SMOL: Trudeau's Hippy Hair Force finally getting much needed snip

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Looks like the sloppy, slovenly, Che Guevara-look for the Canadian Armed Forces is losing favour after almost two years.

The Trudeau government’s September 2022 policy allowing long hair, scruffy unkempt beards and other relaxed “uniform” standards seemed a pretty cool idea for those contemptuously disassociated from, and hostile to, military culture.

At its core was the idea that shunting aside the short hair and dress and deportment standards, making the military look, well, less military, then Gen Z-ers and millennials will jump down from their entitled perches, run down to the local recruiting centre (more likely have their parents drive them) and signup to serve and fight.

But, two years later, where is that anticipated stampede of teens and youth clamouring to enlist in Trudeau’s groovy new Hair Force? Could it be that with todays relaxed “uniform” dress code we are unintentionally portraying our country’s military service as something shameful, whose once proud face is to be hidden behind a dishevelled exterior?

I certainly expressed my concern at the Forces’ new long-hair, relaxed-look initiative in my July 17, 2022 Toronto Sun column. Back then I identified the new dishevelled dress code “as a naive attempt to conjure interest among radical millennial fringe lifestyles that never have, and likely never will, consider the Forces a career.”

And, frankly, I am not at all surprised that professional military heads are gradually prevailing. Trudeau’s Hippy Hair Force is getting, at least for now, a trimming – literally and figuratively.

But now, for the sake of perspective, let’s highlight the motivations and substance behind the 2022 long-hair, Che-Guevara-finds-Jesus-look for the Canadian Armed Forces.

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The news release dated Sept. 6, 2022 announcing the new policy stated, “The appearance of the Canadian Armed Forces has not kept up with the changing Canadian society it serves.”

Thus, alleged sinister acts of authority like ordering a male soldier, sailor, aviator to cut his hair and shave were seen as “discriminatory.”

It would appear that in Trudeau’s Hippy Hair Force the menacing base barber and soldier’s shaving kit are lingering iterations of ever-so-ancient, white colonial-inspired notions of masculinity. This along with other alleged colonial-inspired customs and conventions of the Canadian military I once proudly served. Time-honoured professional practices which, according to the Canadian Armed Forces own peer-reviewed academic journal – Canadian Military Journal – must apparently be re-made into an “anti-oppression framework” of “intersectional feminist, decolonial, critical race, queer, critical disability, and critical political economy theories to advance culture change efforts.”

Also allegedly identified as discriminatory (based on the 2022 policy changes) are such supposed old-fashioned patriarchal rules as forbidding a soldier to chew gum in public, walking with hands in pockets, or disallowing uniformed military personnel to show open signs of affection while in uniform. Such presumed outdated professional military practices had to go according to Trudeau.

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But has the disordered Jesus-on-a-bad-hair-day military look supplemented with gum chewing and public kissing while walking the streets with your hands in your uniform pants achieved its intended goal of making the Canadian Armed Forces more appealing to today’s standards and expectations?

Doesn’t look like it.

But I have no doubt that, with the partial reining in of the long-hair, casual-look policy there are some woke Trudeau sycophants in the Forces who will be unhappy with the fact they may have to now look just a tad more military-like. Including, I assume, some of the allegedly serving members behind the stinging, insolent hate-mail I received when I wrote my original 2022 column. Like the e-mail I received with the name Latoya Williamson who, in 2022, stated, “There is absolutely no place in the CAF for your thinking” and “people with your opinion have no place in the institution.”

Well, Latoya, the recent “fade” on the Forces’ dishevelled long-hair policy suggests otherwise.

And then there was the feedback from another supposed Forces member (referring to himself as Mike) who insisted that “soldiers today do not have to be good at cleaning shacks or buffing DEU boots because their time is better spent at learning skills that are force multipliers.”

Well, sorry Mike, but us veterans from the old short-hair, spit-shined Forces were immersed in a heaping helpful of deadly serious combat-related training and skills between occasional drill, parades and kit inspections. Unlike your generation, we mastered both facets of military life.

Maybe, sometime before the next war reaches our shores, the high-and-almighty Mike and Latoya woke warriors of Trudeau’s fading Hair Force will prove us old, grey, pavement-pounding, combat-focused, spit-shining, shirt-pressed, never-pass-a-fault, Cold Warriors wrong.

Yet it appears that even the Canadian Forces today are not wholly convinced that hippy, sloppy and slovenly is the way professional militaries should look and behave in public.

— Robert Smol is a retired military intelligence officer who proudly wore the traditional, professional Canadian Armed Forces uniform for more than 20 years. He is currently completing a PhD in military history. Reach him at rmsmol@gmail.com.