Military Uniforms: The Psychological Dimension
Introduction
In most armed forces, the uniform is such an important aspect of the collective identity that failure to wear it properly is considered a serious breach of military discipline. This article will discuss the psychological significance of military uniforms, examining why they are such a quintessential part of the military, and what purposes they serve in enabling the armed forces to achieve their objectives.
Military Uniforms as Emblems of Status
The most readily apparent purpose of uniforms is to serve as a symbol of status within the military structure. Uniforms are used not only to distinguish the officers from the enlisted personnel, but also to indicate a person’s rank, job speciality and previous awards. Insignia, hat style, trade badges, and the pins and ribbons above the right chest pocket all serve as additional symbols of status. For recruits, special items of clothing—such as an arm patch, beret or lanyard—are often used to mark the change in status that occurs once a person has completed their initial training and is officially recognised as a soldier. The United States (US) Navy has also found that placing potential recruits into uniform is an effective recruitment strategy. With the use of morphing photography, Navy recruitment kiosks are able to show prospective sailors what they will look like in uniform. The photographs are then sent to the potential recruit, along with recruiting information.
As symbols of rank, uniforms serve a number of practical purposes. First, they ensure that each person’s skills, training and expertise are immediately apparent to all. Second, by emphasising the hierarchical structure of the military, uniforms indicate where respect and deference must be shown. Finally, the officer’s uniform serves as a reminder that the officer’s authority is derived not from his or her followers, but from the organisation itself.
The Badge of Honour: Symbolism Behind the Uniform
While uniforms are used to differentiate those of different status, paradoxically they are also used to create unity. There is a deep and powerful symbolism that pervades every uniform, regardless of whether the wearer is a cadet or a general; their common attire creates a shared sense of identity. As the French scholar, Sarah Maza, has explained, the uniform is the outer expression with which the person identifies, and will be identified by others, as a soldier.1 The military uniform is also perceived to reflect the ideology of the wearer. Commenting on the link between uniform and ideology, cultural theorist, M. R. Jaster, has called the wearing of uniform a ‘public statement of belief in a system’. Literary scholar, John Reed, notes that the uniform can be considered a symbol of ‘manhood’, and many soldiers see wearing uniform as a badge of honour.2 In 2001, Time Magazine captured this ethos superbly when it described the military uniform as a ‘shield against vulnerability, as a constant reminder of a mission far greater than individual sorrows or insecurities’.3 Indeed, the service uniform has become so closely linked with the military ideal that those who do not conform to the military ethic are often described as not being ‘worthy of the uniform they wear’. There is a strong cultural consensus about what the uniform represents, and because this symbolism is so deeply endowed with an emotional component, an understanding of the uniform’s symbolism can be useful in real-world situations. For example, researchers in Israel found that the presence of uniformed officers at the funerals of killed Israeli personnel gave great comfort to the families, due to the uniform’s symbolism.4
Group Cohesion: The Essential Role of Military Uniform
Often, in order to accomplish their objectives, armed forces must subordinate the individuality of their personnel. Uniforms help to do this by creating a homogeneous identity. Military training is geared towards conditioning the new recruit to see himself or herself as a soldier and to inspire devotion to the welfare of the group. The identicalness of appearance instituted by uniforms and haircuts serves to strip each person of their individuality, thereby not only creating feelings of cohesion, but also reducing inhibitions about expressing aggression.5
In combat, uniforms take on a whole new meaning. Not surprisingly, elements important in peacetime, such as the display of status, become irrelevant. Evidence from researchers such as psychologist and former US Army Ranger, David Grossman, and combat veterans such as Major General Hal Moore suggest that, when soldiers pick targets, they aim to cause the greatest damage to the enemy, with a disproportionate amount of fire being directed at leaders.6 Combat thus creates a paradoxical situation where uniform, rather than distinguishing officers from enlisted personnel, is designed to make them impossible to tell apart. As Grossman notes, General James Gavin even insisted that he carry the same standard infantry rifle that his soldiers were carrying, and ordered his infantry officers not to use any equipment that would make them stand out.7
The bonding effects of service uniform also play an important role in combat. Research points to the idea that the extent to which a soldier identifies with the group is highly predictive of combat behaviour.8 Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at Birkbeck College in London, explains that even a timid soldier feels secure by being in a powerful group. Furthermore, she argues that the uniform identity of soldiers results in the displacement of self-love into the group, which in turn reduces the individual’s fear of death.9 Military historians, John Keegan, Richard Holmes and John Gau, also note that uniforms contributed to soldiers’ feelings of security and order, thus preventing panic in battle.10
While the helmet is probably the most practical component of the battle-dress uniform, it has been documented as causing a dangerous response from enemy soldiers. According to Grossman, it is psychologically easier to kill an individual who is wearing a helmet than to kill a bareheaded person. Grossman believes that surrendering soldiers should throw down not only their weapons, but also their helmets. He cites the example of Brigadier Peter Young, who had no inhibitions about shooting a helmeted German soldier, but was quite unable to shoot a bareheaded man. Grossman notes that it was a consideration of this principle that led United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces to adopt the beret as their uniform, rather than the helmet, despite the obvious protection offered by the latter. Working in such politically sensitive areas, and being constantly outnumbered by potentially aggressive forces, it is no surprise that the UN avoids anything that might increase the vulnerability of its peackeepers.11
Women in Uniform
For women, the right to wear military uniform was only won after fierce struggle and heavy sacrifice. While Western governments began to allow women to join the military during World War I out of sheer necessity, they nevertheless often denied them the full privileges of military membership, especially the wearing of uniforms. For example, when women were finally allowed to join the British Home Guard, they were given plastic badges to wear instead of uniforms.12 Even when uniformed women were officially accepted by the military, society at large seemed more comfortable in pretending that they did not exist. W. Webster, for example, found that, in all the films of the colonial war period of the 1940s and 1950s, there was only one sequence showing a woman in uniform.13
Despite the intense prejudice that they suffered, women in uniform were more accepted by early 20th-century society than were those who wore ‘male’ attire for other reasons. For example, Laura Doan—Professor of Cultural History and Sexuality Studies at the University of Manchester—has noted that women who chose to wear trousers in the 1920s were ridiculed, while those who wore them as part of their uniform—for instance women working in munition factories—were not. According to Doan, it was generally accepted that ‘uniform was immune from jeer or sneer’.14
While both society and the military are currently more accepting of women in uniform, discrimination still exists. In a study of the US armed forces, Elizabeth Lutes Hillman—former US Air Force officer and Professor at Rutgers University School of Law—argued that women are discriminated against in court martials because they do not look as ‘soldierly’ as men do in uniforms.15 In the 1940s, when women began to join the US military in greater numbers, there was a heated debate about whether to allow women to wear the same uniform as the men, or whether a more ‘feminine’ outfit was necessary.16 The result was that women were given a separate, slightly modified uniform.
