A number of years ago, while I was in the Air Force....they went to the tape-method. For me, I was returning from the first Gulf War and on day two of the return to the US....they wanted to tape me. So they weighed me (I was seven pounds under my max)...but I was an inch over my tape-point, so I failed. Kind of a miserable way to introduce a guy to the program, but that’s the way they did it.
Eight years pass and I’m working in a new office. We have a young guy...22 years old...sports-nut....who is 12 pounds under his max. He fails the tape. He spends the next month losing five pounds...he’s still an inch over the tape-allowance. He spends a second month losing four pounds...still half an inch over the tape. Third month...he’s losing interest in this game and loses no weight. The leadership gets angry about this ‘attitude’. He’s sitting twenty pounds under his max. He just smiles at them and says do anything you want...he had five months left in the military and had a $90k job offered to him and this weight game had cut him the wrong way.
The tape business works good in the lab but it’s not a practical method of figuring how a guy should look. I’d say at best...it’s sixty percent accurate. It breeds the thin-look. If a thin-guy can fill three hundred sand-bags in a day...great...but I know that will never happen.
the new Army is gonna lose half its female troops if they start taping the single mamas AND “if” they hold everyone to the same standards (which I doubt they will)
(Do these BDU’s make my butt look big? Nah, your butt is just big)
just sayin’
Same reason one of my daughters is getting out of the Navy ~ this stupid taping idea. She’s been under constant stress about it for the past 3 or 4 years. She’s damn good at her job. I told to work hard to comply and let the chips fall where they may. Her skills pay well outside the military.