THAT WAS AWKWARD

Pilvi Takala and the art of excruciation.

- LAUREN COLLINS

At the height of summer, a young woman arrives at the gates of Disneyland Paris. It’s hot. Water-bottle season. Most of the visitors are in groups. The woman has come alone. She’s in a basque-waisted gown with a corn-silk-colored skirt, a midnight-blue bodice, puffed sleeves with Vatican Swiss Guard-style stripes, and an apple-red cloak. She has black curls, tied up in a satin bow. She’s even wearing some kind of ruff, as stiff as a dog’s cone. People take her to be Snow White and start asking her to sign autographs and pose for pictures.

This lasts for less than two and a half minutes. A security guard charges over and pulls the Snow White look-alike to the side.

“It’s not possible to enter in this kind of clothes,” he says.

“Really?” she replies.

“You will have to change and put something else on.”

The Snow White look-alike is polite, demure even, but she doesn’t capitulate easily.

“It’s Disneyland, right?”

The guard has trouble articulating exactly what provision of amusement-park law the woman has violated. He is obviously acting on orders from superiors, but his confusion is ontological more than administrative. We are worried that you might do bad things, he says. People might think you’re the real character, you know?

He speaks into a walkie-talkie. It’s unclear what code he might be using to signal the problem, where the invisible line lies between an innocent bit of flair and a public threat. If Mickey Mouse ears are allowed, why not a Snow White dress? A little girl in a nearly identical outfit is standing nearby, but the guard pays her no mind.