Double the Dose

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Recommended: Integration of females into the military

Double the Dose

"Youz a hooooo! HO! Youz a hooooo! HO! I said dat youz a ho," screams the rapper Ludacris from my alarm clock radio at six o'clock in the morning. I slam the snooze button and curse myself for joining the army. I have physical training today. I jump out of bed and hurry to get dressed. Then, I run over to the training site and join the rest of my fellow classmates. These individuals are becoming very special friends to me. We run together; we do pushups and sit-ups together; we force each other to go further than the limit allows us; we yell at one another; and we feel pain together. The thing I love most about the army is that they aren't really supposed to classify us by any of our differences. As they say, we are one team fighting for a common goal. Yet, it was not so long ago that the military opposed of this type of mindset. Only recently has there been an initiative to integrate both sexes in the army. However, the step to combine men and women in the military doesn't necessarily mean that bigot views and generalizations about the female gender are erased. In fact, as much as we would like to believe that we are improving as a society with the amount of laws and restrictions that we have against sexism, in truth, the double standards against women still lurk in the minds of many-unspoken but still heard.

After an hour of training, I walk back to my dorm to take a shower and get dressed, but not in my regular school clothes-no way, today's Wednesday, the Battle Dress Uniform Day. I look at myself all the time in the mirror when I get dressed, but whenever it's Wednesday, I don't feel like the beautiful women I am supposed to be. For now, I am a man. No jewelry, hair pulled back, baggy camouflage clothes, and the strange feeling in my heart telling me that I'm being trained to kill. I spend the day walking around campus in my uniform trying to ignore the disgusted or confused looks I get from students. "Is she a dike?" I know many ask themselves because, of course, no 'real' woman would ever join the army. Sometimes I wonder myself if I'm a woman trying to be a man.

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