U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is teaming up with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to start what they’re calling the “Pete and Bobby Challenge.” Anyone who accepts the challenge must complete 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in under five minutes.
Whether or not the challenge really gains steam and “makes America healthy again,” the idea of encouraging nationwide fitness is a great one.
The so-called “body positivity movement” has undoubtedly gone too far. Morbid obesity is dangerous, not something to be celebrated. Yet models and celebrities are glorifying an unhealthy lifestyle in the name of self-love.
The body positivity movement’s obsession with self-love is itself suspect. Indeed, encouraging the kind of unhealthy behavior that leads to chronic pain, back issues, heart disease, diabetes, and mobility issues that will significantly reduce your quality of life is a weird way to treat someone you love. But a focus on fitness, rather than physical attractiveness, is a healthy alternative to the extremes on both sides.
“Bring back fat shaming” isn’t the answer either. The late 1990s and early 2000s glamorized a body type which for many was not their healthiest. Renee Zellwegger, Kate Winslet, and Alicia Silverstone were ruthlessly mocked for being “fat.” Zellwegger weighed 136 pounds at 5’4” (well to the low end of a normal BMI) when she wrote in her journal in the movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary” about her “terrifying slide into obesity.” The issue with this mentality was that it prioritized a fleeting beauty standard over the actual health, fitness, and longevity of the individual.
A push for nationwide fitness like the one which Kennedy and Hegseth are leading is a far healthier antidote to our current obesity crisis. Striving for the sort of body that lets you play with your grandchildren, carry heavy boxes past your prime, or explore the mountains in our nation’s beautiful national parks in your retirement is far more inspiring and long lasting then striving for a body that is thin or shapely enough for whatever society has currently decided is the ideal way to look.
When you have children, especially as a woman, you start to understand how fleeting these standards are. Stretch marks in pregnancy, for instance, while they can be minimized with various lifestyle changes and products, are genetic. Many of the healthiest pregnant women will get them regardless of what they do to stop them. “Fat shaming” would do nothing to help a new mom cope with this change, nor would encouraging her to live an unhealthy lifestyle because “all bodies are beautiful.”
Instead, new moms, aging men, or others experiencing physical changes should focus on what they can change – their fitness and strength. Often, thinness goes along with it, and in many cases it should. But a strong body that the tabloids in 2006 might call fat is far more desirable than a thin, weak body that makes you a generation’s sex symbol.
"The Pete and Bobby Challenge" is inspiring. Not everyone can do it – I certainly can’t – but it’s the sort of thing that most people, with discipline and determination, could eventually succeed in accomplishing. It’s the kind of thing that can truly make everyday Americans healthy again.
Sarah Wilder is a writer and commentator on culture and the family. Formerly a reporter at the Daily Caller, her work has been published in Chronicles Magazine, The Federalist, and The American Mind.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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