From Politico:
Army PR push: 'Average-looking women'
The memo refered to the photo above, advising avoiding photos that 'glamorize' women in combat. |
By KATE BRANNEN | 11/19/13
The Army should use photos of “average-looking women” when it needs to illustrate stories about female soldiers, a specialist recommends — images of women who are too pretty undermine the communications strategy about introducing them into combat roles.
“In general, ugly women are perceived as competent while pretty women are perceived as having used their looks to get ahead,” wrote Col. Lynette Arnhart, who is leading a team of analysts studying how best to integrate women into combat roles that have previously been closed off to them. ...
“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 for our comms strategy. For example, the attached article 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 said.
She wrote that a photo of a female soldier with mud on her face that news agencies used last spring “sends a much different message—one of women willing to do the dirty work necessary in order to get the job done.” ...
After POLITICO first reported on the e-mail in Tuesday’s Morning Defense, critics seized upon Arnhart’s guidance as proof that today’s Army culture has a long way to go before women will be treated as equals.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) tweeted that it was “another example that @USArmy just doesn’t get it as it debates if pretty girls should be used in pamphlets.”
Since political discourse is now conducted in 140 character bites, I don't exactly know what the Congresswoman meant. But, clearly, "just doesn't get it" is an effective rhetorical device these days.
We are told that "society's" obsession with how women look is what prevents women from, say, performing Audie Murphy-like heroics on the battlefield, but it sure seems like women want to talk about how women look, even if, as in the case of the Congresswoman, they don't have anything to say.
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67 comments:
"Just doesn't get it" is not simply one rhetorical device, it is the main vector of spreading liberalism. It is a social idea more than an intellectual one. Proving that you are clever enough to pick up the social cues is how you prove your bona fides. It is true, of course, that it actually does take a sort of intelligence to pick up social cues. This is why nonliberals are perceived as dolts, and berating them for this is an effective tactic with some.
How often does one read Maureen Dowd, or Frank Rich, or Amanda Marcotte making an intellectual argument, as opposed to snarky superiority of what the cool kids think? There are liberals who do make reasoned arguments, but it's not their main recruiting tool. Usually, it is post hoc rationalisation.
Audie Murphy was 5'5" and weighed about a buck fifteen. Plenty of women around these days who are his size or bigger.
We should follow the Japanese model. It seems like it would attract women:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNdPPEwguDQ
We should follow the Japanese model.
I think the U.S. Navy did back in 1978:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InBXu-iY7cw
"Audie Murphy was 5'5" and weighed about a buck fifteen. Plenty of women around these days who are his size or bigger."
An Murphy became a stone-cold killer in combat. I wonder if plenty of women do?
Of course, Murphy had also been a hunter from about the time he could lift a rifle...
This crack team of Pentagon "analysts" is engaging in propaganda, not analysis, and will do as stellar a job as the ones who deduced that there were 26,000 military sex assaults last year.
AVI, in the first comment in this thread, is right on the money.
I see my liberal friends playing out this tribal schtick all the time. Several of them are very intelligent in conventional terms, but when we start talking politics or culture, it's all cues and code phrases and knowing looks. Many of them still use the word 'cool' to describe Approved Memes and Concepts.
I find it all most vexing . . . .
We should follow the Japanese model. It seems like it would attract women:
No, the Russians have the best military promo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoet2Q4yqeU
The thing about Jackie Spier's complaint is that one can't possibly predict which direction it's going to go in when it gets spelled out.
Will it be outrageous that pretty women are in the promotions? Or will it be outrageous that the Army would have a problem with pretty women in the promotions? I'll bet even the women who read her tweet, and give it a you-go-girl don't have an idea, and don't care, as long as men and the Army are bad. These women come to cheer and jeer and not to think -- just hand them the script for Christ sake!
