Ret. Gen. Mark Milley served as the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 29, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The memo specifically calls out protocols for beards.
It directs the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to look at "existing standards set by the Military Departments pertaining to physical fitness, body composition, and grooming, which includes but is not limited to beards."
The memo directs the review to examine how standards have changed since 2015.
"Our troops will be fit – not fat. Our troops will look sharp – not sloppy. We seek only quality – not quotas," Hegseth wrote in a post on X late on Wednesday.
HEGSETH ORDERS REVIEW OF MILITARY FITNESS AND GROOMING: ‘OUR ADVERSARIES ARE NOT GROWING WEAKER’
The Pentagon is evaluating physical fitness tests and whether their standards meet readiness goals. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson )
The service branches began making accommodations for recruits who don’t meet physical fitness standards in recent years as a way to address the recruiting crisis. The Army and Navy offered pre-boot camp training for those who did not meet physical fitness or testing scores. But those recruits had to meet the same standards in order to graduate from training courses and serve.
"When I was in the Army, we kicked out good soldiers for having naked women tattooed on their arms, and today we are relaxing the standards on shaving, dreadlocks, man buns, and straight-up obesity," Hegseth wrote in his book ‘The War on Warriors.’
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"Piece by piece, the standards had to go ... because of equity," he added.
The service branches have begun allowing troops to sport different hairstyles, in large part due to female service members who argued that the constant tight, low bun was leading to hair loss. In recent years, the Army has begun allowing cornrows and twists after female service members argued that the hairstyles were cheaper and easier to maintain.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/defense-pentagon-mark-milley-corpulent-physical-fitness