Twitter was abuzz on Sunday after video and photos of a shirtless Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doing pushups and incline bench-presses outside Venice Beach’s Gold’s Gym started popping up in social media timelines. The caption on the pushup video shared by RFK Jr., read: “Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!”
Reactions ranged from accusations of steroid use (there’s no evidence of that, but it would be plenty ironic if true, considering his anti-vaxx stance), to fans gushing that he’s the most “jacked presidential candidate” in history, to critics mocking how little he can lift. Others suggested that the obsession with Kennedy’s alpha male status was evidence of “crypto homoeroticism” on the right (see the many photoshopped pics of a muscular Donald Trump).
Whether you think Kennedy’s an Adonis or a wimp (I’d say he’s in good shape for a 69-year-old man), it might be easy to dismiss this PR bump as a quickly forgotten blip in Season 8 of the surreal reality show that started the day Trump came down that escalator.
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Believe it or not, though, I think this moment tells us a lot about the state of politics and celebrity culture in 2024 America. This is a commentary on modern America.
Let’s start with politics. For a while now, there has been a sense that America was devolving to a primitive state that prizes machismo over intellect. It’s been said many times before, but our current moment seems to have been foreshadowed in the 2006 dystopian satire Idiocracy, where an ex-wrestler named President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho becomes president.
This fictional event takes place 500 years in the future, whereas in real life, it only took America a decade to sink to approximately the same level of dysfunction.
Real-life headlines like “Andrew Tate says he wants to train Elon Musk to fight [Mark] Zuckerberg: ‘You will not lose’” suggest that Idiocracy was always a documentary. (Did I mention that RFK Jr. is literally applauding Musk and Zuckerberg for “setting a physical fitness example for Americans with their Octagon challenge”?)
Great work, Mike Judge. Talk about being ahead of the curve.
Or behind. American politics was once incredibly violent (a condition that led us to a civil war). We mellowed in the 20th century, although “brains” never fully replaced “brawn” in the minds of voters; the tallest candidate, for example, almost always won the presidency.
RFK Jr.’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, certainly benefited from the perception that he was young and healthy and glamorous, while cutting a trim figure. But JFK’s style was a more sophisticated and nuanced virility signal than his flexing nephew.
Times change. You’d be hard pressed to look at the last few years of American politics—particularly on the right—and not get a strong sense that displays of physical masculinity have become more overt.
I first noticed this a decade or so ago, when pictures of a topless Vladimir Putin (sometimes riding a horse) started popping up on social media, often juxtaposed with a photo of then-President Barack Obama riding a bicycle.
The insinuation was that Putin was “bigger, stronger, [and] faster” than American presidents, and that this might even be a microcosm for our nations. (Recent events in Ukraine suggest that perception isn’t always reality.)
With these videos, RFK Jr. is ostensibly attempting to do to doddering ol’ Joe Biden what Putin stans did to Obama—which is to emasculate him (or, at least, out-manly him).
The only problem? As noted earlier, this tendency has manifested mostly on the right, but Kennedy is a Democrat.
Is this proof that RFK Jr. is a pawn of right-wingers and thus running the kind of game plan that will appeal exclusively to their ilk?
Or will Democrats prove to be a lagging indicator of a larger societal change that will soon guarantee only ex-wrestlers (or really fit tech bros) can win in either party? We may be about to find out.
Aside from the reversion to masculine dominance, another variable is that politics has become more about winning the attention economy. And—even for men—showing some skin remains the cheapest way to get some attention.
Whether the conceit is (in the words of RFK Jr.) to get in shape for a debate with Joe Biden, or (in the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene) blaming Washington, D.C.’s COVID-19 shutdown policy as an excuse to post a hotel room workout, there’s no bad excuse for showing off a hot bod.
(For the conspiracy theorists among us, it was recently reported that a pro-RFK Jr. superPAC has ties to MTG.)
Increasingly, the way to get attention and affirmation is to post thirst traps. Whether you’re a Kardashian or a Kennedy, this has proven effective.
We already know this will work. The real question is, to what degree?
