (“Frequently Asked Questions”). The Disney company
includes these rules for a number of reasons, including safety of chil-
dren in the parks interacting with adults and the protection and tight
control of its branding and intellectual property. The statements clar-
ify that Dapper DayTM as a company or organization rejects costume
or cosplay, in part because of park rules5 and the need to maintain a
relationship with the Disney corporation, and the statement reads as
litigious, but also in part because the group believes they promote a
lost elegance of the early twentieth century. Tourists who come to
the Dapper Day weekends do not feel beholden to these rules set up
between two companies who want participants to buy their licensed
products, particularly when it comes to branding and character
Reimagineering Tourism 1341

styling. Fans of dapper dress and Disney properties offer all kinds of
creative representations through clothing of characters, park rides,
and park experiences, pushing against (but not breaking) the costume
rule. “Costume” or cosplay carries a negative or undesirable connota-
tion for Dapper DayTM organizers, who respond to the question is this
a costumed event with a definitive: “No. We want to see your per-
sonal style at our events. There’s [sic] many other opportunities to
wear a costume or cosplay. DAPPER DAY events are meant to fea-
ture you being you!” (“Frequently Asked Questions”). Dapper DayTM
wants tourists to consider their products as a means of creating dap-
per styles, “you being you,” using trademarked accessories, and for
the sake of commerce reject cosplay as part of the dapper experience.
Returning to Shukla’s paring of costume with performing the self,
the statement from the Dapper Day site unfairly dismisses costuming
as part of selfhood. The FAQ clearly emphasizes the idea that Dapper
style is a means of self-expression, or “being you,” while insisting
that costume is something outside the self. Shukla explains that cos-
tume is, for many people, the performative means to “achieving a
self-conscious definition of the self” (4). Costume evokes and publicly
displays selfhood, even if it is a fictionalized or fantastical form of the
self.
The parks disallow fully realized costumes and, in line with the Dis-
ney controls, the Dapper Day organization discourages the idea of “cos-
tume,” but the styling encourages a more varied participant self-
expression that may defy the official rules. Shukla posits that people
“choose their clothing to fit the aim of their performance, its audience,
and their own intention of meaningful communication” (4). Dapper
participants use the three types of style—practicing, performing, pre-
senting—to interpret historical era and character for the self, for other
participants, and for park goers. Dapper Day rules get more compli-
cated with DisneyBounding (which can also be Dapper) because
bounding tourists evoke a specific character, while maintaining a dis-
tinction between bounding and costume. “Bounding” is etymologi-
cally related to “boundary” or “bounds,” the sense that what visitors do
goes up to the edge/boundary of costume without transgressing into
full costume. Like the performances on Dapper Day, tourists offer self-
conscious variations of themselves through playful pastiche. They pay
tribute to fictional and/or historical characters through emblematic
clothing, publicly performing their personal fandom.
1342 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

Urry considers pastiche central to tourist experiences because “the

past is sought through images and stereotypes which render the ‘real’
past unobtainable and replace narrative by spectacle” (Consuming
219). Postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson famously called pastiches
“blank parody, parody which has lost its sense of humour” (5).
Through playful pastiche, fans celebrate community, explore self-
expression, and engage with tribute tourism. Pastiche is appropriate
to the synthetic and prescripted park: a crafted and commodified
space featuring spectacle and parody. Pastiche imitates the past and
brings together incongruous material, both important aspects of
displays and performances in Disney parks.
The Disney parks become a playground or staged space for the
Dapper visitors to perform in and around. The space, including its
architectural facades, is transformed with the presence of Dapper Day
participants. Even the Disney-related, paid events reflect stylized per-
formance. Picnic in the Park is a paid communal picnic where partic-
ipants can gather in a conspicuous spot, like the Magic Kingdom
East Plaza Garden in front of the castle. This picnic is performative
and immersive for the Dapper and non-Dapper visitors. The gate
around the garden separates the Dapper guests from other tourists,
implying that they are out of the ordinary, an idea reinforced by their
clothing, hair styles, parasols, and hats. The Dapper tourists become
part of the visual nostalgia of Main Street USA, becoming a curated
spectacle, in that Disney carefully places these dapper participants
into designated areas to heighten the aesthetic appeal of their pres-
ence. The participants indulge in this moment of immersion, a slow
picnic in a staged space that reflects the early twentieth century. The
surrounding tourists, in turn, see how these styled visitors create a
spectacle of old-fashioned fashion.

