{"id":298534,"date":"2026-02-23T19:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/298534\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:16:18","slug":"rfk-jr-s-fitness-ad-with-kid-rock-is-a-collision-of-maha-and-the-manosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/298534\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr.’s fitness ad with Kid Rock is a collision of MAHA and the manosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration\u2019s latest public health announcement<\/a> features Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and bad-boy musician Kid Rock participating in various wellness activities \u2014 including the sauna, pickleball, cold plunge and fan bike \u2014 at moments, curiously, wearing jeans and guzzling tall glasses of whole milk. Much of the subsequent commentary has emphasized how revolting and ridiculous the spectacle is by mocking their push-ups, disdaining Kid Rock\u2019s deconditioned \u201cskinny fat\u201d physique, imagining the bacterial buildup in sweaty denim and noting the unintentionally homoerotic \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d energy of their intimate escapade, set primarily in a wood-paneled spa and a blue-lit grotto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of the subsequent commentary has emphasized how revolting and ridiculous the spectacle is.<\/p>\n

All jokes aside, the sobering fact is that the RFK Jr.-Kid Rock video isn\u2019t\u00a0just another example of questionable online fitness content, but an official message from our federal government, paid for with our tax dollars, which advises us to \u201cwork out and eat real food\u201d even as it cuts science funding and SNAP benefits and generally undermines other bedrocks of our public health establishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This stunt is more than just a disgusting distraction; it signals the dark reality of what MAHA \u2014 Make America Healthy Again \u2014 now unapologetically embraces, rather than what it might have been. Rather than promising a wholesome, if highly idealized, world in which individual fitness and diet choices offer all Americans who are willing to work for it a path to civic and moral salvation, this video makes clear that to Kid Rock, RFK Jr.\u00a0and the administration behind them, fitness and food are primarily props for alpha-male preening, entirely disconnected from any policy that will actually make more Americans healthier and happier, in their bodies or their lives.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t have to be this way. As I\u2019ve written in these pages<\/a>, RFK Jr.\u2019s appeal grew in part because of the way he addressed real health problems important to many Americans: the inaccessibility of mainstream medicine, the ubiquitousness of unhealthy ultraprocessed foods and the preponderance of prescription medications upon which so many Americans, including children, rely. <\/p>\n

Preventative health measures such as engaging in regular exercise and eating healthy food are not panaceas, but when so many interlocking, systemic factors inhibit our health, it is true that these individual acts can feel like the only available actions a person can take to feel a bit better now. Especially to young men<\/a> who are major consumers of online fitness and motivation content, this message has understandable appeal. Sincere or not, it is that language of hope and possibility expressed in earlier videos<\/a>, featuring children running in the forest, families enjoying a salad or RFK Jr. promising to hire \u201chonest public servants\u201d to clean up the nation\u2019s food and water supply. Even a video like that of septuagenarian RFK Jr. doing calisthenics outdoors<\/a> with a bodybuilder against the Venice Beach blue skies intimates a world in which older people are active, healthy and socially engaged.<\/p>\n

The vibe has shifted, this latest video makes clear, and not only from an earlier version of RFK Jr., but from decades of federal public health messaging on diet and exercise, on both sides of the political aisle. These efforts were deeply imperfect in many ways, but they all connected exercise with self-actualization and with maximizing participation in a healthy, active life. President John F. Kennedy, the health secretary\u2019s uncle,\u00a0implored Americans of all ages and backgrounds that it was their civic and moral duty to participate in recreational fitness, emphasizing that those who sit on the sidelines are more likely to sit out as citizens as well; he mobilized the most significant commitment to public physical education this country has seen.<\/p>\n

The vibe has shifted from decades of federal public health messaging on diet and exercise.<\/p>\n

President Jimmy Carter\u2019s administration\u00a0told a generation of girls that\u00a0 for the first time had legally guaranteed access to sports that \u201cphysical fitness is beautiful.\u201d President Ronald Reagan awkwardly posed for journalists between sets on a Nautilus machine, and he\u00a0celebrated the virtue of vigorous outdoor activities such as chopping wood. President George W. Bush gave interviews about how running had transformed his life, especially after quitting alcohol. Michelle Obama recruited Beyonce to lead a dance workout in a school cafeteria<\/a>. None of these efforts were sufficient to solve America\u2019s complicated health problems, and at times the efforts relied on problematic assumptions, but all of them earnestly endeavored to link fitness and nutrition to an aspirational ideal of individual and national self-improvement.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNatalia Mehlman Petrzela\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNatalia Mehlman Petrzela is Professor of History at The New School in New York City. She is the author of two books, most recently “Fit Nation: The Gains and\u00a0Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession,”\u00a0and is currently a Carnegie\u00a0Fellow, working on a new book about education and political polarization.\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\u00a9\u00a02026 Versant Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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