Why every fitness influencer is a conservative jagoff

The Question

"Swole Woman: I am super-intrigued by strength training. But I’m also more than a little put off by the people who seem to do it. They all seem… really conservative? And it seems to break the brains of anyone who crosses the threshold of the gym, and it becomes their intense fixation. I’d love to lift, but I’m afraid to be around or become one of these people (honesty afforded me by advice letter-writer anonymity). How am I supposed to reconcile these things?”

—As Promised, Anonymous

The Answer

This is a completely understandable fear, because I’ll say it—most of the public-facing meatheads who are surfaced by our content mills (and they are surfaced—more on that in a second) are… not my favorite kinds of people. In a social media feed, it would so often happen like this: alights upon a social media post spoonfed to me by the algorithm oh this guy likes to lift—great! scrolls a little more he seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of movements I’ve never heard of that will magically 10x my deadlift or squat—awesome! I gotta follow this guy! scrolling the feed a few weeks later here’s my guy, and he—uh—touches earpiece offhandedly mentioned at the end of this video that we must secure a future for our white childr—fumbles phone like a hot potato before drop kicking it into the ocean

It’s not always that horrifying. However, I think many of us at this point have noticed some trends. and it’s difficult to talk about without it seeming like an apologia, or an insistence that we have to take the good with the bad, or really they aren’t ALL like that.

Some of what is happening here is the distortion field of social media, where confusing, extreme, disorienting things are the best engagement bait. People will stare longer at, for instance, the Liver King, who is so red and engorged that he looks like he’s about to burst like a hot dog in a microwave, than at a different guy saying all the same things. It doesn’t mean they like the Liver King more; it doesn’t mean his comportment commands more respect, or something. But the Liver Kings of the world, the real world, are vanishingly few, and they are way, way overrepresented on social media. The controversiality is part of why. It’s actually kind of a good sign, overall, that these things are not mundane. However, I admit also that the field of the physical arts seems particularly given to a certain archetype of person.

If you’re interested in the cultural history of lifting in America and how strength and physicality was co-opted from socialists by conservatives, capitalists, and Christians, I went all into this in A Physical Education, and I strongly recommend turning to page 103 and then page 120 (chapters 15 and 18) in the book. But here I’m going to talk about something a little different to extend that discussion, which is the role of dignity, what makes all of this physical stuff vulnerable to co-option, and how that speaks to the importance of reclaiming it. (You don't have to have read the book for this; this is kind of an extension of what's in the book, because I find the intersection of all these topics fascinating).

During the pandemic, at one point, I found myself on one of those Twitter party-line audio confabs. A New York Times writer was holding court for the release of his book, which was about ways humans could “futureproof” themselves, and really their careers, against the rise of AI. This writer and I have known each other for several years, so he greeted me when I joined. On the call, he was riffing with some of the guests of honor about jobs that were extremely vulnerable to AI takeover. He mentioned that takeover was imminent for jobs that were already largely automated, like customer service, which is largely done by contract laborers overseas. The writer joked that this was a job that sucks anyway, and is paid terribly. They all laughed.