Dapper Disney Tourists Unbound

The structure of Dapper Day participation—the clearly defined

vocabulary, the meet-ups, the online sharing—all reflect Jenkins’s
framing of fandom as a combination of interpretive and aesthetic
practices, consumer agency, and alternative communalism (278–80).
Being part of this community is a commitment to an aesthetic expe-
rience that plays with the idea of history and the narratives of Disney
Reimagineering Tourism 1343

characters. The rules of this styling are open-ended and flexible, lead-
ing to explorations of cultures and genders, as long as participants
avoid overt costuming or cosplay. Nevertheless, those who attend
Dapper Day may also cosplay, as is evident in Instagram posts: these
activities all exist within the same spectrum.
In his description of the art form, Mark Duffett states that with
cosplay “fans adopt the garb of fictional characters as a way of extend-
ing their participation, exploring their identities and interacting with
others. . . . They can explore issues of performativity in the way that
they use their bodies” (189). Similarly, Dapper Day fosters participa-
tion and sociality, using individual bodies to perform together within
themed spaces, but, instead of recreating a character with detailed
costume, Dapper participants create a mood and atmosphere. Partici-
pants gain cultural capital through their respective fandom communi-
ties’ appreciation of their creative effort. In “Stardom/Fandom:
Celebrity and Fan Tribute Performance,” Scott Duchesne explains,
“profit [for cosplayers] . . . is largely emotional and psychological—
that is, recognition for focused, creative work, and for connecting
with the larger community” (24). Dapper participants also receive
praise and attention from the general tourist population, creating a
relationship between performer and audience in the parks.
One area where Dapper fans more overtly approach tribute perfor-
mance is in the sub-genre of DisneyBounding. Bounding happens
every day in the parks for hardcore visitors and Disney fans, but is
most visible on Dapper Day. To DisneyBound is to go into the parks
in twenty-first century attire that reflects the coloring, patterns, or
general makeup of a Disney character. For example, in 2018, I went
to Magic Kingdom wearing a purple top, maroon skirt, and purple
slip-on shoes, with my hair highlighted purple. A few park goers and
cast members recognized my tribute to Mad Madame Mim, which
was my bound. (On close inspection, a looker could see that I was
also wearing a Mim Disney trading pin.) Tourists and fans may not
recognize Mim, a character from Disney’s 1963 animated film The
Sword in the Stone, as easily as they would a Frozen character, but peo-
ple do look out for bounders in the parks. Some visitors plan their
everyday vacation wardrobe to include daily bounding, a very indi-
vidualized tourist-performance in the parks. Duchesne defines fan tri-
bute performance as assuming the role of a fictional character at a
convention; bounding is a softer form of this tribute performance tied
1344 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

to tourism. Bounders visit and interact in the Disney environment as

tourists, not as the characters, but they do pay homage by using
clothing to reflect their interest in or admiration for a character.
Further, they perform close to boundaries of what constitutes
characters. If park visitors recognize a character bounder because of
the styling that imitates specific aspects of a recognizable Disney
figure, the bounder is performing an approximation of that figure.
The major distinction with bounding is that visitors allude to
characters through clothing and not through behavior, voice, or
mannerism.
When Dapper Day meets bounding, which happens often, partici-
pants push up against or play around with the idea of costuming or
cosplay (see Figure 2). The historical-era clothing is a heightened
form of dress, and stepping out is a form of performance. When fans
combine bounding with Dapper Day, they offer stylized dapper looks,
reflective of characters, that come closer to being costumed. Combin-
ing character-specific clothing with era-specific clothing means
Dapper bounders heighten their tourist-performance. Costumes vio-
late the rules of the park, so the fact that Dapper bounding reads
almost as costume seems very significant, at least in terms of the
push–pull between the control of the park and the agency of the
tourist. Participants appear out of the ordinary visually because they
dress outside contemporary time (or outside casual contemporary),
and they read as familiar because they reflect characters from Disney
and the parks themselves. Consider Walt Disney World cast mem-
bers Kathy Cronin and Priscilla Organtini (Figure 2), not working
but enjoying the parks as visitors.6 The photograph shows the two
posing as a Dapper bound of Marion and Indiana Jones7 near the
Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular in Walt Disney World’s Holly-
wood Studios. They bounded to celebrate the show’s thirtieth
anniversary. Cronin, as Marion, offers a near replica of what the char-
acter wears in the movie and in the stunt show, with the striking
exception that Marion wears pants and Cronin wears a long skirt.
Cronin thus feminizes a character known as defying era-specific norms
through masculine tendencies (her management of a bar, her drink-
ing, her pants). One element of Dapper tourism is a feminizing of
style as participants translate chicness and early-twentieth-century
clothing into traditionally feminine cuts, colors, and attire. Organtini
offers a mix of masculine and feminine as she clearly evokes Indy,
Reimagineering Tourism 1345