"Just doesn't get it" is not simply one rhetorical device, it is the main vector of spreading liberalism. It is a social idea more than an intellectual one. Proving that you are clever enough to pick up the social cues is how you prove your bona fides. It is true, of course, that it actually does take a sort of intelligence to pick up social cues. This is why nonliberals are perceived as dolts, and berating them for this is an effective tactic with some.
Another phrase similar to "just doesn't get it" that you see a lot these days is, "Really?"
Sure, Audie Murphy was five foot-five, 115 pounds, but he grew up harder than hardscrabble and shifted almost completely not just for himself, but for his younger siblings; and to provide food he became a superb shot in taking small, highly mobile game. How many of the women in today's army have grown up in conditions even remotely as adverse as those in which Audie Murphy formed his character and honed his marksmanship?
Be sure not to show tough macho good-looking guys. Beta male plain-faced soldiers might not do the job.
And Hollywood better start using plain actors to play cops and the like. Ordinary looking cops might be demoralized in their jobs.
PS. Funny how plain-faced real-life people feel flattered to have good-looking actors and actresses play them in 'based on true story' movies.
Obviously if the Cold War were still going on, you wouldn't be seeing this kind of nonsense in the military. I think Putin was right when he said that the collapse of the USSR was "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century." There's no forced discipline anymore that can keep crap like this in check.
right on with AVI's "just doesn't get it" & "really?" also add: "Wow. Just wow. Really?"
Isn't it a scientific fact that attractive people are more intelligent and all-around more competent?
Why is that feminists want to imitate men do in pretty much all aspects(including appearance) but have ultra femme inclinations when handed access to media.All talk about books,weight,relationships,celebrity gossip and fashion dressed in the fig leaf of academic sounding leftist political lingo
Nothing about history,technology,scientific research(apart from how abortion is wonderful and differences between male and women),military tactics,weapons,geopolitics,religion and so on
Only in magazines catering to men do they have token female writers and editors and even then they manage to girl it up and make articles PC and uninteresting
Particularly in the case of National Geographic and Scientific American.
"just doesn’t get it" -- the beauty of this is that the readers can ascribe to it their own subjective meanings... a valuable tactic for keeping disparate coalitions unified.
If memory serves Speier is the Congresser who went into a non-sequitur story on the House floor about the time she'd had a medically necessary(*) abortion, in response to a pro-lifer who'd just read something out in a speech about abortions by discretion-- that is, NOT by physician's directive. This was hailed as Periclean Statespersonship at the time: "I am uterus, hear me roar;" etc.
*It's deep in the weeds AFAIC but she played this record again later when Tea Party firebrand Joe Walsh, late of Illinois, disputed the concept of a life-saving abortion or perhaps whether such a procedure has occurred; not sure which
All that occupying experience in Ayrab countries will be handy when the army is used for internal security duties, five years maximum from now.
Handy to have it staffed by recent immigrants as well, no hesitation in obeying questionable orders.
GC
Oh and by that time the men soldiers will be the ones wearing makeup on duty.
You have to admit: cross-editing the old Navy ads w/ the Keith David voice-over & the Nippon Dancefloor Strikeforce was actually more aesthetically compelling than either source ad on its own...
Then again, I also found Jack Donovan's column devil's-advocating the conscription of the most diesel women available to be convincing.
"Audie Murphy was 5'5" and weighed about a buck fifteen. Plenty of women around these days who are his size or bigger. "
yeah the 160 pound average american woman could easily do what he did because weight is what makes the world go around.
The MSNBC host Rachel Maddow speaks Speier as well, that kind of exasperated sneer that sounds unbecoming from someone older than 14. You would have liked the headlines at Buzzfeed/Salon/The Atlantic/XOJane earlier this month when the Senate passed its latest righteous-gay-fury ENDA bill. They were more or less all variations on, "Memo to GOP bigots: You're irrelevant"
The thing about Jackie Spier's complaint is that one can't possibly predict which direction it's going to go in when it gets spelled out.
The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated.
@panjooby & @avi -
Here's the Atlantic on how the word "because" has become a preposition.
