We already know the main event. That would be Elon Musk
versus Mark Zuckerberg in Las Vegas, or maybe the Colosseum in Rome. The rival
tech billionaires are inching toward a cage match, brokered by Dana White,
president of the UFC.
اضافة اعلان
And for an undercard, how about a sitting U.S. senator
versus a union boss? Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., last week challenged Sean
O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
to an MMA fight after O’Brien called him a “clown” and a “fraud” on Twitter.
In case that is not enough testosterone, perhaps some feats
of strength are in order. Robert Kennedy Jr. might be interested. The
Democratic presidential candidate recently took his shirt off in Venice Beach
to perform pushups and incline bench presses — revealing an uncommonly defined
upper body for anyone, let alone a 69-year-old. (He has a full decade on Jeff
Bezos, who is also muscle-bound.) So too might Jamaal Bowman. On Thursday, the
Democratic representative of New York posted to Twitter a video of himself
bench-pressing 405 pounds.
A season for peacocking
For some powerful men, this is a season for peacocking. No
longer content to embody the masculine ideals of financial, professional and
political achievement — or simply to optimize their fitness, as tech CEOs have
long done — suddenly these honchos want us to see the achievements of their
bodies. Grappling, squeezing, flexing, dominating (or being dominated): These
are no longer tired metaphors for corporate or intellectual conquest. They are
literal descriptions of America’s big shots showing off as buff boys.
The margin with which women can display any kind of jealousy, resentment, ego or desire to get ahead in any unfettered way is very narrow,
So, what’s with all these conspicuous displays of machismo?
To start, they’re mostly just that — displays.
“A lot of it is spectacle,” said Andrew Reiner, a lecturer
in men’s studies at Towson University and the author of the book “Better Boys,
Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional
Resiliency.” As Kennedy’s viral lifting session proved, a bit of
well-timed machismo is prime fodder for the social media machine.
But, according to Reiner, these look-at-me behaviors also
draw on something deeper: tropes of masculine honor and personal strength that American
pop culture has been broadly moving away from, but may be rediscovering.
“It is a textbook, old-school, throwback masculinity,”
Reiner said, pointing to Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars —
after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith — as a
watershed moment.
One factor in the cage match moment is the increasing
influence of MMA culture. Joe Rogan, a prominent fan of fights who holds a
black belt in Brazilian jujitsu, reaches millions of people with his podcast,
“The Joe Rogan Experience,” on which Musk, Kennedy and Zuckerberg have all
appeared as guests. Mullin, the senator, had a short career as an MMA fighter.
The Musk-Zuckerberg and Mullin-O’Brien back-and-forths
recall the performative jawing of a boxing match weigh-in, and the athletic
theater, or “kayfabe,” of professional wrestling, where wrestlers play
characters who never acknowledge there is a script.
This blend of reality and fantasy became a key feature of
American public life during the Trump years, according to Abraham Josephine
Riesman, the author of “Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.”
The blurring of reality is key to understanding a world in which campy
performances of heterosexual masculinity can seize our collective attention,
Riesman said.
“There’s something about committing to a totally outsized
parody that just works for the human brain,” she said.
Another common thread may be a measure of overcompensation.
After being photographed shirtless last summer aboard a yacht (and subsequently
ridiculed for his physique), Musk tweeted in October that he had been fasting
and taking Wegovy, a prescription drug used to treat obesity. And although
Zuckerberg, who is 5 feet, 7 inches tall, is in fact a committed athlete, he
has for years worn the title of nerd king, which he inherited from Bill Gates.
(Recently, Zuckerberg has turned to training and competing in martial arts, and
posting mirror selfies of his progress on Instagram.)
Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency.
Meanwhile, for Kennedy, the shirtless romp draws a contrast
with the Democratic front-runner, President Joe Biden, who is 80 years old.
“Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!” Kennedy tweeted,
alongside a video of himself doing pushups.
The modern history of male politicians strutting and brawling
dates back at least to Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900s. Vladimir Putin, the
Russian president and himself a judo black belt, was photographed shirtless on
horseback in 2009. And Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House and onetime
vice-presidential candidate, posed with 40-pound dumbbells for Time magazine
before the 2012 presidential election.
Of course, women in leadership positions face scrutiny over
their appearance and affect in ways Musk and Kennedy never would. Imagine, for
example, how a female CEO who displayed Musk’s apparent impulsiveness,
aggression and vanity would be talked about.
“The margin with which women can display any kind of
jealousy, resentment, ego or desire to get ahead in any unfettered way is very
narrow,” said Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the co-editor of the anthology “Nasty
Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump’s America” and the author
of the forthcoming book “The Myth of Making It.”
Then again, the times may be changing. Marjorie Taylor
Greene, the Georgia congresswoman and CrossFit aficionado who once shared a
video of herself performing pullups and overhead presses, called her Republican
colleague Lauren Boebert of Colorado a “little bitch” on the House floor last
month. It was just the kind of barb one might expect before a cage match.
Read more Odd and Bizarre
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