FIGURE 2. WDW Cast Members and bounders Kathy Cronin and Priscilla
Organtini evoking Marion and Indy as they pose near the Indiana Jones Epic
Stunt Spectacular. Photo permission Kathy Cronin and Priscilla Organtini.
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

with leather-like jacket and khaki skirt, fedora and heeled oxford-like
shoes. In the photograph, they perform a tribute to the characters,
enhanced by the jungle facßade specifically designed to add atmo-
sphere to the stunt show area.
Period attire on the Liberty Square Steamboat or around Main
Street USA allows Dapper Day visitors to occupy spaces that echo
1346 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

their imagined pre-1970s elegance and immerse other tourists in the

nostalgia (nostalgic Americana in particular). The Dapper Day visi-
tors become part of the Disney experience in that moment. Kathy
Cronin and Priscilla Organtini blend Dapper and bounding in their
Jones tribute, creating a real exploration of playful pastiche full of
seriousness and humor, which becomes a crafted and commodified
spectacle. Other Dapper visitors recognize and enjoy the attention to
detail and styling and other parkgoers can enjoy the obvious homage
to characters like Marion and Indy, who are fictional and historical,
with the added twist of stylized presentation. Dapper bounding,
then, layers historical stylings with fictional, fantastical characters in
a playful performance of Disney representations.

Bending the Disney Script

Indulging in fantasy and fantastic fashion is open to anyone who

wants to participate, and Dapper Day attracts a wide variety of partic-
ipants. Part of the driving force behind the experience is consumer
performance. Disney parks are expensive, as are specialty clothing
items. Going to park events and expos requires substantial spending,
whether on new outfits and accessories or on special foods. Dapper
DayTM capitalizes on participant engagement as well, selling specialty
items themed to each Dapper Day event in the parks. Participants
like Spruiell may also commoditize their performances, as Spruiell
brands herself a content creator and writer. She can turn Dapper Day
weekend into a performance of commercial self-promotion, which
goes hand in hand with Disney’s model of commodifying experiences.
Part of Disney’s commercial success is the company’s creation of
immersive performative experiences. Susan Bennett and Marlis Sch-
weitzer detail the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique8 as a “performance
brandscape” and explain that “the Disney Corporation has had a long
and profitable history in the creative management of consumers,
building aspirational, lifelong brand desire through an immersive
experience that starts in childhood” (24). Dapper Day events are an
extension of brand desire meeting immersive experience. People per-
form their chicness and enact their fandom, with the ongoing expense
of visiting parks and crafting style.
Reimagineering Tourism 1347