More post hoc BS.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/
they're the ones who don't get it...plain girls still think they're hot, or at least aspire to hotness.
To the people arguing about Audie Murphy's weight.
A 5'5" 115lb man is going to be more powerful than a 5'5" 115lb woman. More of that buck-fifteen is muscle and he has more testosterone.
This is why we're taught from little boys never to touch women except when they want to be touched. Because our force, even what seems to be our light force, that's no big deal when we do it to each other, can under freak circumstances kill a woman.
As for Jackie Speier, she's one who "just doesn't get it." She was Leo Ryan's chief-of-staff when they both went down to Guyana in 1978 to investigate Jim Jones's cult. The cult killed her boss, left her for dead but she miraculously survived. But she survived to become an Obama cultist.
"Why is that feminists want to imitate men"
They only want to imitate men when government pensions are involved. But if you are an isolationist, a 100% female and LBGT infantry is a good sign.
Women do just fine in the IDF, and they seem to intentionally use beautiful women in advertisements.
It's 2013 and you just don't get it that snark is... an urban white thing? Wow. Just wow. Really?
That picture is supposed to be an example of the "pretty" type, at least by Army standards? Perhaps they should introduce the burka as standard wear in anticipation of the onslaught of the competent uglies.
Society may as well just let go of these notions that are based on a sense of false pride, that things like this are a man's job, and just go ahead and staff the Army entirely with lesbians. We've been told they're all yearning for a chance to die for their country and at this point in time it's now possible to make their dreams come true. It has the advantage that we could take higher casualties without a lot of political blowback since nobody cares about dead dykes.
...it's all cues and code phrases and knowing looks.
And it's not just the liberals. Establishment Republicans also have a patented eye roll/knowing smirk whenever someone mentions the TEA Party approvingly.
Women in combat, Navy SEALs with mandatory diversity, I'm all for it. Anything that weakens this rotten empire is good. The best thing that could happen is a bitter, brutal defeat of the U.S. military a la Vietnam. It would probably put an end to domestic politics driven adventurism for decades, and possibly forever since the new gibsmedat population is going to want that military money for themselves. We have no real foreign enemies, only domestic ones and they are promoting the very invasion that the military is designed to prevent. Why waste the money (not to mention lives)?
The first female Marines ever just completed infantry training:
http://blogs.militarytimes.com/battle-rattle/2013/11/19/the-first-four-women-in-marine-corps-history-have-completed-infantry-training/
As mentioned earlier, Audie Murphy was only 5 feet 5 and just barely over 100 lbs. He was smaller than many women today. There are plenty of women these days who are stronger than Murphy ever was, especially with modern training. These Marines are probably bigger and stronger than Murphy was.
Citing Murphy is not a very good argument.
Citing Audie "Midget" Murphy is not a very compelling argument here. Pointing to an undersized manlet smaller and weaker than many contemporary women is not a good reason why women shouldn't be soldiers.
Audie Murphy was 5'5" and weighed about a buck fifteen. Plenty of women around these days who are his size or bigger.
And I'm taller and bigger than Redskins running back Chris Thompson. Maybe Coach Shanahan will let me play now that Chris is on injured reserve.
Not only was Audie "Manlet" Murphy undersized, he was also a head case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy#Post-war_trauma
"Murphy was plagued by insomnia and bouts of depression, related to his military service and slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow.[117][118] A post-service medical examination on June 17, 1947, revealed symptoms of headaches, vomiting, and nightmares about war. His medical records indicated that he took sleeping pills to help prevent nightmares."
So he was overly emotional, moody, mentally weak, and he abused sleeping pills. It almost sounds like he had PMS or something.
In other words, he wasn't physically and mentally much different from the average woman.
While I haven't quite figured out the reason yet, I am outraged by this! Outraged I tell you!
right on with AVI's "just doesn't get it" & "really?" also add: "Wow. Just wow. Really?"
Also, "Seriously? SERIOUSLY??????"
