Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “Department of War” social accounts released a series of workout videos Wednesday featuring the Cabinet member doing training exercises with “warriors” (members of the military), this time at Guantanamo Bay. One video featured numerous shots of Hegseth and other men running, jumping and lifting amid a chorus of grunts and was quickly followed by another video of Hegseth giving a locker room-style speech about how the president has “got [their] backs” and is ready to “unleash” and “untie” their hands. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Hegseth (or other members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet) release videos of this nature — it’s just the latest example of the MAGA-coded “masculinity theater” that’s becoming associated with Trump’s second term.
What is masculinity theater?
Masculinity theater isn’t hard to spot once you know what you’re looking for, and it’s something we’ve been seeing a lot in the social media videos from Trump’s Cabinet members, seemingly targeting the “manosphere” set. With all the talk of “performative males” among progressives — describing men who use the cultural shorthand of feminist literature, merch or even drinking matcha to project a “feminist” or feminine aesthetic (whether it reflects their true values or personal politics or not) to get women to like them — the masculinity performances we’re seeing here are, in a way, the conservative play on the same idea. But instead, it’s men performing for other men’s approval.
“We see it with Pete Hegseth. We see it with Robert Kennedy [Jr.]. It’s the same kind of display of this militant masculinity of a representative American man who is white, dominant, powerful ... physically fit and attractive,” explained Soraya Chemaly, author of “All We Want Is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy.” She noted that all of these individual and otherwise unrelated qualities “get all knotted into one” preferred macho identity.
“They are really explicit displays of individual physical strength, but at the same time, they’re symbolic: These men represent the government. They represent the nation,” she said. “They represent Trump’s ideal in particular, the right-wing ideals of manhood and masculinity.” It’s through these MAGA masculinity displays that we see “both an aesthetic, but also a political message.” But it isn’t just something that manifests on social feeds — from the internal messaging and policies currently guiding the military that shame gender, racial and body diversity (from weight to beards) to the literal mixed martial arts exhibition on the White House lawn or the upcoming IndyCar race being held for America’s 250th.
She said “it’s a decision” to choose to repeatedly display and highlight that specifically masculine-coded physical strength and to praise “a very narrow definition of strength.” Fitness culture itself is a major, documented stage for masculinity theater. Researchers at the University of British Columbia Vancouver examined men’s attitudes about their bodies and their approach to fitness in a 2016 paper published in the American Journal of Men’s Health and noted how “masculine body ideals are ‘pitched’ or sold to men, men ‘purchase,’ buy into, internalize, and/or ‘perform’ these ideals (to varying degrees), and perpetuate body ideals that influence their peers.” When discussing the performance of this masculinity, it displays similarly to Hegseth’s videos: “Physical performativities that demonstrate athleticism, strength, stamina and competitiveness can be used by men to showcase their masculinity and demonstrate commitment to participating in idealized male body practices,” the researchers noted.
The real message behind masculinity theater: “reaffirming MAGA men’s sense of dominance.”
Unfortunately, behind the silly B-roll and chest-beating performances of Big, Strong Men, the message gets more disturbing. For Chemaly, this also plays into the changes we’ve seen in the military since Trump’s second term began: “Very clearly the purge of the military, the redefinition, the re-masculinization and the re-whitening of the military — because that is what has happened — that kind of that reform of the military, it isn’t just about the military, right?” “The military is a lab of social change in America. It has always been the engine of social change in America,” she continued. “When you see changes like this, I think it’s important to note that, historically.” And so by enforcing rules that “disproportionately disadvantage trans people, women, Black service members,” she said, it speaks to the “overall agenda” under the surface.
“They’re reaffirming MAGA men’s sense of dominance. They’re reaffirming and validating the historical centrality and dominance of white men in American society. They make no bones about that,” Chemaly said. “They do it through their administration, through their public-facing people — including women.” “They’re not dancing around the issue. They’re very explicit about the issue.” Citing this rhetoric and imagery with the actual geopolitical “aggression” via recent actions of the “Department of War” in this second Trump term, Chemaly said, they “all go hand in hand with these kind of fun and jocular social media, meme-able images that produce the cultural wrapping around the violence.”
Trump support itself is potentially a form of masculinity theater.
The MAGA-of-it-all does play a role in how these masculine performances are received — both by Trump’s supporters and his detractors. Dan Cassino is a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He found in his March 2026 study looking at how individuals self-rated their masculinity and femininity over time, “men who reported supporting Trump in any of his electoral campaigns were more likely than other men to move towards the maximum levels of masculinity.” “The data suggests that for men, voting for Trump wasn’t just a consequence of having traditionalist views of their masculinity, but was a way of asserting that masculinity,” Cassino wrote. “Voting for Trump, especially since he was running against women in two out of his three bids for the presidency, seems to have been a marker of masculinity, a way for men to prove that they were closer to the elusive standards of traditional masculinity.”
“Just as men who bought a gun or got a raise might consider themselves to be closer to the ideal of masculinity, it seems that men who voted for Trump thought of themselves as being more masculine for having done so,” he concluded. Likewise, Cassino did note that the data suggested men who were not Trump supporters “tended to move away from claiming that they were completely masculine.” “This could be interpreted as some men deciding that, in the Trump era, masculinity wasn’t something that they wanted to claim,” Cassino noted.
Calling it out when you see it helps. Laughing at it does, too. When you come across one of these sweaty and seemingly heavy-handed government promo videos, a knee-jerk reaction might be to laugh at it. And to Chemaly, that’s understandable. Just as the meme-ified nature of these dispatches is part of the power of masculinity theater — by getting it into the hands of the men they most want to influence and baking it into their culture — there’s a power, Chemaly said, in recognizing the messaging, being critical of it and having a good time clowning on it. Can we laugh this sort of performative energy out of public discourse? It’s probably a bit late for that. But there is a power in naming the absurdity in it.
“I think there are a lot of really brilliant people who are laughing at it, but being sincere,” Chemaly said. “They are making fun of it, but they’re noting how critically dangerous it is. And I think both those forms of content are really important because they speak to different audiences, they produce a pushback.”
