Bobs are back: Naval Academy mandates chin-length haircuts for new female students

The United States Naval Academy is bringing back a requirement that female plebes, or first year students, cut their hair to chin length.

Female first-year students had to arrive at the Annapolis campus on Thursday with a bob or have their hair cut at a “processing station” for Induction Day, the official start of their seven-week “plebe summer” program. Male students were required to shave their heads.

The haircut requirement for women marks the return of a tradition that ran from 1976, when female students were first admitted to the academy, until 2019. The change seven years ago followed efforts to create a more inclusive environment and match Navy standards for women of varying hair textures.

This summer’s reversal is just the latest change at the academy and to military uniforms under U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has said that efforts to promote diversity make the armed forces weaker.

The bob rebound restores “a common standard so that male and female plebes share the same visible symbol of their commitment to naval service and to the team,” said Kara Handley, a public affairs officer at the academy, in a statement. “The I-Day haircut marks the moment when civilians begin setting aside individual preferences and start embracing the responsibilities, expectations and identity of future Navy and Marine Corps officers.”

Handley declined to share what prompted the reversal.

“For it to happen abruptly three weeks before [Induction] is very unsettling to me,” said retired Captain Timika “Timi” Lindsay, who served as chief of diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity at the Naval Academy until 2021.

Regulations when Lindsay was a student prevented women from putting their hair up, and other Black women in her squad turned to chemical relaxers that damaged their hair during her plebe summer in 1988. When she returned as a director, Lindsay witnessed young Black women having to take out their braids on Induction Day so staff could check whether their hair fell past their chin.

In one case in 2018, Lindsay said five women spent hours taking their braids out and then were told to rebraid their hair without any products — a process that spanned hours and led to them missing the rest of the day’s activities.

The incident prompted Lindsay to start a campaign teaching academy staff about how the hair standards impacted women with different hair types and which hairstyles and products could be used to help them meet academy standards. Now, she feels that work is being erased.

“I pray there’s nothing that goes wrong because of this blindness,” she said.

Other Naval Academy alumnae have more positive feelings about the rite of passage.

Newly retired Navy captain Sarah Self-Kyler said getting the hair cut during her plebe summer in 1995 made her feel like she was stepping into a whole new culture. Looking back at old pictures, she can measure her growth in the Naval Academy by the length of her bob.

“I appreciated that we were all going through the same trauma of hair that’s too short going to a ponytail,” she said. “You’re all learning to look stupid together.”

Self-Kyler now chooses to wear her hair short: “It makes me feel very professional,” she said.

Her former roommate, Kathleen “Kitty” Sutherland, said her thick, curly hair became difficult to manage after being chopped, creating issues for her peers when neither a rubber band nor barrette could keep strands out of her face.

“I definitely got myself and squad mates a couple extra push-ups for my hair,” she said.

She can look back at it and laugh, but she is sympathetic to those with thicker hair textures and women of color.

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