Unlike nearly everyone else in 2013's Congress, at least Speier can credibly be said to have been in combat, given that she was shot five times and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip in the People's Temple ambush of her boss Leo Ryan.
Audie Murphy was a man. Men are better at every measure in combat including reaction times and shooting skills. The goal is to make the armed forces irrelevent except as a social justice plaything.
It makes no sense to put women into any military position. Positions women can hold could be better done by older or disabled men.
Audie Murphy was a man.
He was 5'5" and 100 lbs. He was a manlet, not a man. He was an Irish manlet, like a leprechaun.
"Anonymous said...
Not only was Audie "Manlet" Murphy undersized, he was also a head case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy#Post-war_trauma
"Murphy was plagued by insomnia and bouts of depression, related to his military service and slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow.[117][118] A post-service medical examination on June 17, 1947, revealed symptoms of headaches, vomiting, and nightmares about war. His medical records indicated that he took sleeping pills to help prevent nightmares."
So he was overly emotional, moody, mentally weak, and he abused sleeping pills. It almost sounds like he had PMS or something.
In other words, he wasn't physically and mentally much different from the average woman."
Obvious troll is eye-rollingly obvious. He was the guy that stood on the back of a burning tank and single handedly fought off a battalion or more of elite Nazi infantry. I got this funny feeling like he could whip your ass while asleep AND strung out on sleeping pills and the kind of PTSD you get from, you know, fighting off a battalion of SS from the back of a burning tank.
He was the guy that stood on the back of a burning tank and single handedly fought off a battalion or more of elite Nazi infantry. I got this funny feeling like he could whip your ass while asleep AND strung out on sleeping pills and the kind of PTSD you get from, you know, fighting off a battalion of SS from the back of a burning tank.
I get the feeling that you have no understanding of modern warfare and the role of chance in infantry survival. An infantryman surviving a battle has more to do with chance than personal skill.
"Isn't it a scientific fact that attractive people are more intelligent and all-around more competent?" - they wouldn't be so much smarter and prettier if they weren't.
Anonydroid at 1:56 PM Said: I get the feeling that you have no understanding of modern warfare and the role of chance in infantry survival. An infantryman surviving a battle has more to do with chance than personal skill.
Hunsdon said: Run many dismounted patrols through Kandahar there, have you? Audie Murphy was a ton of bad news on a 120 pound frame, a stone killer, and we were lucky to have him.
I know, I know, don't engage the troll.
"I get the feeling that you have no understanding of modern warfare and the role of chance in infantry survival. An infantryman surviving a battle has more to do with chance than personal skill."
I get the feeling you have less infantry training and experience than me. MAJ Murphy wasn't crazy crazy skilled like say, Chuck Kelly or SGT York. You've heard of them...right? An infantryman's survival isn't dependent on him a whole lot... but that's not the point. You don't get the Medal of Freaking Honor for really giving two shits about your own survival... that's the entire point of the award.
How many men will jump on the back of a burning tank destroyer, rack the .50 and start mowing down krauts while everyone else in olive drab is headed for the tree-line? Barely any. How many women, hot or not, will? Even fewer. War is zero sum. If you don't have a guy like Audie Murphy to hold back that counterattack, then the retreat turns into a rout and you can loose several companies worth of men in minutes. I hope you realize that's why he's a great soldier, not because he was a good marksman.
I hope you realize that's why he's a great soldier, not because he was a good marksman.
The point is that citing an undersized manlet smaller and weaker than many contemporary women is not a good reason why women shouldn't be soldiers.
"He was the guy that stood on the back of a burning tank and single handedly fought off a battalion or more of elite Nazi infantry."
I've read his autobiography and don't remember him doing anything like that. His engagements were relatively small and not larger than life -- because life isn't larger than life.
I am ok with women being in the armed forces and even the infantry if they can pass the same physical tests as the men, but I doubt they do have to pass the same tests.
