new thread
An interesting article from Slate:
Prince Hairy?
Why didn't the British royal have to cut his hair in the army?
By Chris Wilson
Posted Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 6:54 PM ET
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Prince Harry returned to London on Saturday, after a 10-week deployment to Afghanistan with the Household Cavalry of the British army. Photographs of the young royal showed him dressed in desert fatigues with a healthy mop of red hair—an unusual sight for Americans accustomed to military buzz cuts. Don't British soldiers have to cut their hair, too?
Only if their commander says so. Unlike American male recruits, for whom the buzz cut is part of the initiation into the service, the British Ministry of Defence leaves coiffure decisions up to individual regiment leaders. Most require new recruits to report with neatly groomed hair of modest length; they'll even go so far as to prohibit cuts shorter than about 1 centimeter. For example, the Army Training Regiment in Lichfield manual for recruits (PDF) mandates that "the closest permissible haircut is a No 3," a clipper that leaves about 3/8 of an inch of hair. It specifically prohibits "skinheads." Women are generally required to keep their hair in a net or bun, as they are in the United States.
The differing standards are representative of the British army's organization, which emphasizes loyalty to one's regiment in addition to the army as a whole. Unlike the U.S. commanders, whose "Army of one" approach emphasizes uniformity among service members, the Minister of Defence tolerates a little bit of panache.
Historically, facial-hair styles have conferred status to British officers. Soldiers across the pond picked up the habit of growing mustaches in the early 19th century while living in India. The colonial mustache became so prevalent, in fact, that by the middle of the century, British officers serving in the East India Co.'s forces were required to grow them. Several British authors have gone so far as to equate the rise and fall in the popularity of the mustache with the strength and decline of the British Empire.
In the United States, military men have worn closely cropped hair since at least the 1950s. The standard buzz cut of today edged out the crew cut—as immortalized by Elvis—or the flattop as the predominant style beginning in the 1970s; by the 1990s, the buzz had become so associated with the Marine Corps that invariably head-shaved members were described as "jarheads." In the Army, regulations dictate strict standards for a soldier's general hygiene and appearance, stating that "the requirement for hair grooming standards is necessary to maintain uniformity within a military population."
American soldiers have rebelled against their commanding hairdressers on occasion. When the top general of the U.S. Army demanded shorter hair for his troops in 1801, a colonel named Thomas Butler took the matter all the way to court-martial for refusing to cut his locks. And when the Navy cracked down in the 1970s on facial hair among sailors deployed at sea for extended periods of time, the aggrieved began mailing their beards to an executive officer in protest.
Explainer thanks Carol Burke of the University of California-Irvine and the British Ministry of Defence.
Chris Wilson is an editorial assistant at Slate in Washington, D.C.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2185850/
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That is the first time I've seen a pic. It probably is just slightly longer than regulation length, but he was in combat for ten weeks, presumably with no opportunity to get a haircut, so it doesn't seem like he would have been considered to be out of line.
The bit in the Slate article about 'skinhead' cuts not being allowed in the UK forces underscores what I have said before. For those who don't understand that reference, skinheads are associated with soccer violence, racism and fascism (meant quite literally, not a figure of speech). Naturally, nobody wants those people to be in the military, where they might abuse others.
Of course, a lot of guys started shaving their heads as just a fashion statement in the '90s, but we can't expect the top brass to take any account of that, can we? The other images of ultra-short hair as a positive thing that make sense to some in a US context just don't exist in the UK, not that I find that something to complain about.
Frankly, when I first emigrated to the US the sight of so many guys with buzz-cuts scared the living cr*p out of me! Of course, I eventually realised that they were harmless and were not skinheads.
I might add (I don't know why, but I will anyway) that the skinheads' preferred mode of beating up their victims (mostly Pakistani immigrants and/or just rival soccer supporters) was to push them to the floor and then kick them with heavy boots, usually 'Doc Martens' or workboots with steel toecaps. So much for 'not striking a man when he's down'. Sewer rats have better ethics.