Military's New Facial Hair Rule May Mostly Affect Black Men

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that troops who need an exemption from shaving their facial hair for longer than a year should get kicked out of the service, the AP reports. While commanders are still able to issue service members exemptions from shaving—a policy that has existed for decades—they will now have to come with a medical treatment plan, Hegseth said in an Aug. 20 memo made public Monday. Troops who still need treatment after a year will be separated from service, the memo says. "The Department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos," Hegseth wrote in his memo.

The announcement applies to all the military services and is the latest in a series of restrictions after years of military services loosening the rules on how troops can look, often at the request of service members themselves. Most shaving waivers are for troops diagnosed with pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, a condition in which hair curls back into the skin after shaving and causes irritation. It is a condition that disproportionately affects Black men. The memo is silent on what treatments the military would offer for troops affected by the new policy or if it will front the cost for those treatments. The document, which declares that "the grooming standard set by the US military is to be clean shaven and neat in presentation," doesn't specify if service members will still be allowed to sport mustaches.

It is also unclear if policies like broad exemptions from shaving for special forces troops who are in operational settings or soldiers stationed in the Arctic climates of Alaska where shaving can pose a medical hazard in the extreme cold will be affected by the change. The Army this week announced its own grooming standard update, which significantly changes acceptable appearance standards for soldiers, especially for women, including revisions for nails, hairstyles, earrings, and makeup. In January, the Air Force rolled out a new policy that significantly limits the kinds of nail polish those in the service could wear to just three—one of which is clear—reversing a previous rule that allowed 60 colors.