I Look Like a Veteran Too

My first mistake was not backing-in to the “Reserved for Veterans” parking spot, displayed outside Home Depot.?Everybody knows “real veterans” back into their parking spaces, I thought as I saw the grumpy-looking old man put his cart away with a bang and march toward me. My second mistake was shifting my frazzled, whining toddler out of her car seat and onto my hip.

“This is not the day, my dude,” I muttered as he approached. I knew he would give me the what-for: parking was reserved for VETERANS,?not?their wives.

And I was an Army wife. Part of the reason the toddler and I were so frazzled was because Daddy was deployed, again, to war in his role as a special operations helicopter pilot. I understood the dangers he faced daily, from my own role as an Army intelligence officer deployed twice to Afghanistan, in the famed 101st Division.

I had been out of the Army for less than two years, and often joked that, in one day, I’d been demoted from “Captain Mestyanek” to “so-and-so’s wife,” name unimportant. I’d already become so tired of being what our culture has termed “invisible veterans,” a term that when we dig down just a little, is the dog whistle for ‘the females.’ We’re the ones whose presence is erased every time another politician talks about ‘our boys over there’ or ‘our guys in green.’ It’s the women, who have fought and died for our country in combat since the Revolutionary War, but who could not serve in full capacity for centuries. The combat ban was overturned in 2013, during my service. Oh, I was gonna let this guy have it.

But before I could finish formulating my plan of attack, I noticed that he was…smiling through his squinting. He held out his hand. I saw his VFW-studded ball cap at the same moment I recognized that I was about to be… recognized?

“I just wanted to say,” his deeply-rumbling voice exactly what I had expected. “I’m in awe of your generation for volunteering the way you have. Thank you for your service.”

I know I shook his hand, and I think I thanked him back. As he walked away, I buried my face into my little girl’s curly mop of hair so he wouldn’t hear me burst into tears.

While volunteering at a Veteran Service Organization, I conducted an informal, two-year-long survey. With almost every veteran I asked the same question: “What is the first thing people say when they find out you are a veteran?”

From the men, a singular response: the-almost universal, automatic: “Thank you for your service.”

Very different for women veterans. Many different responses, most along the themes of: “Really?” and “Oh, you’re way too pretty to have been a soldier,” and “You don’t look like a veteran.” The leering “They didn’t make soldiers that looked like?you?back in my day.”

Many of the women I spoke to shared they almost-never volunteer they’re veterans outside of a ‘safe space’, for fear of one or the other of these degrading responses — the constant microinvalidations are the thanks we receive for our service.

“Thank you for your service” is a loaded phrase for most of us. As veterans, we have different feelings about this phrase. We can debate whether or not it represents real gratitude, and whether or not we deserve that gratitude. But we can agree that it is recognition. Our generation all signed up?voluntarily?to stand in the gap between American citizens and whomever our enemies might be, a choice most Americans do not make.

Changing the narrative — changing this stereotype — is essential for our community, where women veterans often suffer suicidal ideology, disability, homelessness, and mental illness, amongst many other ‘common veteran issues’ at a rate of almost 5:1 to our male counterparts. Veterans who look like my husband get to be acknowledged and feel accepted, even with something as small and unquestionable as a parking space.

Every time my husband and I attend an event where he is thanked for his service, while I am told that “I don’t look like a soldier,” I’m forced to justify my service in a way that he is not. I look like as much of a veteran as my spouse. And so do my fellow sisters-in-arms. Woman veterans are all ages and in all walks of life. You’ll find us in your churches, your preschools, your conference tables, your neighborhood groups, your Fortune 500 companies, your bookstores. We are directors and CEOs, teachers, mothers, daughters, friends. We are here working alongside you to better our communities.

Stop erasing us into invisibility and see us for who we are: veterans.

Daniella Mestyanek Young is the Author of UNCULTURED: A Memoir.