An Army spokesman told Politico Saturday that Col. Lynette Arnhart stepped down from her position heading up a Training and Doctrine Command gender integration study after an email she wrote advising public affairs offices to pick photos of “more average looking women” to accompany stories involving female soldiers became public. Another colonel, Christian Kubik, who forwarded the message to other public affairs officers with a note saying it was a “valuable reminder” was suspended from his position as a public affairs officer at TRADOC.
“In order to protect the integrity of the ongoing work on gender integration in the Army, Col. Lynette Arnhart agreed to step down as the gender integration study director,” Army spokesman George Wright said in a statement. “Concurrently, TRADOC suspended Col. Christian Kubik from his position as the public affairs officer pending the outcome of an investigation.”
In the email, which was published by Politico last week, Arnhart said the Army has a “a general tendency to select nice looking women when we select a photo to go with an article.” She also argued that, “in general, ugly women are perceived as competent while pretty women are perceived as having used their looks to get ahead.”
