The episode: "Touch and Go"
What happened: Lieutenant Bud Roberts (Patrick Labyorteaux) advises Corporal Lisa Antoon (Jolene Blalock) in her application to Officer Candidate School (OCS). Antoon is an exemplary Marine, the only woman in a Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) platoon. The only obstacle is that her Commanding Officer is demanding a picture of the tattoo on her butt, and she is reluctant to provide such a picture. The Commanding General, who is a woman, refuses an appeal to waive the requirement. In the end, Antoon takes the suggestion from Lt. Simms that Antoon have a female nurse take a picture of the tattoo and attest that it is indeed a picture of Antoon.
What has me wondering: To see Roberts at JAG, Antoon wears a Service Alpha uniform with a Rifle Sharpshooter badge on it. Shouldn't Antoon be a Rifle Expert? Actually, I'd even believe a Rifle Marksman badge on her uniform more than the Sharpshooter badge. Rifle Marksman is the lowest level at which you can qualify, and Rifle Expert is the highest. Rifle Sharpshooter is the middle level, and one which for some reason lots of men qualify at but hardly any women.
The common wisdom is that women are either very good or very bad with rifles. The first time I heard that, I thought that it was a misguided misogynist stereotype, but when I joined the Corps I saw that it's actually true. Many female recruits use up all their chances at the rifle range to obtain a score that is just barely Marksman (if you fail on your first chance, you get Marksman even if your second chance score is Expert-level), and many female recruits get Expert on the first try. Not to toot my own horn, I was one of the latter. You have to qualify each year, and generally career Marines' scores go up each time, until their final years when their scores might take a sharp dive.
In my four years in the Corps, I never saw a woman wearing a Rifle Sharpshooter badge. It is possible that I did see a woman who had earned that badge, but wasn't wearing it on her uniform because you normally don't put shiny things on a camouflage uniform (the episode correctly reflects that in the scenes with Antoon going to the field in camouflage uniform to talk to the CO).
Being in a LAV platoon, Antoon is already quite unique: LAV Marines are practically Infantrymen with cars, so for a woman to be in a LAV platoon is the closest she can get to being Infantry. Would she also be so unique as to have a badge few women earn? And what woman in the military would go out of her way to get a middle-level badge if she can get the top qualification? In the entire run of JAG, I have never questioned Sarah Mackenzie's Rifle Expert and Pistol Expert badges. Would Mac one year decide to mess up a few shots on purpose just to get a Sharpshooter badge?
Of course it's possible that there were women in the Corps who have in fact genuinely scored Sharpshooter and were given the badge. Also, it's possible that the changes made to Marine Corps rifle qualification since JAG went off the air could possibly lead to more women earning Sharpshooter badges. But in a fictional story, is it worthwhile to costume your character in such a way that viewers question the plausibility of the character?
Oh, and before I forget, there is the issue of what the CO does when he gets the picture of the tattooo on Antoon's butt. Without looking at it, he rips it up and discards it. Please. In real life he would've looked at the picture and said something like "Well, um, everything seems to be, um, in order... um, dismissed." The episode doesn't say where exactly on her butt the tattoo is on, but if we take her remark in Bud's office that she's "sitting on it" literally, it would imply it's low on her... you get the picture, no pun intended. Do a Google image search for "Jolene Blalock" and you will find pictures in which she gets pretty close to showing that area, though still leaving unanswered the question of whether or not the actress, like her character, has a tattoo in that area.
By the way, Jolene Blalock was T'Pol on Star Trek: Enterprise. Bill promised me he'll post his nitpicking of the new Star Trek film tomorrow.
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