Please change "bites" to "bytes" unless that is an intentional wordplay.
"He was the guy that stood on the back of a burning tank and single handedly fought off a battalion or more of elite Nazi infantry."
A battalion is a unit with 300 to 1,200 soldiers.
I am ok with women being in the armed forces and even the infantry if they can pass the same physical tests as the men, but I doubt they do have to pass the same tests.
Exactly. What did Murphy bench? They didn't even lift weights back then. They did calisthenics - touching your toes, jumping jacks, etc. Lots of women these days are bigger and stronger than Murphy was.
@ Hack--Are you serious? You read To Hell and Back and didn't know what he won the Medal of Honor for? That's like watching Top Gun and not knowing it involves pilots and airplanes. 'Not larger than life' tends to be strongly correlated with 'Not deserving of the Medal of Honor' or 'Not being the most decorated soldier in American history'. Shockingly the most decorated warrior the country has ever produced has a pretty exceptional combat record.
@anontroll-- 6x tigers, 4-5 anti tank guns, flak88, STGs, and at least 200 infantry. Not in the same TO&E but easily a battalion worth of troops.
"The first female Marines ever just completed infantry training"
Herstory has been made! Enough with the pullups!
"There are plenty of women these days who are stronger than Murphy ever was, especially with
modern training. "
Don't let the steroids fool you, women are still flabbergasted by how the skinny-ass man who'd fit twice in their jeans can still lift heavy things without much ado.
"
Citing Murphy is not a very good argument. "
Did you even grok why it was cited?
Anon who thinks there are a 'lot of women' bigger and stronger than Audie Murphy was,
Go fuck yourself. Bigger sure, stronger? No way. He was a country kid brought up in the Depression. You literally either have no idea what you're talking about or are lying out your ass. You might, might find a very few weight lifting women who could equal his lifting but that's it. Plus women are far slower, more likely to be injured and have less endurance than men.
Look at a commonly used test for police officer hiring. It is designed to pass 4/5ths as many women as men. It is adjusted for age and sex. The highest standards for women in their 20s is still much easier than the easiest standards for men in their 50s.
Become educated about a subject before you spout off. Or simply look at reality instead of Joss Whedon fantasies. I am sick of lies like this simply going unchallenged.
"Did you even grok why it was cited? "
To save you and me the trouble, look up Sailer's Law of Female Journalism and then reread the relevant part, especially the bit about
"but it sure seems like women want to talk about how women look"
If memory serves Speier is the Congresser who went into a non-sequitur story on the House floor about the time she'd had a medically necessary(*) abortion, in response to a pro-lifer who'd just read something out in a speech about abortions by discretion-- that is, NOT by physician's directive. This was hailed as Periclean Statespersonship at the time: "I am uterus, hear me roar;" etc.
Pro-Life advocates should always start by making their opponents acknowledge, or refuse to acknowledge, how grateful they are that their mothers didn't abort them.
All that occupying experience in Ayrab countries will be handy when the army is used for internal security duties, five years maximum from now.
The increasing inclusiveness, diversity, feminization, homosexuality, and political correctness will come in handy, too.
Women in combat, Navy SEALs with mandatory diversity, I'm all for it. Anything that weakens this rotten empire is good.
Well said. Fight against the demographic change, let the rot spread throughout the regime.
The goal is to make the armed forces irrelevent except as a social justice plaything.
A goal I wholeheartedly endores and support. Also, it plays into the trend of PMCs; as the military turns into an extension of the welfare state, the PMCs take on the real military duties.
He was an Irish manlet, like a leprechaun.
Al Capone looked more Irish than Murphy did.
I couldn't care less if there is some Amazon lesbian stronger than Audie Murphy- a sane nation doesn't turn it's girls into infantry. Snips/snails/puppy-dogs' tails vs sugar/spice/everything nice and all. I'm sure some tribe in prehistory tried giving the girls spears and sending them off to fight; their experiment obviously wasn't very successful, and the tribes that left the girls at home won. When all cultures on earth back into prehistory agree on a thing, my assumption is that thing is the way it is for a reason. The women in the military issue was probably settled 20 or 30 thousand years ago.
