How do you feel about the US Army’s announcement which will allow female soldiers to wear ponytails, locs, lipstick, y aretes?
The announcement covered hair, and re-addressed jewelry and makeup. The jewelry and makeup didn’t change.
I think it’s great. The high bun that can’t touch the bottom of the collar is torture under a kevlar all day. It harms visibility and has left our scalps breaking out and bleeding before. For YEARS women asked why we couldn’t wear crown braids under the kevlar which makes far more sense if you look inside at the harness system. They are neat, stay for days, and make hair washing a cinch (it sounds gross to civilians I’m sure but we would rather wash braids while deployed and only when necessary saving hygiene for more pressing concerns during things like water shortages). Cornrows are often worn by women of all ethnicities for field training and we ignored the men and often accepted a counseling statement just to be in the field for a month without hair issues. Lord knows we knew it was coming. Women who chopped their hair off were counselled for it too. Men buried us in those out of impotence, frustrated desire, and pure hate. Bald? Counseling. Shaved? Counseling. Bun? Counseling. Half shaved? Counseling. Bob? Counseling. Long? Counseling. The ONLY TIME we weren’t counselled was when our heads were bleeding and torn from that sock bun under a kevlar. Then the rapey bitches would smirk and remind us to keep that bun to avoid counseling. Now men lost another stupid control measure to throw tantrums and I’m loving it. I hope it makes the worst ones just quit because literally everyone hates those whiny bastards.
I’ve heard a LOT of civilian males explode over two things.
Its sexist and favors women more than men
Shave and publically punish women if they want to serve.
Both are pure nonsense. The first one is men’s fault 100% (dont make sexist regulations as the most recent ones because those fall on the chopping block during Army reorganization) and the second one is hogwash because I did have a partially shaved (buzzed) hair cut and was written up for not “maintaining a feminine appearance” so you can rest assured that the men whining now are just giant babies who shouldn’t join at all.
Also…let women who don’t want to braid, plait, or put buns in their hair shave it. That standard of “femininity” is pure bullshit in a military filled to the brim with rapist men and it’s a bad look for any fighting force dealing with this many male felons who can’t fight for shit but sure can beat their fellow soldiers, drink their asses off, and rape men and women alike. Not to mention, as a demographic, soldiers nearly lead the US in drunk driving accidents so I’m not sure they’re experts on worrying about anything but getting their shit together. All men whining about this change are the same ones I’ve been accusing of supporting rape culture or being rapists themselves. I haven’t been wrong yet. Fragile men need to stay the hell out of the military.
To men who aren’t impotent whiners, the ball is rolling! We have another stop to make! Sí, I know…the most recent regulations were written by men angry at women and obviously, those all need to go BUT this is a direct AR 670-1 change melded with force readiness. You know what that means!!! Our military tries to claim that a clean shaven standard even during deployment is force readiness and have to issue shaving profiles and ship skin care emergency treatments and creams for men who usually have to dry shave twice a day to meet regulations. The rashes and acne and infections need to go! I dont mean all men HAVE to have a beard. But the sheer superfluous BS when men’s faces are bleeding from acne or follicle infection wounds downrange where your access to showers can be shrugged off but you’d better shave is pathetic. It harms our men for ZERO reason and it makes deployment readiness more complex. Let’s get rid of that stupid shaving standard! In garrison, shave away and look amazing! But no male soldier should have to deal with the scarring, infection and bleeding that comes from such a vanity cause in the military. Let’s strike while the iron is hot and oust that stupid rule!
As for the whiners, if you’re on the outside looking in and wondering who has the valid argument regarding women’s braids and ponytails, I have an odd fetish of theirs to show you. Those men crying the hardest right now think of themselves as (and loudly compare themselves to) this guy:
At home and on leave they cosplay this stuff even going so far as to buy wigs to have these long male tresses. They claim these men are never defeated or have their hair pulled in battle when its arguably longer than all but the wealthiest women in that era.
Those whining males think this is a hazard never mind that the braid above could scalp a man with enough momentum and force but the one below probably wouldn’t do more than provide minor discomfort:
Let that sink in. We women who have served or continue to do so can swear an oath in court and then face you and tell you that men told us the above photo is how we needed to look to be attractive and feminine. Now those same men are screaming about a braid. We have evidence in the form of counseling statements and petty, humiliating (y a menudo, sexually nuanced and oppressive) punishments we had to fulfill for a certain number of hours regarding our hair. When I cropped mine and buzzed the back, I had to do extra duty until it grew out. Then I was told to do that again…crop and shave or I’d get written up. That never happened because I was gang raped a few weeks later and the actual nightmare began. Sexist men are playing games and they now get to see the stupid prizes. Let them. We have a shaving profile situation to destroy so our men won’t be plagued with skin issues and we have to braid our hair. Let the whiners implode into holes of self pity. The Army at least is starting to target them because they finally see what we women were saying. Those sexist males are completely useless and look a bit too much like a man who plays the pretend informant game on his own Taliban group for favors. We don’t like losing wars and we have several thousand males acting as a millstone around our necks and it looks like their time is up. Honestly, I have to admit that I dont care if they cry and kind of hope they are loud about it so I can giggle. And even if this gets the answer collapsed…
May the rapists in the military leave to escape something this petty and try to end their miserable lives but find the gun always misfires or the pill always gives them the shits but doesn’t kill them. May they live long and unhealthy lives of degradation and wandering followed by the image of their victims screeching laughter and hounding them to a hell of our own making. May every waking moment be their torment with no escape. May eternity be a second in their day and may they have those minuscule eternities last until they’re too old to do anything else but die. May they be this way and live to 150. May others who would be them get to see them and allow disgust and fear to set them on the right path so the rapist may live his life in servitude to the men and women he preyed upon doing a free service to meet our hopes for the world. And may these rapists take their gods and ideals and hopes with them when they die to leave rapists nothing else to feed on.
I dont know a prayer or incantation to make this a curse but I send it out with all of my will and righteous fury at the men who broke my body and then left their victims for me to find and try to help. I seal this with the only thing I know how to use, my will and my labor. I’ve already had one of my rapists end his life and he was apparently talking about me a few weeks before he died. I TOLD him I would be there when he died. I told him I would be the last face he saw and the last voice he heard and I have no doubt I was correct. Now I’m a mother and I won’t let these plagues touch my son or my daughter and now I dont want the evil doers to get off so easy. I want them to be a walking husk of warning and doom. You can help. The men screaming about something silly like ponytails? Those are the men I just cursed. Find them and push them out of decent or worthwhile existence and away from the rest of us. If evil doers want to live lives filled with fear and anger, let it be fear of what they will become and anger at men ruining the world for the rest of us.
P.S. Throughout history, men and women with long hair were not a detriment to battles. There’s a story where Loki cuts a goddesses hair off, the story of Samson being a weakling when his hair was short, and Medusa. Hair doesnt feature in lost battles at all. But do you know what does feature as the BIGGEST liability for battles or heroic tales and can be seen on vases or heard of in poems? The dangly bits men can’t pin up and out of the way. If that isn’t a liability, this ponytail meltdown nonsense needs to go.