Learning to wear a Navy uniform that wasn’t made for us
I wore a uniform long before the Navy ever issued me one.
From kindergarten through high school, I attended parochial schools where uniforms were simply part of daily life. For girls, that usually meant jumpers or skirts, pleats pressed, hems checked, shirts tucked (or retucked), and a quiet understanding that how you wore the uniform said something about you.
So when I arrived at the Naval Academy, I thought I understood uniforms.
I didn’t. Not even close.
Issued Identity
In those early days, we started simply: T-shirts and “white works.” Temporary. Transitional. A placeholder for the succeeding things.
Soon came the uniforms that felt like they mattered: summer dress whites, working blues, and service dress blues. Each had its own rules, its own purpose. You didn’t just wear them, you learned them.
Uniform regulations governed everything: grooming standards and clothing length, fit, fabric, and allowable combinations. What to wear, when to wear it, and how it should look at every moment. It wasn’t just about appearance; it was about sameness. Precision. Discipline.
Uniformity.
Tailor Shop Party
But there was one thing the regulations couldn’t yet fully account for: us.
Women had served in the Navy before WWI, but there hadn’t been enough of us as officers to standardize integrated uniforms at scale. So when we arrived, many of our uniforms weren’t issued; they were built.
We spent hours at TSP (Tailor Shop Party) being measured, pinned, and adjusted. It became part of the rhythm of our days. Fabric and chalk, hems and seams, standing still while someone tried to make the Navy fit a body it hadn’t quite planned for.
White Skirts
Our full dress uniforms included white skirts, stockings, and heels.
Heels. On grass. Learning from the first year of women at USNA, the Navy adapted, and my year was issued proper flat shoes. It was a small but meaningful shift: function finally catching up with form.
Three Memories: The Tuck, The Slit, The Weird
Some lessons in uniformity were formal.
Others less so.
The Tuck
During Plebe Summer, we often sat in a semicircle at the end of the hallway while our squad leader, a first-class midshipman, taught us the details that weren’t written down anywhere.
Mr. V, Puerto Rican with a Bronx accent, took this responsibility seriously.
He showed us how to align our gig line, how to smooth fabric, and how to make a shirt lie flat in a way that looked effortless but wasn’t. Then, standing with his back to us, he paused, turned his head slightly toward me, the only woman in the group, and said:
“Don’t go writing home about your upperclass dropping trou in front of you, Miss Andrews.”
And then he did exactly that, just enough to demonstrate how to pull, fold, and tuck a shirt properly before zipping back up as if nothing had happened.
It was equal parts mortifying and instructive.
And we learned.
The Slit
There were ceremonial moments when we wore swords: parades and formal marching.
But no one had quite figured out how that worked for women.
During plebe summer, the Academy experimented. I was briefly asked to serve as a model for the Commandant. My version of the summer whites used an over-blouse rather than a tucked shirt, and the standard black belt left marks across the fabric.
The proposed solution: a slit in the side seam to accommodate the sword belt and halter.
For a few minutes, I stood there wearing a sword, walking carefully, aware of every step. It felt important, not just because I had been chosen, but because it was part of something larger. The Navy figuring out, in real time, how women fit into traditions that it had never imagined us.
The Weird
And then there were the things that didn’t make sense.
The personal gear bag, a heavy cotton pouch tied under the uniform to carry sanitary items, felt like something designed in theory rather than reality.
White undergarments issued to be worn under white uniforms. They showed through. Constantly. Comfort and practicality were clearly not the priority.
The mandatory handbag. The heels. The quiet assumption that appearance could override function.
We laughed about it, because what else could we do?
Becoming Uniform
When women first entered the Naval Academy in 1976, the Navy didn’t yet have a clear answer for what our uniforms should be. They adapted existing designs, modified as needed, adjusted along the way.
We were part of that process.
Measured. Fitted. Tested. Observed.
And somewhere between the tuck, the slit, and all the weird in between, we learned something deeper than how to wear a uniform.
We learned how institutions change.
Not all at once. But slowly, through friction, through improvisation, through the lived experience of the people inside them.
I had worn uniforms my entire life.
But this was the first time I understood what it meant to grow into one, and, in some small way, to help reshape it.