![]() ![]() The promotion system is not necessarily inherently racially biased, the authors cautioned. Brandon Tatum, Air Warfare Center chief of joint terminal attack control training, works with Pakistani commandos to locate and coordinate various targets of opportunity during a training scenario at a Pakistan military range, Ma(Master Sgt. “Male beard growth beyond that allowed by USAF regulation can cast members in a negative light as it can be considered unprofessional,” wrote Ritchie and his fellow researchers in their study, which found an association between shaving waivers and a “significantly longer” time between promotions. However, those waivers might harm the airman’s career prospects due to a long-standing cultural aversion to facial hair in the military. The Air Force issues shaving waivers to airmen who, for medical or religious reasons, are not able to shave in line with regulations, and many airmen with PFB receive waivers. Men of any race can have PFB, but the condition is commonly found among Black men. Also known as razor bumps, PFB is a skin condition that makes shaving painful and can lead to permanent scarring if the skin is not allowed to heal. Adhering to the Air Force’s prohibition on beards is difficult for many Black airmen who have a medical condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae. More scientific evidence is needed to inform the military’s grooming standards, Ritchie said, because the current policies have a discriminatory effect on service members of color. “A lot of the consensus papers and position papers on this rely on expert opinion, but none of it is based on an actual scientific study like ‘hey, let’s have people put a M-50 mask on and study that.’” “In the scientific community, anecdotes are the lowest level of evidence for making recommendations,” the doctor said. While supporters of current Air Force policy “may have anecdotal evidence of one to five people who they see fail the fit test,” he said, “that can’t be extrapolated to hundreds of thousands of airmen.”Īnecdotal evidence is useful, Ritchie said, but in his years of analyzing the issue he has yet to find an up-to-date, scientifically rigorous study showing that neatly trimmed facial hair impacts the seals of military gas masks. Simon Ritchie, a dermatologist who last year published a study on the beard prohibition’s discriminatory effect on Black airmen. “It’s an unsubstantiated claim,” said Lt. ![]() While many military leaders defending the beard prohibition have repeated the claim that beards break gas mask seals, one Air Force doctor has found no direct scientific evidence to support it. military leaders have prohibited service members from growing beards, arguing that facial hair not only disrupts a clean, professional appearance, but also interferes with the seal of a gas mask, oxygen mask or other devices that service members wear to survive hazardous environments. (Illustration by Matt Battaglia / Task & Purpose). ![]()
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