During the 1970s and 1980s, women in many armies were wearing uniforms cut and styled differently from those worn by men. Women’s uniforms were characterised by the shirt being worn outside the pants, instead of tucked into the pants.17 However, as these uniforms began to be phased out, women started to purchase male uniforms. Great confusion followed, as no one knew whether women should continue to wear their shirts outside their trousers, or, since they were wearing the exact same uniform as men, they should wear it the same way. Finally it was decided that both men and women should wear their uniforms with their shirts tucked in.
Herbert also noted that women in the US armed forces often perceived a conflict between looking feminine and wearing uniform. They often violated uniform regulations in order to appear more feminine, such as not wearing t-shirts under their fatigues, wearing their caps further back on the head, or having their uniform skirt too short. These violations resulted in punishment and reprimands from their superiors, as well as ridicule from their peers, who stereotyped them as not being serious soldiers.18 Nevertheless, in the 1980s, the US Army acknowledged the need for women to look more feminine and granted them permission to wear earrings with certain dress uniforms.
While women in the military are currently more content and fairly treated than in the past, the issue of discrimination has not been fully resolved. Obviously the roots of this issue run much deeper than simply conflicts about uniform. Indeed, the crux of this problem may reside in the fact that armed forces have failed to resolve the contradiction between two opposing ideals: the homogeneity imposed by uniforms versus the desire to acknowledge gender variation. Nevertheless, it is likely that, until the perceived conflict between gender and uniform is solved, there will continue to be discord, discrimination and prejudice associated with this issue.
Conclusion
Uniforms have had such a long and proud tradition in the military that one can be inclined to take them for granted. However, it should be recognised that uniforms are central to the armed forces precisely because they serve very distinct psychological purposes. Increased understanding of the psychological dimensions of military uniforms can enhance the use of this powerful instrument in the formation of a cohesive and unified defence force. Such knowledge can allow the Australian Defence Force to maximise the effectiveness of uniforms across a spectrum of purposes—from instilling community pride in the ADF to providing soldiers with greater protection in combat.
Endnotes
1 S. Maza, ‘Uniforms: The Social Imaginary in Balzac’s La Cousine Bette’, French Politics, Culture and Society, vol. 19, no. 2, 2001, p. 21.
2 M. R. Jaster, ‘Breeding Dissoluteness and Disobedience: Clothing Laws as Tudor Colonialist Discourse, Critical Survey, vol. 13, no. 3, 2001, pp. 61–79. See also J. R. Reed, ‘Soldier Boy: Forming Masculinity in Adam Bede’, Studies in the Novel, vol. 33, no. 3, 2001, pp. 268–85.
3 Time Magazine, vol. 158, no. 7, 2001, p. 84.
4 V. Vinitzky-Seroussi & E. Ben-Ari, ‘“A Knock on the Door”: Managing Death in the Israeli Defense Forces’, The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3, 2000, p. 391.
5 See Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-face Killing in TwentiethCentury Warfare, Granta Books, London, 1985; and John Keegan and Richard Holmes with John Gau, Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1985.
6 David Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1995, p. 174. See also H. G. Moore & J. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young, Corgi Books, New York, 1992.
7 Ibid., p. 174.
8 For example, see studies such as Quincy Wright, A Study of War, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1965; and P. Neumarkt, ‘The Orgy of Self-renunciation: An Analysis of the Motif of War in Modern Literature’, Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, vol. 8, 2000, pp. 152–65.
9 Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing, p. 87.
10 Keegan, Holmes & Gau, p. 43.
11 Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, p. 174.
12 C. Peniston-Bird & P. Summerfield, ‘“Hey, You’re Dead!”: The Multiple Uses of Humour in Representations of British National defence in the Second World War’, Journal of European Studies, vol. 9, 2001, pp. 413–37.
13 W. Webster, ‘ “There’ll Always be an England”: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948–1968’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, 2001, p. 557.
14 L. Doan, ‘Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s’, Feminist Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, Fall 1998, pp. 663–700.
15 E. L. Hillman, ‘The “Good Soldier” Defense: Character Evidence and Military Rank at Courts-martial’, Yale Law Journal, vol. 108, no. 4, 1999, p. 879.
16 M. S. Herbert, Camouflage isn’t Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality and Women in the Military, New York University Press, New York, 1998.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
