This is a picture of one of my son’s over 30 years ago in my LBE, Load Bearing Equipment. I’m sure they have other names for this gear now. In fact in the 70s it was called something else too. Anyway, isn’t he cute, adorable, and in some sense laughable as when children try on adult shoes or clowns wear oversized ones?
This is how female soldiers in the 1990’s looked in their LBE. I had a chaplain assistant assigned to me, a young woman who was five feet-nothing and maybe 105 pounds. The job of the chaplain’s assistance is to protect the chaplain. A site similar to the above does not assure one of that.
Here is a picture of the New Orleans Chief of Police.
She was on camara a lot after the Sugar Bowl terrorist attack in 2025. The picture of my son is funny, but this of an aged-woman is not funny? See her behind a podium in the days after the attack giving briefings. She looks like the blue-haired lady in front of you driving a car much too big for her. Does she inspire confidence, authority, ability to protect anybody?
Since the Roman Legionaries, troops have worn headgear not only for protection but for intimation. In the 70s, you had to be a minimum of 6 feet tall to join the Michigan State Police and still at the time all of them wore hats to make them taller. You won’t see a Texas Ranger, and rarely a DPS officer, out of his car without his hat.
In 1975 when I went to Basic Training and till things changed in the 80s the physical fitness tests were physical, strength-based tests. I was tall but thin compared to most. They issued me fatigues with a 13 1/2 inch neck. We ran in fatigues and combat boots, sometimes we had t-shirts on instead of the heavier fatigue shirt but always we wore the fatigue pants and combat boots.
To make the physical fitness more “gender friendly”, the proper word is “sex friendly” but that would be misunderstood by all but Boomers and above, the Army switched to anaerobic physical fitness. We ran in t-shirts, gym shorts, and tennis shoes. And the standards were not the same for men and women. When accused of having a double-standard, the Army replied it wasn’t a double-standard but a different standard. They should have been Jesuits or church bureaucrats.
The argument is that you don’t need strength or endurance to push buttons, to drop bombs, to fly drones. Women can do those things as well as men. Yes, they can.
Do some research on the bomb tonnage dropped on London in the Blitz, on Vietnam in the war, or in the Gulf Wars. You can’t bomb your way to victory. (Only the Airforce has ever believed you could.) You can blow up virtually everything – see Dresden, Hiroshima, Hanoi – but eventually boots have to be on the ground. Even with Japan and Germany who surrendered, we sent in occupying forces. And in some sense they need to be intimidating all on their own.
Remember when Hillary Clinton ran for president? When she tried to get loud and forceful like a man her voice became shrill, harpy, and somewhat laughable. It goes much the same way when man tries to gentle a baby with his voice. It’s not natural. It cracks; it goes gutteral. It too is somewhat laughable. Boys dressed in LBE, cute though they be, are that as well, and so are blue-haired grandmothers assuring you their taking charge of a deadly situation.
