The northern zone hemline: IDF bases in the North have decided to fight the phenomenon of lowered waistlines in the pants of female soldiers, which has become an increasingly popular trend among army girls there.
Female soldiers have been caught lately entering their Golan Heights and Galilee bases dressed in especially low-cut pants, in violation of army standards, which earned 120 of them a date at the military court.
The female soldiers complained to their commanders that the cut of the army-issued slacks is “unflattering” to their figures. But the defense was to no avail: a few were confined to the base for a number of days in punishment, and the rest were dealt monetary fines.
A senior official in the Northern Command told Ynet that recently there has been a sharp increase in the number of incidents in which female soldiers lower the waistlines of their army pants.
“You need to view the situation from two directions: First, and most importantly, this is a severe blow to the norms and disrespect to army uniforms. On the other hand we can’t forget that these are young women who until recently dressed in adolescent fashion, went out to entertainment spots in very low cut jeans and revealing shirts,” he said.
“This is an assimilation process important to us as an army, and I believe that suitable explanations and punishment in extreme cases will prevent such incidents from recurring to a great degree in the future.”
Many of the soldiers expressed regret during their trial and claimed they lowered the waistlines “innocently.” Command officials saw evidence of this claim in the past few days when over 500 pairs of army pants whose waistlines had been lowered were returned to the quartermaster's store to be traded in for pants conforming to IDF standards.
“They’ll have to leave the fashion shows for the weekends and their civilian lives,” the senior official commented.
An IDF spokesperson issued a response to the affair saying, “As part of the IDF’s enforcement policy, it was decided in the Northern Command to be stricter on making appearance conform to standards and on discipline. Thus soldiers who lowered their pants were ordered to exchange them, and disciplinary action was taken.”