I'm just waiting for the left to discover that most parents aren't that good at raising children; surely state-trained child-raising experts would do a better job. Who cares if the way it is now is the way it's been for thousands of years? And if you disagree you just. don't. get. it.
Unlike nearly everyone else in 2013's Congress, at least Speier can credibly be said to have been in combat
Big deal, they just knockout-king'd a Congresswoman in D.C. the other day. If people can claim hangouts w/ gun-toting hoodlums as a political credibility point why isn't Jim Traficant or Maxine Waters House Speaker today?
dcthrowback:
Here's the Atlantic on how the word "because" has become a preposition.
More post hoc BS.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/
It's bullshit because no genitive, temporal or spatial relationship and because word deletion of the head (and possibly an article) of the prepositional phrase that follows "because".
By looking at it as a novel grammatical use of the word rather than mere word deletion, they're aggrandising a childish affectation, imo.
Al Capone looked more Irish than Murphy did.
Al Capone didn't look Irish at all. Because he wasn't Irish at all.
Audie Murphy looked very Irish. Since he was Irish:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Audie_Murphy-DW_ORIGINAL_PUBLICITY_PROMO_PHOTO.jpg
"That picture is supposed to be an example of the "pretty" type, at least by Army standards?" - She isn't fat, that has to put her in the top quartile of all American women.
Okay, you got me. Al Capone was a pretty liver-lipped, Sicilian-looking guy.
So Frank Sinatra looked more Irish than Audie Murphy did, and Audie Murphy looked more Italian than Frank Sinatra did.
The women who can fireman's carry 150 lbs farther than Audie Murphy, do more pullups and run a mile in less time are ...
99th percentile females? Physically I mean. Somewhere thereabouts.
And what percentage of those could also beat Audie at a aggression drill like Pugil Stick fighting or MCMAP spars?
You're getting into one in a thousand territory is all I'm saying, and I don't think it's worth it to put tampons in everybody's MRE just to accomodate those ladies (contemplated, but decided against "freaks")
So Frank Sinatra looked more Irish than Audie Murphy did, and Audie Murphy looked more Italian than Frank Sinatra did.
I don't think you know what Irish and Italian people look like.
Audie Murphy looked Irish, not Italian.
Frank Sinatra did not look Irish, he looked Italian. More specifically, Sinatra had the Italian/northern Euro mix look, which combines the wolfish Med facial structure with lighter coloration, like blue eyes. Bradley Cooper would be another example of this type.
The military may be losing its ability to fight, but it's not losing its ability to catfight:
"Sergeant-turned-beauty queen Miss America contestant lashes out at female colonel who branded woman soldier 'too pretty' for publicity shots"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511328/Miss-America-contestant-lashes-female-colonel-said-female-soldiers-pretty.html
"Army sergeant-turned-beauty queen Miss Kansas today lashed out at a female army colonel who said photos of 'average-looking' and 'ugly' women should be used in PR campaigns to get more females in combat roles.
Colonel Lynette Arnhart is leading a team of analysts studying how to integrate women into fighting roles in the army and in leaked emails, referenced an article featuring an attractive Corporal Kristine Tejada as an example of how pretty girls deployed on duty undermine the army's attempts convince the public.
'In general, ugly women are perceived as competent while pretty women are perceived as having used their looks to get ahead,' wrote Col. Lynette Arnhart in the email exchange seen by Politico.
But today, Theresa Vail, the 22-year-old Miss Kansas and Miss America contestant, hit out on Twitter: She said: 'Unfortunately that is the sick reality and one of the many stereotypes I'm trying to break'."
Colonel Lynette Arnhart
We're not a serious country anymore.
Sinatra looked kinda like Ronnie Reagan. Isn't Reagan an Irish name?
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