Marine Corps Cpl. Jeremy Rojas shaves before a howitzer live-fire event at Fort Barfoot, Va., on Oct. 20, 2024. (Nicholas Pilch/Department of Defense)
WASHINGTON — Gen. Eric Smith, the Marine Corps commandant, said Marines are different, even when it comes to beards.
Smith told reporters Wednesday that the service would not make any changes to its regulations that would allow Marines to grow beards.
“We’re Marines, and we’re different. We don’t have beards,” he said during a Defense Writers Group discussion. “The Marine Corps has a brand, and we’re making our recruiting mission. We’ve always made our recruiting mission, and what we don’t want to do is tinker with the ethos of the Marine Corps — you joined us, we didn’t join you. You knew that coming in. You signed up. We don’t have beards, and you knew that coming in.”
Some Marines can grow a beard through a waiver process for pseudofolliculitis barbae, which causes painful razor bumps and disproportionately affects Black men.
“That’s a medical waiver, not a fashion waiver,” Smith said. “It’s not a ‘Well, I decided I wanted to.’ ”
All military services have faced growing legal and internal pressure to relax grooming standards as debates on social media and in various other forums highlight the struggle to balance tradition and uniformity with individual rights. Military officials have argued facial hair could prevent a perfect seal of a gas mask.
“When I retire, I’m going to grow one,” Smith added. “I won’t have to deal with a … mask.”
Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, talks with reporters of the Defense Writers Group at the Fairmount Washington Hotel in Washington on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Chloe McAfee/U.S. Marine Corps)
In December 2022, a federal appeals court ruled three Sikh men should be allowed to go through Marine Corps recruit training with their turbans and beards intact. The panel ruled the Marine Corps had not proved that allowing the recruits to keep their beards and turbans for religious reasons would threaten cohesion and uniformity.
Currently, airmen are not required to shave only if they have a religious exemption or a medical waiver for conditions such as pseudofolliculitis barbae.
In the latest National Defense Authorization Act, the annual must-pass bill that sets policy and spending priorities for the Pentagon, Congress wants the Air Force to examine the pros and cons of allowing airmen to grow beards, with a prospective April 1 deadline for service leaders to deliver findings to lawmakers.
The House Armed Services Committee in May approved an amendment requiring the Navy to brief committee members on a 2023 study by the Naval Health Research Center on the effect of beards on gas mask seals, with the briefing due by March 1.
For years, military branches have carried out various studies on the beard issue to determine whether regulations could be loosened for the rank and file. So far, no branch has taken the step beyond special exceptions.
In the case of the Army, soldiers being clean shaven became a requirement just before World War I when chemical weapons were deemed a serious threat. The Navy and the Coast Guard were the last branches to ban beards, doing so in 1985 and 1986, respectively.
