When Derrick Braxton joined the Air Force at age 21, he'd never shaved in his life. He had a short beard that he got trimmed at the barber. But on the first day of basic training, he willingly broke out a razor.
"The next day, my face was just on fire," he said. "The best way I can put it is, it literally looked like a Crunch bar. One of those Nestlé Crunch bars."
Braxton, speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the Air Force, said he was sent to a military shaving clinic. He was told to try an electric razor, new shaving techniques, and a host of topical treatments.
"They work for a little bit," he said. "After you get shaving bumps, they kind of help them go away. But they don’t necessarily fix the situation."
He was later diagnosed with pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, a chronic condition where hairs grow back into the skin and cause painful irritation after shaving. PFB is more common in Black men.
"This particular disease affects individuals with tightly coiled hair," said Dr. Chris Adigun, a North Carolina board-certified dermatologist and owner of the Dermatology and Laser Center of Chapel Hill. "So it looks like little bumps or pustules, because the body is processing the presence of that hair in the skin as a foreign body."
She said the best intervention is to avoid close shaving. Laser hair removal can help too, but the devices that work for patients with darker skin are expensive and uncommon.
"The lack of access is monstrous," Adigun said. "It takes many, many treatments, sometimes seven or more treatments. And then they will not be able to grow a beard again later in life."
Relief and Stigma
More than a decade ago, the Air Force gave Braxton a shaving waiver, a doctor-approved exception to the daily shaving requirement that can last from 90 days to five years. He has always kept his beard well within regulation at under a quarter inch. But even with that, as a young airman, he said he was asked to show his waiver as many as seven times a day.
He remembers an officer in one of his squadrons in 2014 fixating on his appearance.
"She came over and looked at my face. She even touched my face to feel my beard and all that stuff. I backed up like, 'Whoa.'"
"Then, for the next three months -- literally every single day -- she would come up to me and another airman I worked with and ask, 'Hey, do you all have your shaving waivers?' It's not like the dates changed on them or anything like that."
Now Braxton isn't sure he'll be able to stay in the Air Force with a shaving waiver.
In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a review of grooming standards, which Pentagon officials say is meant to restore discipline and uniformity in the ranks.
"We must remain vigilant in maintaining the standards that enable the men and women of our military to protect the American people and our homeland as the world's most lethal and effective fighting force," Hegseth wrote in a memo.
"Our adversaries are not growing weaker, and our tasks are not growing less challenging. This review will illuminate how the Department has maintained the level of standards required over the recent past and the trajectory of any change in those standards," he added.
The Air Force said it’s tightening the shaving waiver process, increasing medical oversight, and reserving long-term waivers only for the most severe PFB cases. The Army and Marine Corps also have made it harder to get shaving waivers and now can kick out troops who can't shave.
The Pentagon declined a request for an interview on the topic.
Kyle Bibby, a former Marine Corps infantry unit commander who oversaw troops with shaving waivers, said short beards don't affect service members' ability to fight.
"I can say that there's absolutely zero correlation between someone getting a no-shave chit [waiver] and a military's ability to function and perform its duty," he said.
Bibby, now the co-CEO of the Black Veterans Project, sees the changes as part of a broader political message. Studies suggest more than 45 percent of Black men in the military have PFB.
"I think it’s more about the politics of the Trump Administration and their feelings about what the military should look like -- not in terms of beards, but racially and ethnically -- than it is about combat readiness," he said.
"I don't find it a coincidence that this decision was being made as the Defense Department was taking down references to Jackie Robinson and Black Medal of Honor recipients. I don’t think it's a coincidence that they’re openly and categorically antagonistic to anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or that this administration is canceling grants that even mention race, or Black, or anything like that. All of this paints a very clear picture."
A Medical Condition In Question
Joshua Nixon has had a shaving waiver since he joined the Air Force in 2011. Speaking in a personal capacity, he described living with PFB.
"When you have bumps on your face, and then those bumps turn to permanent scarring that doesn’t go away -- that just looks like little black moles everywhere -- that hurts your confidence, especially a young person," he said. "If I had to just keep shaving, it would have only gotten worse. It wouldn’t have gotten better. That’s not how PFB works."
As a medical technician, he entered waivers into airmen's records. Unlike broken bones or pregnancy, which came with routine accommodations, he found that shaving waivers tended to invite extra questions.
Nixon was once told he couldn’t become an Air Force recruiter because of his waiver. Studies have found that shaving profiles are tied to career setbacks, including promotion delays and being disqualified from certain duties and awards. Over time, Nixon said his experiences around shaving waivers left him burned out.
"I think we have to look at, hey, if we are being this strict on this medical condition that mostly affects this race, what are our intentions?" he asked. "Are there hidden motives? I’m not saying that there are. But I would be lying to you if I said my mind didn’t go there."
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
