Not What They Meant by "Be All That You Can Be"

When Bostonist read in today's Globe that area armed forces recruiters have been having more and more trouble getting the youngsters to sign up, we first assumed it might be because the reporting of the war in Iraq and the accompanying imagery are so much more graphic and immediate than they were in past generations. Some of the kids interviewed suggested that today's high schoolers are simply more selfish than their parents were at their age. We also guessed the Army's incredibly dumb ad campaign isn't helping ("Be all that you can be" made us think about learning cool technical skills and going to college; "Army of one" is just weird and it makes us think about getting our ass kicked, as an army of one assuredly would). But then we saw another story off the AP wire today that explained everything: America's young people are too fat to fight.

It seems that the good folks at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick have met the enemy, and it is girth. They've found that 43% of American women and 18% of American men in "prime recruiting ages" exceed enlistment weight limits. Bostonist wishes this would lead to bold national weight-loss campaigns and posters with rhyming, patriotic exhortations ("Big Hips Sink Ships," perhaps, or "DON'T send a salami to your boy in the Army"). The Associated Press story reminds us, for example, that after World War II, our nation's leaders pushed for school lunch programs to lessen the perceived problem of scrawny would-be soldiers. So what should Washington (or Beacon Hill, since 16% of the state population is obese) do about our fat fighting force? As always, Bostonist wants nothing more than your suggestions.

Photo (of one possible source of recruiting problems) courtesy of flickr.com / user: Tom Harpel