US Air Force Major Jennifer Holmes, who identifies as the “senior trial counsel at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland,” took issue with General Mark Welsh’s “all in” call for a Mustache March in an opinion column entitled “In Mustache March, I lose“:

I am not invited to be a part of the latest team-building game, Mustache March. I have been relegated to the bench to cheer the real players on…

This “gauntlet” thrown down by the most senior leader in our Air Force does not bring us together by tradition; it promotes the long-standing “boys club” that continues to drive amazing female airmen out of the military…

In a day when the Air Force is under so much scrutiny, it seems almost impossible to me that our leadership has driven a blatant, public wedge between the women and the men. Our most senior leader has started a camaraderie game exclusively for the men.

Those are pretty strong words for an Airman to publish in the Air Force Times, and they were met by comments equally strong, including some who sarcastically agreed with her:

Tell ya what – get rid of the Princess cut blouse and the skirt and the tab. Level off the PT standards across the genders…I mean, it isn’t fair to exclude the women over something as silly as a gender-based limitation (you know…like the ability to grow a mustache). Cut that hair to a 1/4 inch maximum length at the termination point above the top of the collar and off the ears. Whatever it takes to include this, ahem, “minority group”. Make them all look like men…whatever. Then we can focus our attention on something more substantial than this ridiculousness.

In the end, this is surely just what the Air Force needs: a gender scandal to join the budget, religious freedom, and sexual assault controversies already ongoing. To be fair, however, Major Holmes may just be giving another voice to the constant focus on gender-distinction in the military. For example, her commentary comes just days after an official Air Force article was titled “First female assumes command of ANG fighter wing.” A commenter on that article dryly asked:

Is it the official Air Force position that females are inferior to males and therefore it is somehow newsworthy when a female does something that males do all of the time?

Major Holmes closed with a zinger of “but what if…”

Would this be OK if Air Force leadership had an Air Force-wide team-building competition that completely excluded other minority groups?

She apparently missed the irony: Major Holmes said this during the Air Force’s officially-recognized celebration of Women’s History Month.

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