Part of Bennett and Schweitzer’s discussion centers on the recre-

ation of Disney brand imagery, in this case girls visiting salons to
become little Disney princesses. It is a troubled, gendered dynamic,
as little girls are made over into “desiring objects and desirable
objects” (26). Bennett and Schweitzer see this makeover as immersive
theater that imprints consumer branding on the girls. Though they
do not detail the regressive ideas of girlhood or femininity that the
boutique transformation reinforces, they do indicate that the partici-
pating girls are passive objects, with family and cast members at
times more enthusiastic about the process than the children. Disney
controls the narrative in the boutique—a simple and problematic nar-
rative that girls are princesses. This level of narrative control is typi-
cal for the company, as the parks, resorts, and events all reinforce
brand desire and themed experiences. On the surface, Dapper Day
appears to indulge in this controlled narrative, as old-fashioned,
regressive styling is the main theme. Certainly, Cronin, Organtini,
and Spruiell appear in their images as extremely feminine and evoca-
tive of a time period when culture strictly regulated gender identity.
However, Dapper participants also use the event, and bounding, to
reject gender binaries and cultural expectations by bending typical
gendered and historical narratives.
One of the most striking and dynamic aspects of Dapper and
bounding performances is how tourists play with identities and defy
the gender binaries reinforced through Disney narratives. Visitors to
the parks use a range of clothing, accessories, and makeup to appear
chic and, in true pastiche fashion, draw from a variety of aesthetic
sources to create looks. Hipster, steampunk, drag, and cosplay sty-
lings all inform how Dapper participants present themselves, and
many use the events as opportunities to blend, bend, flip, or fracture
gender identity. In her seminal work, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler
states: “the effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the
body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane ways in which
bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute
the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (192). The Disney parks
reinforce, overtly and indirectly, the false narrative of strict, binary
genders (cis male and cis female). Returning to the new Tokyo Dis-
neyland rule to “dress in a manner that suits the image and appeal of
the Disney character”; the policy does not discuss gender directly,
but could be employed to restrict various fan interpretations of
1348 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

character and gender (Dress Up). In the American parks, princess and
pirate ideals, accompanied by gendered commodities, highlight the
notion that boys and girls are separate and distinct. Even in moments
that celebrate queer aesthetics, such as the unofficial Gay Days9 at
Walt Disney World, gender presents as rigid or separate. Walt Dis-
ney World park shops sell Disney licensed and trademarked clothing
items for Pride month that coincide with Gay Days, including rain-
bow-flagged Mickey hats and Minnie ears. These Pride ears reinforce
binary gender expectations since the Mickey ears are masculine hats
and the Minnie ears are sequined headbands.
On the other hand, Dapper bounding confounds the idea of bina-
ries by offering participants the ability to indulge in gender transfor-
mation through style. Dapper bounders may lean into what Butler
sees as “the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configu-
rations outside the restrictive frames of masculinist domination and
compulsory heterosexuality” (192–93). They may privilege gender
performances that blend, blur, or bend the idea of “adbiding gender.”
Full drag and gender flips are becoming a large subset of Dapper Day
performances. Typical cis-gender expectations do not dictate Dapper
dress, though many female-presenting participants often express an
exaggerated femininity. In essence, any performance of character in
period dress destabilizes essential gender categories, putting gender
literally into play. If, as Butler explains, “the effect of gender is pro-
duced through the stylization of the body,” then Dapper bounding
creates a playfulness or pastiche of gender in the way participants
style their bodies (191).
To bound, in general, and to Dapper bound, in particular, is to
take ownership of fan desire within the strict structure of a Disney
park. Of course, Dapper bounding embraces Disney aesthetics and
commodification and is in large part a tribute to the artistry of Dis-
ney characters, but it deliberately challenges the strictness of the
parks or characters, including their adherence to binary gender. For
example, Andrew Clemmons shares his bounding look with the hash-
tag #BroWhite (Figure 3), a gender bending of the Snow White
character (Andrew Clemmons).10 Clemmons shares character DNA
with what mainstream culture sees as Snow White—redhead wig,
blue top, yellow bottoms, apple—all markers of the Disney cartoon.
Clemmons is photographed outside spaces associated with Snow
Reimagineering Tourism 1349

FIGURE 3, 4. Left: Andrew Clemmons, participant in Dapper Day, bound-

ing, and cosplay, as #BroWhite (Instagram handle @andrewclemmons).
Right: Performers/cosplayers @littlelilycos and Jimmy Sherfy (Instagram
handle @ jimmysherfy) as Dapper Flounder and Ariel. Photos by Eric Yaras.
Photo permission Andrew Clemmons and Eric Yaras. [Color figure can be
viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

