The Fatigues Off Her Back

Kimberly Heartsong was one of the first women to serve as an aircraft maintenance officer in Operation Desert Storm. Deployed with the Air Force's Special Ops team, she routinely serviced aircraft in blistering 120-degree Saudi desert heat. After one 12-hour shift, she remembers taking off her heavy steel-toe boots, only to discover that her fire-engine red toenail polish, a "cherished hidden piece of femininity," had melted into her socks.

Military clothing is unvarying, and a soldier's identity is subsumed within that uniform. Does that change when it's a woman doing the wearing? What kind of burden does their clothing carry? What does it make lighter, and how does it protect? These are some of the questions explored by San Francisco artist Pam Deluco in Paper Dolls: Stories from Women Who Served, a new illustrated book just released this Veterans' Day.