{"id":160814,"date":"2025-09-17T00:45:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=160814"},"modified":"2025-09-17T00:45:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:45:26","slug":"it-makes-a-fella-proud-to-be-a-soldier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2025\/09\/17\/it-makes-a-fella-proud-to-be-a-soldier.html","title":{"rendered":"It makes a fella proud to be a soldier!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defensive Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to have an obsession about stamping his toy soldiers out of identical molds.\u00a0 Now, if you listen to him, he seems to be all about combat preparedness<\/em> and making optimal warfighters<\/em> and other such Defense Department things.\u00a0 But when you look at him actions, they all seem to be about making sure that all the good troops fit some idealized appearance<\/a>, regardless of what it means to discipline, morale, or “warfighting” ability.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
<\/div><\/div>
Pentagon says troops can only be exempt from shaving their facial hair for a year<\/div>
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that troops who need an exemption from shaving their facial hair for longer than a year should now be kicked out of the service.<\/div>
apnews.com\/article\/pentagon-facial-hair-grooming-beards-hegseth-e87c41e311089db0da4c4f2b5de93d1f<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

The current diktats concern facial hair, with orders Coming From The Top that no soldier can have unshaven facial hair (which seems mostly directed toward beards, though presumably mustaches would also apply).<\/p>\n

I am passingly familiar with military history, and I’m pretty sure that no battle was ever won (or lost) due to the presence or absence of beards. This is solely an aesthetic judgment and an ability to impose meaningless discipline on the troops.\u00a0 Which is a big thing in some quarters of the military, but isn’t exactly what you would think a Defense Secretary would be obsessing over.<\/p>\n

The newest twist is a bit more disturbing.\u00a0 There are people with sensitive skin conditions, pseudofolliculitis barbae<\/em><\/a>, or PFB.\u00a0 Shaving can cause ingrown hairs, and subsequent irritation.\u00a0 For decades, the military has cut soldiers with such a condition some slack.\u00a0 Not Pete Hegseth, who explained it this way:<\/p>\n

The Department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really?\u00a0 The “warrior ethos” (which, I guess, is a thing we actually want) is underpinned by grooming standards?<\/em><\/p>\n

Rather than accepting that folk with PFB cannot stay clean-shaven, Hegseth has decreed that any medical exemption can only last for a year, after which the service member will be kicked out.\u00a0 For not being able to shave without .<\/p>\n

More importantly, PFB impacts Black men in much higher numbers — about 45-80% of them<\/a>.\u00a0 By definition, this kind of policy will kick more Black men out of the service than White or other racial groups.<\/p>\n

It’s a policy that impacts, that discriminates<\/em> against, Black soldiers, plain and simple.<\/p>\n

But, hey, we are assured by Hegseth and his boss, Donald Trump, that we don’t pay attention to racial distinctions any more (except for ICE profiling purposes) because that’s “divisive.”\u00a0 Which sounds good, except that it means that policies that do<\/em> discriminate can be dismissed as, “Well, certainly it’s not about the discrimination because we don’t pay any attention to race.”<\/p>\n

It seems kind of nuts to discharge qualified people — folks who have gone through not-inexpensive training, and who have clearly shown the desire to serve the nation — just because a medical condition requires they don’t go clean-shaven.\u00a0I mean, unless your top priority is being able to put on some sort of weirdly uniform Military Parade — you know, the sort of thing that Americans used to poke fun at — then it might make some weird sense.<\/p>\n

\"Moscow
Moscow Victory Parade, back in the good ol’ Soviet days<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But, then, if you were\u00a0really<\/em> looking for uniformity … well, surely standardized skin tone<\/em> would be a big part of that, would it not? But, I’m sure, that such a thing would never be what is being consciously driven at, since the Trump Administration is all about not paying any attention to something divisive like “race.”<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it is still a policy that discriminates against Black men for no reason other than that someone thinks that you can’t have a “warrior ethos” if you don’t have everyone shaving the same way.<\/p>\n

Which seems a pretty stupid way to run a Defense Department, let alone a War Department.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do grooming standards REALLY “underpin the warrior ethos”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[134,349,740,1071],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-care","category-military","category-race-racism","category-trump"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Moscow-Victory-Day-Parade.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134404,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/23\/the-world-of-british-acting-sometimes-seems-pretty-small.html","url_meta":{"origin":160814,"position":0},"title":"The world of British Acting sometimes seems pretty small","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 23-Aug-17 5:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"And here we have a 2012 National Theatre production of Antigone, with the major role of Creon being played by Christopher Eccleston -- the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, and the title role being played by ... 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