White, like Fantasyland and the Germany Pavilion in EPCOT, rein-

forcing the character performance.
Like Organtini (Figure 2), Clemmons’s outfit includes both mas-
culine and feminine markers, with the typically masculine suspenders
and fedora and the feminine bow and sweater. He thus creates a
male-centric princess, whereas Organtini offers a feminized version of
a male hero. The same is true for Jimmy Sherfy (Figure 4) and his
Ariel dapper look. On his Instagram, Sherfy explores geek culture
with cosplay and drag performance. His male-centric Ariel is a gen-
der-flip with its jacket and bow tie along with sequins and wig.
Announcing his intention to other fans interested in gender bending,
his hashtags include “#DapperDay,” “#Genderbent,” “#GayGeek,”
and “#MaleAriel” (Jimmy Sherfy). The hashtags clarify that his Dap-
per bounding is a queer performance, intentionally defying gender
norms. In these cases, both tourist-performers use pastiche, and
replace typical, gendered princess narratives with spectacle, to craft
new possibilities for the princesses. Disney cannot limit the branding
of their princesses to young girls because fan culture disrupts that
1350 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

narrative, just as Organtini, for example, disrupts Indiana Jones’s

male space.
Gender, Duffett states, is “an imitation, approximation, and repli-
cation: something that we automatically borrow from others around
us and yet feel as our own since it allows us to identity ourselves,”
and fandom is “also enacted and performed in actions” that relate to
self-identification (205). For Dapper park visitors, performing fandom
is a means of performing gender in ways that certainly complement
the idea of immersing oneself in cultivated, staged spaces. Addition-
ally, the ability to play with, bend, or slide along the spectrum of
gender as a Dapper tourist decenters the boy-pirate, girl-princess park
narrative. Dapper Day may lead to queer aesthetics, but it at the same
time emphasizes historical gender presentations. Many female-pre-
senting participants are extra feminine, in overtly delicate dresses,
heels, up-dos, and makeup. Ladylike presentations evoke the cultural
memory of women as passive, submissive, and lacking agency. There
are suffragette or Rosie Riveter Dapper stylings, but, in general, they
are a genteel expression potentially reconfirming problematic roles.
Henry Jenkins discussion of fandoms reflects on this complex
incorporation of unstable identities:

[Fandom] provides a space within which fans may articulate their

specific concerns about sexuality, gender, racism, colonialism, mili-
tarism, and forced conformity. . . . Fandom contains both negative
and positive forms of empowerment. Its institutions allow the
expression both of what fans are struggling against and what they
are struggling for; its cultural products articulate the fans’ frustra-
tion with their everyday life as well as their fascination with repre-
sentations that pose alternatives. (283)

Dapper Day allows for participants to very publicly articulate pro-

gressive ideas about gender binaries through gender-bent perfor-
mances. However, using history as the basis for alternatives to
everyday life is potentially regressive. The history-bending at work in
Dapper tourism relates to visitors visually mixing eras that may rein-
force historical erasure and injustice. Participants enjoy staging them-
selves around the facades at US Disney parks, the design of which
often owes its origins to colonialism or Victorianism. The non-every-
day life that fans admire in the parks are colonial throwbacks, painting
nonwhite cultures as exotic and Euro-American culture as mainstream.
Reimagineering Tourism 1351

Dapper visitors appropriate foreign cultures (sushi dresses and wooden

parasols around the Japanese pavilion in EPCOT) or indulge in exoti-
cism (animal and African prints in Animal Kingdom). They make a
point to evoke colonialism by styling themselves after and staging
themselves within Victorian spaces like the Plaza, Frontierland, and
the Grand Floridian resort. Dapper participants may not intend to
reinforce historical problems, but by stepping out in style, they enjoy
performing nostalgia, which inherently tidies up history.

Conclusion: The Traps of Nostalgia

Part of the Dapper process is a form of commemorative performance,

a form of actively engaging with the past and, in the case of many
bounders, a fantastical and fictional narrative. Of course, the com-
memorative performances the visitors make by stepping out is nostal-
gic, and therefore problematic. Gediminas Lankauskas explains: “the
trouble with nostalgia . . . is that it tends to gloss over complexities,
contradictions, and ambiguities. . . . [It] totalizes and simplifies; it
often conceals more than it reveals. It may help us build neat models
of ‘positive’ memory” (40–41). In highlighting synthetic or spectacu-
lar identities, Dapper Day works with Disney to simplify historical
narratives. Disney parks reinforce nostalgia and “positive” memories
of history throughout its visual landscape and sensory experiences.
Main Street USA evokes a fictional idea of the American small town
(inspired by Walt Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Montana, but
not at all a true or exacting representation); it also obfuscates that fact
that the buildings and facades of Main Street are clearly markers of
white, straight, middle-class culture. In a similar vein, Dapper Day
privileges a bourgeois or mainstream, turn-of-the-century sensibility.
This cultural framework marginalizes difference based in gender, race,
ethnicity, and sexuality, and turns that difference into a form of tour-
ism-performance—people to be gawked at or mocked.
The parks commemorate, commodify, and coopt historical and cul-
tural markers to produce seemingly authentic spaces. Dapper Day vis-
itors similarly commemorate, commodify, and coopt markers to
create their own unique interactions within the parks. Dapper Day
does not dissect the simplification process of nostalgia. For Dapper
visitors, multiple eras of clothing all serve the same purpose of
1352 Victoria Pettersen Lantz

