AFI 36-2903: Air Force Dress and Appearance Standards

Okay, so today I will be discussing the dress and appearance manual specifically for the air force. So I’ll be covering hair, nails, makeup, jewelry, and then kind of a miscellaneous section. So for hair, essentially, you want a maximum bulk of four inches, and you want your hair above the bottom edge of your collar. And so there’s an image here, and it kind of demonstrates that people can get you if your hair goes past this, when it’s up, when you have braids, make sure that they’re behind you, not in your front or on your shoulders. Essentially, when you’re in Ocps and such, you want your pinned up hair to not have too many loose ends.

And with hair accessories, you mostly want them to either match your hair color or be black. You will be called out if they’re not nails. Basically, the general rule of thumb is to keep everything in conservative colors and in conservative length. And so with nail polish, it’s the same. Basically, you don’t want any colors that detract from your uniform.

So we’re looking at some of these pale colors, some of these colors that go with your uniform, but don’t have extremes that will be flagged. You’ll be talked to. Same thing with designs. You don’t want anything that’s distracting from your uniform, distracting from your job and your work at hand. And your fingernails must not exceed a fourth of an inch.

So, makeup, basically, again, conservative. You can have eyelash extensions. Make sure those don’t exceed 14 mm in length. But the point that one of my cadre members made is no one’s pulling out a ruler to measure your eyelash length. So just make sure that your eyelashes aren’t hindering your eyesight, that they’re conservative.

And those shades of lipstick should basically be those natural colors jewelry. So make sure that they’re small, make sure that they’re minimal and conservative in color. So that white diamond, the gold, white pearl, or silver. One thing to note is that you can only have one set of earrings in uniform, and they should be worn on the lower earlobe. So, for example, this is okay, but if we have something or other piercings up on top of the ear, that’s not ideal.

And make sure those are both matching, that you have the exact same on each ear and that they’re at the lower part of the earlobe. You can wear one bracelet and it should be conservative rings, you can wear three rings. And when it comes to wedding rings, if you have an engagement and a wedding ring that is considered as one set and one ring, and you can wear it on your thumb and it should be at the base of your finger so it shouldn’t be all the way up top of your finger like this. Necklaces essentially just make sure it’s covered by your uniform. So with your dress blues and things like that, sometimes it could be easier if you have in modified dress blues, having an open collar, things like that.

You can see that. So make sure that it’s hidden. Okay, so some of the miscellaneous. So make sure your backpack, your lunch bag and even your gym bags and things like that are conservative in color. You got blacks, browns, grays, dark blues and piercings.

Basically if you have piercings make sure that they can’t be seen from underneath your shirt. Or things like that is one of the things that it talks about. You shouldn’t have some of these distracting piercings. Basically electronics. So it’s kind of based on where you’re at, what base you’re at, what detachment you’re at.

But basically we always want to be professional. We don’t want to be walking into somebody on our phone or things like that. So with bluetooth it is supposed to be only for official duties as well as just being on our phone. In general, walking around campuses, walking around base with your eyeglasses. So when you are formed up, you should not have sunglasses on unless you have a doctor’s note.

So that’s something to keep in mind. And like it says here, they shouldn’t be around the neck or on top or back of your head or exposed hanging on your uniform. And tattoos, brandings and body markings go to the dress and appearance manual for this. There’s a lot about it, about specific locations with neck or specific markings, but basically you want to keep it to areas that can either be covered by your uniform, keep them appropriate and things like that. So again, I’m Cadet Furbanks.

I’m happy to help you with your questions and anything like that. So thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a great day.

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