MAGA Masculinity: Protesting Too Much

Froma Harrop on Oct 13, 2026

We've seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lifting weights in snug Levis, sweat pouring down his naked muscled chest. Last February, the secretary of health and human services was "giving body" in the "Rock Out Workout" video. A jeans-clad Kennedy flexes alongside Kid Rock in black shorts, then strips off his shirt and joins Rock in a grotto-like pool.

Provocative questions followed. Kennedy has become a hero to a MAGA movement that celebrates masculinity and pushes back against what it sees, not without reason, as an anti-male attitude flooding far-left feminism.

I'm not the first opinion to spot a homoerotic element to this display of what, in other contexts, would be identified as performative hypermasculinity. Gay culture has long applauded macho imagery, with its beefcake lumberjacks and bikers in tight leather.

Back in the day, my husband, Craig, was a bare-chested bartender at Studio 54, wearing only satin shorts and, as he recalls, Adidas sneakers with socks. He belonged to the hetero minority behind the disco's bar, and he knew why he was hired. "I wasn't there for my brains," he says, adding with some embarrassment, "and I was only 18."

RFK is 72.

The buff torsos, Craig observed, were most appreciated by the disco's gay male patrons, not by young women. "Women over 40 were there for that. Women under 40 were there for the rich guys."

No one here is speculating on the sexual orientation of Kennedy or the other "looksmaxxers" flexing in the MAGAsphere. Craig did find the video puzzling, especially the part where Kennedy goes into the water with his jeans on. It's an exaggerated manliness that strays into camp territory prized by the gay culture.

Looksmaxxing claims to be about attracting the female gaze. In practice, its appeal is largely to young men studying other men's abs, jawlines and naked abs. Rather than call looksmaxxing "homoerotic," some scholars prefer the term "homosocial": the desire to bond with other men using women as the pretext. Those midcentury "physique" magazines, after all, were not all bought for the workout tips.

The oddity extends to "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth and his ongoing campaign to bring what appears to all the world like looksmaxxing to the Defense Department.

What's his thing with testosterone? Testosterone is the main male sex hormone, made in smaller quantities by women. Yes, it plays an important role in helping infantrymen build muscle. But a modern military increasingly demands other attributes.

Most enlisted personnel today are not trained for combat, according to the Defense Department's 1999 "Population Representation in the Military Services" report. They are managers, planners and engineers, or they work in communications, intelligence, medicine or electronics. Cyber Command and missile defense are overwhelmingly brainwork.

Even so, Hegseth grabbed headlines last summer with mandatory screening for "testosterone deficiency" among troops 30 and older. He announced it on X in a video captioned, "The High-T Department of War," which struck many as high camp.

Kennedy, for his part, revealed in 2023 that he was on testosterone replacement therapy as part of what he called an anti-aging program. As we know, TRT is also used to build physique. His reason is no business of ours, except he felt the need to offer one publicly.

Women have been remotely piloting aircraft and working in surveillance and reconnaissance operations for years. Flying a Reaper or a Global Hawk does not require upper-body strength. The U.S. Army now has female snipers.

This is not a girls-are-the-same-as-boys argument. Transgender women, born male, have a different musculature no matter how many female hormones they take. They should not be competing in most women's sports. The point is that the MAGA obsession with hypermasculinity can, culturally speaking, turn on itself.

Follow Froma Harrop on X @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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