presenting elegance, and they present positive nostalgia instead of in

any way addressing historical contradictions and ambiguities. As sta-
ted earlier, Dapper Day is intersectional in many ways, for those who
can afford it, as long as there is a shared interest in stepping out in
early twentieth-century or fantastical elegance, folding in Disney fan-
dom along with it. Diverse groups of Dapper participants pose and
immerse themselves in nostalgia but do not remark upon or engage
with the problematic sociopolitical constructions of pre-Civil Rights
era America. The playful pastiche of genre, history, and culture leads
to uncomplicated visuals on Dapper Day weekend. Disney’s cultural
tourist locations are simplified and superficial, and Dapper partici-
pants may reinforce the idea of nostalgia over history. These visitors,
creating their own experiences within the parks through clothing,
posing, and mannerisms, are insisting on open-ended playful com-
memoration and commodification, by and large, without critique.
The pastiche trades in spectacle, and nostalgia trades in simplifica-
tion, so Dapper fan tourism appears as intricate, detailed perfor-
mances of uncomplicated narratives.

Notes
1. Dapper Day is an event in Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Disneyland Paris. Any
guest can participant in Dapper Day by coming to the park dressed up. Dapper DayTM
refers to the company that helps organize events and sells trademarked items reflecting the
historical styling such as fans and parasols.
2. Importantly, the Dapper Day website states: “‘Dapper Day’ is a registered trademark. DAP-
PER DAYâ Events are not associated with The Walt Disney Company” (“Frequently
Asked Questions”).
3. One treat available in 2017 was the Dapper Quartet, “four perfectly harmonized chocolate
and vanilla cupcakes” available for ten dollars only for Dapper Day weekend. Disney ties its
own property, the popular Magic Kingdom quartet, The Dapper Dans, who sing on Main
Street USA, to Dapper Day and adapts it to this outside event (the Dapper Dans dress in
the same striped colors and bow ties that are on the cupcakes).
4. The Facebook group D3 Darlins, around since 2014, has over six thousand members and
states they do “fashionable themed events at WDW.” They use the group to share tutorials
on making clothes and styling hair, sharing photos of dapper dress, and organizing group
events (https://www.facebook.com/groups/dapperdarlin/about/blogs, etc.).
5. Disney parks do not allow costumes except during Halloween for older children and adults
in part for safety. The parks need to discourage parents or children confusing non-employ-
ees with park cast members and allowing physical contact with these people for legal rea-
sons. Another reason is that characters are proprietary, and Disney controls meet-and-greets
and character representation.
6. Cast members are employees in the Disney parks. Kathy Cronin is a former student of mine
who now works at WDW, including the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, and
Reimagineering Tourism 1353

frequently bounds in the parks using a number of different Disney characters. She does reg-
ular dress bounding, Dapper bounding, and Dapper Day.
7. The Indiana Jones film franchise has a long history with Disney parks and for frequent,
long-time visitors, the character of Indy is part of the Disney umbrella.
8. A salon experience in Disneyland, Disney Springs, and Magic Kingdom offering princess
makeover for girls three to twelve years old.
9. Another unofficial Disney event during Pride month. Disney parks sell unofficial Pride-
themed food and souvenirs.
10. Clemmons bounds in Disneyland with a number of different Disney characters, male and
female, human and creature/animal. His Instagram account often includes a large image
of Clemmons bounding with a small version of the embodied character in the image for
reference.

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Victoria Pettersen Lantz, PhD, is an assistant professor of Theatre and

Musical Theatre, Sam Houston State University.