Shaved heads in basic training; is this mandatory? If it is, then why and why only for males?

Sounds Fair Enough to me. They will all look like Ripley from ALIEN-3 (lol)

i do not believe that females should shave their heads they have not ever done it in the past why should they now a trim maybe but to shave them bald no that would be the same as saying men should get special time to use bathrooms for that time of the month sry but there are things that are meant to be separated

Truthfully, I never thought about it much. But then again, I went through HS running Track and X-C and working summers as a lifeguard/WSI. For practical reasons, my hair was crew cut and never more than a half inch or so long.

This is something I never thought of it even gave a rats ass about while I was in. When I had a couple females in my squad I had to learn their regs for something other than a board. And yes they had to maintain just like the regs for the males.

In the beginning - head shaving was more of a moral builder and a start to the we are all alike....same clothes same food same haircut...etc. It also was about hygiene. Put a couple hundred young men in to a single building to live and you will inevitably have the sole who has lice. If one man has it. Soon you all have it. It's a pest control solution. Women when they came into service did not initially go through the same basic training. The taught young ladies how to be women. They weren't on the front lines. Many were clerks assistants typists -female laborers. As times went on there was always a second standard for women. Still is. Men get cut close as always. And women....well ....they have their own set of standards. Call me a sadist. But I feel you go to boot...you ALL should look alike sound alike act alike...regardless of your imaginary or real gender. Shave them all. Bald heads as far as the eye can see. Make boot camp what it is truly about...making every one equal to build them all into a cohesive unit with the same standards across the board.

Realistically, I see busybody questions like this as a indicator that our soldiers are simply thinking less and less as time goes by. For one thing, there are recruiting concerns. Good luck getting ANY females to enlist if you shaved their heads. Second, the time it takes for a male to grow his hair out from shaved to male regulation maximum length is what? MAYBE six months? For a female, highly likely to be more like 2 years. Third, females, across all cultures are more concerned with their appearance than males are. And forcing them to remove what makes them "female" in their eyes is pretty well akin to an act of psychological rape. You wanna see military females getting into constant fistfights with offpost civilian females once they get out of basic, due to harassment? Perfect recipe for it, right there.

There are many reasons why females don't need their head's shaved. It actively sets them up as "weird" in a lot of the public's view, whereas we have male movie stars that are bald, and sill getting parts on the regular. Women in society have a hard enough time as it is, without us finding a dipstick way to make their lives harder.

And the goofball "equality" argument just doesn't hold water, SSG. We all know that "women's" equality is what is being strived for, as women in many fields still get paid substantially less than men. Women who bring valid rape allegations are made to be pariahs within their communities for getting the local superstar jock in trouble. Applying "equality" to this particular example very much comes across as a passive-aggressive anti-female stance. Something one can get away with, because "hey, equality!". Now, this may come across as a little sexist, but I will still say it: Women are the weaker sex, and are to be protected, physically and in all other ways. Including from a societal perspective. Women are victims in many ways, and trying to find another way to make them victims, i.e. shaving their heads, is about a beta male idea as I've ever heard.

When I joined the Navy in 1974 there was a new CNO and I was told that we could have the shaved cut or the regulation cut. The regulation cut was a bit longer but our drill instructor said that if we get gigged at inspection then off it goes. I chose the regulation but made sure that it would not get hit on inspection.

Not mandatory just to make u feel stupid

I would think that the shaved head issue is for SEVERAL REASONS. One is probably a way of putting all the young recruits on a level playing field... the same with putting them all into the uniform. This uniform idea is also done in private schools. So that there is no obvious rich or poor, all are the same. Second is the idea of a kind of mental game/adjustment - your life has changed. There was the before time and the NOW, delineated by hair vs no hair. Its often a shock to the young men (I remember seeing the 1000 yard stares as their hair went bye-bye... Its a kind of way to shift the mental attitude. A third reason is that its TRADITION. The military is big on tradition! And fourthly... I would imagine that in the past, it was done as a health measure, a way to make sure that no lice or parasites were dragged into the barracks with the new recruits. That stuff can spread like wildfire. I know this first hand... when one of my dogs dragged home a dead woodchuck with fleas... in about 20 minutes, he had fleas, gave fleas to the other dog, and all 17 of the cats, AND the five kids and me. It was an unholy disaster. EVERYONE got a flea bath. The dogs, kids, cats and me. By the time it was done, I was cut to ribbons from claws of struggling animals, and the bathroom had a fine, red mist in the air from all the blood let out of me. My husband laughed and laughed at the descriptions of the "fine red mist", but I assure you it was true, AND not as funny as it sounds. Its an experience I heartily hope to NEVER repeat. I can only shudder to think what it would be like to have all those recruits spreading fleas or lice from one to another in the close quarters of the barracks. As to why its not done with females: First, they DO insist that you must keep all that hair off your collar, and that if not, it must GO. We cut each other's hair in the supply closet. Really, truly. We policed ourselves. Our TI said he LOVED when he drew the "short straw" for the female recruits. He said we listened better immediately, there were far, far fewer of us that thought we'd enlisted as the General on day one, and that lead to much less disciplinary problems. I would imagine that there was no NEED to shave our heads as a shock as we were already conditioned from childhood to be obedient to orders and leadership. Of course, maybe that is changing now, as people are raising daughters differently than they did in the past... It would be interesting to see over the next 20 to 30 years, how training for females changes to keep up with the changing mental attitudes of the growing female children.

If you're a male and you're complaining about a tradition that has been around for generations then maybe you should stay home so you can take care of your hair. When I was in the 101st and you were in combat arms, God help you if you ever needed a haircut. I have seen 1SGs take a toothpick and put it on a soldiers ear. If hair touched the toothpick you needed a haircut......AND YOU GOT ONE AND DIDN'T SAY A DAMN THING ABOUT IT.