The New York Post is pretty worked up about President Obama’s proposal to do away with gender-specific Marine Corps’ uniform caps in favor of a unisex design. The problem? The new caps — a simple, streamlined design pictured above on the right — are too girly.
The Post reports:
Thanks to a plan by President Obama to create a “unisex” look for the Corps, officials are on the verge of swapping out the Marines’ iconic caps — known as “covers” — with a new version that some have derided as so “girly” that they would make the French blush.
It doesn’t stop there. The Post suggests the accessory belongs in “the shops of Christopher Street,” and then predictably proceeds to equate “feminine” with “frivolous”: “We don’t even have enough funding to buy bullets, and the DoD is pushing to spend $8 million on covers that look like women’s hats,” an unnamed senior Marine laments. Absent from the Post’s coverage of the debacle is consideration of the cap’s name: the Dan Daly, after a male World War I hero who wore a quite similarly styled cap.
Update: Paul Szoldra at Business Insider got in touch with a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, who clarified: “The President in no way, shape, or form directed the Marine Corps to change our uniform cover. We’re looking for a new cover for our female Marines for the primary reason that the former manufacturer went out of business…The Marine Corps has zero intention of changing the male cover.”
