Indeed, most of this current political project can be read as a wild overreaction to the mere perception of being scolded. Most of Trump’s appointees—Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino; obvious dopes with résumés heavy on podcasts and talking-head gigs—are only qualified in the sense that they have made themselves avatars of not apologizing, the manliest virtue according to modern conservatism. They are the logical evolution of TV cowboys like Reagan: internet tough guys and podcast he-men.
It sounds funny to say, because, as always, the presentation of hypermasculinity can only go so far before it turns into parody. Indeed, the Zelenskyy moment itself seems to contain multiple instances of presentation falling apart and signal coming unstuck from signifier. It’s worth noting that Zelenskyy himself, like both Reagan and Trump a TV guy before he was a politician, only took to wearing his sort of “operator”-inspired tactical gear in order to project the image of the wartime leader he thought people wanted to see. That clearly backfired with the Trumpists, assuming any of their criticism was in good faith. It probably wasn’t, but it gave them ammunition nonetheless.
And yet, bringing Zelenskyy in for a three-way scolding may have also backfired, in the sense that, as we’ve covered, there’s nothing less masculine than being a scold.
Trump, maybe because of his years of experience playing a character on TV, seems to play his part well enough. It’s mainly through JD Vance that we can see the most obvious cracks in the façade. The part of the scene that most stuck in people’s minds was arguably Vance’s plea to Zelenskyy: “I haven’t heard a ‘thank you.’”
It was clearly intended to be straight talk, but it was the pleading part that stood out, and more than a few commentators likened Vance to a nagging girlfriend. Memes of Vance, his already round face artificially be-fattened into Fauntleroy-esque proportions, have metastasized to the point of inescapability. The internet loves turning him into a bug-eyed little piggy.
I won’t say that JD Vance puts the lie to the entire reactionary masculinity enterprise, but it seems clear now that there’s something faulty in his presentation. He wears the same suits as Trump, with the same long, shiny ties (“they point at your dick,” says Sebastian Stan–as–Trump in The Apprentice), but somehow it only ends up accentuating his tight pants, and the way the tapered legs get stuck on his calves when he sits and end up revealing the skin above his socks. He’s frequently accused of wearing eyeliner. He tries to look tough in front of a foreign leader but ends up being ridiculed for sounding like a woman. Above all, he gives the impression of an eager pupil wearing his dad’s clothes, a barely grown Stilwell from A League of Their Own.
It’s almost solely the presentation that the public has managed to puncture thus far, but when all you can offer is presentation, what happens when you can’t even maintain it?
The danger with all presentations of masculinity is that they’re just that: presentations. The same way too-obvious makeup and overly elaborate hairstyling on women eventually starts to imply drag queen, there’s a level at which the presentation of hyper-masculinity starts to seem feminine, or gay porn–y.
Subconsciously, Trump is already there. He seems to play “YMCA” as often as Reagan played “Hail to the Chief,” and the Village People practically invented hypermasculine presentation as a winking gay in-joke. Trump is a political cockroach and one of the dumb-luckiest humans alive, so it’s hard to speculate about what types of obvious hypocrisy will actually hurt him. But the preponderance of JD Vance memes at least seem to suggest that parts of the tough guy act aren’t having the desired effect. And further, it’s hard to imagine that the motley crew of manosphere stooges surrounding Trump in the rest of the administration won’t drive the whole shtick into the ground.
