Military haircuts

[oldfart73]

Military haircuts. Standard boot camp joke... First haircut; You want to keep those sideburns? Catch!...

Got hit for needing a haircut in basic electricity School. Haircut was 3 days old. Another 35 cents for reinspection (1967). Checked on board the destroyer tender and got the standard warning about sideburns too long. So we wore sideburns one nanometer from the limit. On the carrier, many guys shaved their heads bald as we were leaving the pier for a 6-month cruise. On the DDG in the Persian Gulf, some of the guys started wearing negative sideburns (shaving up into the side of the head). The wardroom discussed it and decided to ignore it. It was a very short-lived fad. On one ship, the squadron commodore (O-6) gave a little tug on one guy's hair to indicate his dissatisfaction. The commodore later got picked up for DUI. He was known for being a real hard ass.

[AllaN01Bear]

1. hem.

[oldfart73]

2. Reply from a Coastie.

in the Coast Guard there were no ships service rating.
Lowest SA got a 2 minute lesson on running the laundry equipment
The cutters I was on the corpsman ( only had one ) ran the ships store

Whoever had hair clippers became the barber
One was an E-8 MM and they could charge you $ for it.

[Tetrachloride]

3. my father was frontline in Korea. the topic of hair or such never came up in family conversations of the war

currently, I am tied for first for shortest haircut in the family.

[marble falls]

4. Zumwalt made the Navy a little less chickshit for a while.

[Aristus]

5. When I was on active duty in the Army, 1989 - 1993, I wore my hair as long as regulation would allow.

Now that I'm a civilian (and mostly bald) I keep my hair Marine short. Nice, neat, clean, out of the way, and not likely to be mistaken for a combover or anything else.

[CrispyQ]

6. i came of age when guys wore long hair & I still like guys with long hair & loathe short/military cuts.

Not a lot of people have nicely shaped heads or attractive ears & a lot of guys would look better if they grew their hair out. Now if they don't have any hair, that's a different matter but if you got it, flaunt it, I say.

[coprolite]

7. While attending college in Fairbanks, AK

our hockey team was in the same conference with the Army and Navy teams.

Besides the color of the jerseys you could easily determine which team the player was on by the amount of hair hanging out the back of the helmet.

[EYESORE 9001]

8. I managed to grow 9 months of hair without getting it cut

I purchased a cheap ‘short-hair’ wig and survived the personnel inspection before deployment. My hair was already quite long from having been in school and briefings for a couple of months - away from the withering glares of those in my command with a vested interest in the length of my hair. A skilled razor-wielding stylist carved out some naked real estate at the back of my neck and around the ears. This was long before the punk practice of shaving hair randomly to create a shocking contrast in lengths. I was just trying to get all that hair under the rug.

As a test, I wore the wig to a trendy-for-the-day, pre-disco dance club to observe whether anyone was playing ‘spot the weasel’ with bad hairpieces. Interestingly, nobody noticed, as I kept a wary eye out for eyes that lingered more than a nanosecond on the top of my head. Our entourage took a booth and we ordered drinks.

Moments after taking our seats, a fellow across the table started cackling uncontrollably while looking straight at me. This was a time of mad black-light posters, and some wavelength apparently liked to bounce off that muskrat pelt, illuminating it with an intensity not seen since Johnny Winter stood on stage under a brilliant limelight that made a 4” thickness of hair light up and reveal his scalp.I yanked that thing off my head and joked that it was radioactive. I just hoped our shipping-out inspection didn’t include a black light.

I passed muster with the Master Chief et al and we began our deployment about a month later. I didn’t have to use the wig while still in port, but I had to tuck under my ball cap like mad and hope some prick monitoring departures at the boat dock wasn’t checking hair length by ordering me to ‘uncover’.

Once at sea, we were freed from the constraints of hair length. Some were like WTF when they saw a shaggy mane so early on, and they weren’t buying my explanation of having fast-growing hair. It never became a ‘command’ issue, however, and hair continued to grow.

I started wearing the wig again around five days before returning to port, always covered by a ball cap. I had a trusted shipmate do the straight-razor high-and-tight on back and sides thing again. Once again, I passed muster and departed immediately on one month R&R. The month after, I had to phone in for two weeks, then went to a school for two weeks.

For the first time in my life, my hair reached my shoulders. It’s never attained that length since - nor will it. Still, I’m glad to have successfully thwarted attempts to force a haircut standard that ensured I’d stand out among the general population . This was 1973, after all. Goes to show the ‘lengths’ to which an 18-year-old kid will go to straddle social strata.

[keithbvadu2]

9. From a woman in the Air Force. Three more years for her 20.

I shaved my head before basic because my hair was so long and driving me nuts. Got in trouble for have hair too SHORT.

[BOSSHOG]

10. In the mid 80s the Navy did away with beards

Because many of those with beards did not maintain them as prescribed by the Navy’s Grooming Standards. A few ruined it for all? Standards were not universally enforced? But the standards were in writing and easy to understand. I never had a beard but I believe those in Uniform should look as sharp as possible. I did not find looking good a detriment to good order and discipline.

I do recall in boot camp 1972, the barbers asked the same question for our first haircut, short or long. Barber humor. All the hair came off.

[oldfart73]

11. requested to grow a beard,

Before Zumwalt allowed beards, one guy, E5, requested to grow a beard, voluntarily
restricting himself to the ship for one month. Approved! Two weeks later. Zumwalt
approved beards. He was off restriction and had a two-week head start over everyone else.