Beauty queens and armed women in fatigues evidently is not a good sell, and the Army is looking to attract more females to the largely male-dominated armed forces.
According to internal emails obtained by Kate Brennan at Politico, as posted to Yahoo, Col. Lynette Arnhart, the head of a team studying how to make changes that would reach out to women recruits, said this to an Army spokesperson:
“In general, ugly women are perceived as competent while pretty women are perceived as having used their looks to get ahead. There is a general tendency to select nice looking women when we select a photo to go with an article (where the article does not reference a specific person). It might behoove us to select more average looking women.”
She then references an attached advertisement, seen here, and says it shows a “pretty woman, wearing make-up while on deployed duty. Such photos undermine the rest of the message (and may even make people ask if breaking a nail is considered hazardous duty).”
Arnhart is deputy director of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command’s Analysis Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and is helping to lead “an extensive study of the institutional and cultural factors associated with integrating women into previously closed” positions, Politico said.
As you might imagine, social media has caught fire with this clear jab at attractive women who serve in our nation’s special forces.
As they say: Be all you can be, except when it comes to how you look.
What are your thoughts on this attempt by the Army to keep it real? Sound off – one, two, three, four – below.
