Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s crusade against military facial hair is just the latest in a long line of rules you’d struggle to find anywhere else in American life.
Some services ban chewing gum or sipping a drink while walking. However, one particularly strange rule for many troops, even when it’s cold out, is no hands in pockets.
The rules and the strictness with which they are upheld vary among the different service branches. The Marine Corps and Army are among the toughest enforcers.
For some senior leaders, the restriction on putting hands in pockets is about discipline, uniformity, and maintaining a professional appearance — looking sharp, so to speak. But for service members, the rule can feel impractical and has spawned numerous Reddit threads devoted to the matter.
Marines ban pocketed hands under almost all circumstances when not training, feeling that the look can “detract from an appropriate military presence,” according to the Corps’ uniform manual. But when training outdoors, “good judgment” will govern whether Marines can put their hands in their pockets.
The Army’s uniform regulations ban hands in pockets for any reason other than “momentarily to place or retrieve objects.”
The Navy previously barred sailors from putting their hands in their pockets but reversed course in 2024, allowing them to do so as long as having their hands in their pockets doesn’t interfere with safety or saluting. (That same Navy decision also allowed for the return of the obscure Navy tiara.)
The Air Force has allowed its troops to put their hands in their pockets since 2021. A service news release at the time said the update was part of a broader effort to let troops determine how best to “maintain standards” without having commanders and rules “specifying exact behavior in every situation,” putting it on service members to figure out what’s appropriate.
Beyond guidelines on how service members use their pockets, plenty of other strange rules abound in the armed forces.
Until 2019, for instance, male Marines were not allowed to use umbrellas while in more formal “service” uniforms — women could, but men were expected to embrace the rain like stoic sea captains. Now they can all use umbrellas, unless they’re wearing their camouflage utility uniforms, which are worn by the majority daily.
Some troops also aren’t allowed to carry gym bags with shoulder straps — those must be carried in one hand, especially with formal uniforms.
Most troops can still travel in their camouflage uniforms, often seen in airports, although they are generally barred from wearing formal uniforms unless it’s directly related to official military business.
And for outdoor exercise, troops were long required to wear reflective neon belts and vests when running, walking, and so on, even in broad daylight. The Marines ditched that rule in 2015. In 2019, it took the Army’s service secretary weighing to change those rules so that soldiers only wear glow belts at night.
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