The Pentagon unveiled new grooming standards to maintain respect and “proper military appearance.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s memo directed service members to be “clean shaven and neat in presentation for a proper military appearance.”
“As I stated when directing the Rapid Force-Wide Review of Military Standards, the strength of the military is our unity and our shared purpose,” Hegseth wrote in the guidance. “The Department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos.”
“Commanders must apply consistent criteria and appropriately consider the Department’s interests in safety and uniformity when authorizing individual exceptions,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement. “Military medical officers will provide a written recommendation concerning a shaving waiver to the commander who is the final approval authority. Service members with an approved shaving waiver will participate in a medical treatment plan. Unit commanders will initiate separation of Service members who require a shaving waiver after more than one year of medical treatment.”
President Trump recently restored the name “Department of War” to the Department of Defense.
“We’ve been talking about this ‘Department of War,’” Trump said. “So, we won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between — and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense. So, we’re going ‘Department of War.’”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said prior to the order’s signing that the nation is “going to go on offense, not just on defense,” explaining, “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this war department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”
