Beauty queen and U.S. Army Soldier Theresa Vail wouldn’t be a good choice for Army advertisements according to the Army’s targeted audience. Yahoo finance said the U.S. Army is looking for “average looking woman” in its advertisements in order to get more ladies into combat boots.
According to internal emails obtained by Kate Brennan at Politico, Col. Lynette Arnhart, made these recommendations on implementing a marketing plan that featured average looking woman:
In general, ugly women are perceived as competent while pretty women are perceived as having used their looks to get ahead. There is a general tendency to select nice looking women when we select a photo to go with an article (where the article does not reference a specific person). It might behoove us to select more average looking women for our comms strategy. For example, the attached article shows a pretty woman, wearing make-up while on deployed duty. Such photos undermine the rest of the message (and may even make people ask if breaking a nail is considered hazardous duty)