Board updates uniform regulations

[thedrifter]

Board updates uniform regulations

Green-side sailors must adopt Corps grooming standards

By John Hoellwarth
Times staff writer

The corpsman used to be the guy in the platoon who looked like a Marine with long hair, but those days are over.

The Marine Corps Uniform Board has approved changes to the Corps' dress code, including a regulation about the Marine combat utility uniform that doesn't affect Marines. All green-side sailors must now adhere to Corps grooming standards while wearing the Corps' cammies, according to a Jan. 20 Corps-wide message.

"If sailors wear the Marine Corps combat utility uniform, they must abide by Marine Corps grooming and accessory regulations," stated MarAdmin message 031/06.

Adherence to the policy requires male green-side sailors to wear a Marine regulation cut, with hair length from zero inches graduated up to 3 inches on top. That's only an inch shorter on top than Navy regulations, but that means skin on the sides for sailors who were previously authorized to keep up to three-quarters of an inch down to the nape of their necks.

For female green-side sailors, the change is going to be a bit more drastic. They must now keep their hair above the bottom of their collar without visible barrettes. Female sailors must also give up earrings and nail polish.

Mary Boyt, program manager for the Marine Corps Uniform Board, said she's already received a bit of negative feedback regarding the new grooming standards but that it hasn't been enough to warrant reconsidering the policy.

Also in the message, the uniform board announced that ceremonial details and color guards are now authorized to wear the dress blue overcoat with the dress blue uniform. But you can't rush out to cash sales and buy it. You've got to wait until your command makes you sign for one.

"The overcoat will not be personally owned. It will be command-issued," Boyt said. "It is not going to become a common-wear item like the tanker jackets. Marines can't go out and buy it."

The board also recommended that recruiters be allowed to wear the coat, but that suggestion was turned down by the commandant, Boyt said.

"I think it was disapproved because we would lose control of the coat. It would become a common-wear item, and it's a special ceremonial item."

Regardless of who gets to wear the overcoat with their blues, Boyt said all Marines will get new gloves for the dress uniform. The new unisex gloves are "more of an Isotoner driving glove" that allows more flexibility and dexterity and will dry more quickly, Boyt said.

Two more changes to the uniform policy affect female Marines. Female officers and staff noncommissioned officers who wear the new pleated evening dress shirt now have the option of breaking the ruffled evening dress shirt out of mothballs.

"The evening dress is not worn when uniformity is required, so having two styles of evening dress shirts is acceptable," Boyt said.

Female Marines can also look forward to a new garrison cover, though it won't be phased in until the beginning of fiscal 2007. It looks a lot like the existing folding garrison cover, but the crease at the top has been redesigned to allow female Marines to put it on and adjust it with one hand, something Boyt said is difficult with the current headwear.

[nighthawkal]

the navy said no...so that order is resended. long hair is back...never really left!