SEPTEMBER 21, 2025 – Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum in August directing the military services to stringently enforce facial hair grooming standards across the force.
“The grooming standard set by the U.S. military is to be clean-shaven and neat in presentation for a proper military appearance,” said Hegseth in a memorandum dated Aug. 20, 2025.
Service members with certain medical conditions, such as pseudofolliculitis barbae or eczema, for instance, are eligible to apply for medical waivers that allow them to abstain from shaving. Those medical conditions might have made daily shaving challenging for those service members.
Some of those medical waivers were issued on a long-term basis, meaning that some service members could go for years without having to meet the standard of being clean-shaven.
That is no longer the case. Now, service members who have medical waivers for shaving will have one year to address the underlying medical issues that keep them from meeting the standard.
According to direction by Hegseth, when needed, medical officers will provide written recommendations concerning shaving waivers to a service member’s commander; service members with approved waivers will participate in a medical treatment plan; and commanders will initiate separation of those who still require a shaving waiver after more than one year of undergoing medical treatment.
Service members are not alone in seeking out medical treatments for conditions that prevent them from meeting departmentwide grooming standards.
“There are various medical treatment plans that a provider can recommend to a service member that can allow them to get off a permanent shaving profile,” said a Pentagon official, on background. “Each one of those treatment plans will be individualized.”
A shaving waiver for medical reasons, the official said, is just like any other medical condition that requires a temporary waiver from meeting standards.
“Just like any type of injury or something else, which results in a service member being on a profile, service members are provided through their medical provider or military treatment facility … options to get back within standards,” the official said.
Whether it be a broken leg, an illness, a condition that prevents shaving, or any other medical condition, the official said, there are treatment options available within the military medical community.
“We have a very robust medical system that is constantly working with service members, regardless of what the specific limitation is, to get them back to medical readiness,” the official said.
The secretary’s memorandum on grooming standards is “effective immediately,” the official said. However, that doesn’t mean service members who currently have shaving waivers will be separated in August 2026.
“Each individual case will require an individual review by the service member’s medical provider and commander before the initiation of separation takes place. Commanders are charged with determining if retention is appropriate based upon the service member’s progress, or if separation is in the best interest of the service and the member,” the official said. “Over the next year, we will see movement by individuals to come into compliance with the secretary of war’s established standard for the department.”
The new direction from the secretary does not affect shaving waivers related to religious accommodations, nor does it impact growing mustaches if the military departments permit their service members to do so, the official said.
By C. Todd Lopez
Pentagon News