Published: October 6, 2025
On Tuesday, September 30th, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gathered all senior military officials to a meeting in Quantico, VA on short notice, using this untraditional event to lay out the issues he saw with the “people and culture” of the US Military. His speech first stoked fear, decrying the “naive and dangerous” nature of pacifism, praising the “warrior ethos,” and discussing the proposed name change for the “Department of War.” This inspired a sentiment of “this could have been an email” and unrest among some officials present, as reported by Politico. Hegseth’s remarks took a turn, though, as he described his plans to reshape the military, inspiring criticism in the days following – as the specifics have worrying implications for medical accommodations and a culture of mistreatment in the military.
Hegseth’s rhetoric was directed towards combat readiness and physical fitness, seeing these new standards as contrary to the “woke garbage” and political “debris” he views as holding back the military’s lethality and effectiveness. Whether his updated personnel policies will improve unit cohesion or preparedness is up for debate, however: he focused instead on women, body fat, hair and facial hair, and policies protecting service members from “bullying and hazing.” These standards and his claims about existing policies do not reflect the reality of military recruitment, physical fitness, and efforts to address rampant abuse. Instead, they prioritize an aesthetic look for the military – suspiciously similar to the on-screen portrayal in the 1987 film Full-Metal Jacket. His new “1990 test,” reviewing any policy change made since then, suggests he is inspired by that era’s brutal treatment of service members – and that he is dedicated to undoing what former and active-duty officials consider to be crucial progress. Notably, women were barred from all combat roles and many non-combat roles until the mid-1990’s.
Weight was one of the secretary’s most significant complaints: criticizing “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world” to a room of the very same generals he was insulting. In reality, as AP News reports, the history of changes to weight and body fat standards in recruitment are based on an improving understanding of physical fitness in the wider medical community. The 2016 changes to Navy fitness assessment highlighted this shift, as physicians and experts began formally recognizing that visual weight, body fat percentage, and Body Mass Index (BMI) are not comprehensive measures of one’s health and physical capability. These changes – as well as an improvement to the measurements used to decide physical fitness – also led to adjustments to metrics previously used to deny women roles in the military. Hegseth views these changes as allowing too many unqualified recruits to join, while the exact opposite is true: these older standards turned away too many capable, willing service members while the military was facing an ongoing decline in recruitment.
Standards for grooming are similarly more complex than Hegseth’s comments let on: while religious exemptions were established in 1993 and reinforced in court multiple times since, these new rules seem to openly challenge these rights. Black men also have raised concerns over the shaving new facial hair shaving standards: the condition “Pseudofolliculitis Barbae,” present in 60% of Black men and people with curly hair, causes painful skin irritation, razor burns, and bumps from ingrown hairs when shaving. Advocates concerned with the implicit racism of these policies highlight Hegseth’s chosen exception: “We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans.” Referencing one Norse soldier granted permission to wear a full beard during the first Trump administration, Hegseth neglected to address the history and recognition of medical racism that prompted the establishment of these policy changes – while also hinting at the not-so-quiet-part-out-loud.
Most concerningly, the secretary’s remarks also targeted the frameworks for addressing abuse and mistreatment within the military’s ranks – especially systems of accountability for “toxic leaders.” Just as these restrictions are being introduced during a recruitment crisis, these challenges to “empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing” are happening as the military still struggles to address harassment and violence within its own ranks. Interpersonal violence, sexual harassment and assault, and the “hazing and bullying” Hegseth references are rampant across all branches of the military, but some branches and bases are much worse than others. Fort Hood, for example, has been the subject of controversy: the deaths of Vanessa Guillén and Ana Basaldua Ruiz being clear cases among many of an escalation from sexual harassment to violence, and cases that leadership failed to intervene in even after reports. Unfortunately, this violence – targeted disproportionately at women, non-white people, and queer people – is still a significant problem in the military. Improvements to the equity of these investigations is needed, as Black and Hispanic service members are investigated and court-martialed at significantly higher rates compared to white peers, while cases of discrimination, abuse, and assault are not properly handled. Rolling back the small improvements made to these systems of accountability over the past years may prove disastrous for efforts to seek justice for survivors and victims, and may even embolden these “toxic leaders” to commit the “nasty” forms of hazing and bullying that Hegseth vaguely discouraged. This standard is not clear: when is bullying or hazing not “nasty,” and how will the administration draw this line?
Hegseth’s new standards will not likely improve the “readiness,” “lethality,” or any measure of the military’s capability. They will instead make the military more male, more white, more unnecessarily hawkish about visible weight, and less representative of the able-bodied and willing population ready to serve in the military. The violence within its ranks will continue unchallenged and more extreme, as the military struggles to draw in more recruits to an already-fraught organization. On Tuesday, the country’s top generals were faced with a dilemma familiar to many federal workers this year: “do the honorable thing and resign” as Hegseth suggested, or stand in the way of these changes?
