When "authenticity" means "dudes"
As 2026 approaches, can we political reporters please not forget every damn thing we learned just last year for the love of God
As one of the internet’s resident masculinity-politics experts, I have felt duty-bound for weeks now to address the oyster guy’s ad.
Now, I’m not seeing the video readily available anywhere other than Twitter, so just click through and watch it.
Because … [extremely Stefon voice] This ad has everything. It has anger. It has fishing. It has tattoos. It has swearing. It has kettlebells. It has Ford F-150 music.
But then more and more dude stuff piled up. There was a swooning New Republic profile, in which Platner, with his “stout chest and bulky arms,” hung out on his boat and showed off his dude bona fides…by which I mean his undies. ("He bends over to haul up the crates, T-shirt riding up. Platner is not a candidate who checks if his boxers are showing when a reporter is watching.”)
And then there was a Politico story about how two sporty guys in Iowa are going to solve all the Democratic Party’s problems by being Authentic. (The candidate the author found “perhaps most compelling was 45-year-old J.D. Scholten, the ‘baseball-playing, monopoly-busting, beer-drinking, Bible-reading, working-class prairie populist.’”)
And then there was this article from the Washington Post about how being “rugged” in Democratic politics is So Hot Right Now. (As one candidate put it: “I might be a little bit hairy, I might be a little bit fat, I might be a little tattooed … but I’m here standing up, willing to fight.”)
Now, look. I do not criticize my fellow journalists’ work lightly.1 All these authors are capable, smart people who have done great work.
But genuinely, this is important: please go look at all of those articles and tell me what’s missing.
I’ll tell you: not one of them – not one – clearly talks about gender. Not one states the blatant fact that masculinity is central to these candidates’ appeal. In fact, they barely get at even the idea of winning over men voters.
Now, these articles are very much about masculinity, however unwittingly. They all go on at length about the typical manly signifiers. Beer? Sports? Difficult jobs working with your hands? Yep.2 And those things mean these dude candidates are “authentic.” “Normal.” People who can reach the “working class.”
But these pieces do not make the crucial connection – the fact that in American politics, “authentic,” “normal,” and “working class” all always seem to be male-coded. And that’s a major omission, because masculinity is now more loudly, blatantly central to American politics than it has ever been in my lifetime.
Consider: Democrats needed you to know last year that Tim Walz coached football and was a veteran and could fix a car. And as a result, we all — journalists, pundits, everyone — spent much of last year talking about politicians and masculinity.
And it’s not just that. Josh Hawley wrote a whole book about manhood (Title: Manhood). Republicans are beating the strawman that masculinity is not inherently “toxic.” Dems are trying to find some musclebound guy who can podcast for three hours while also being a progressive. The “boy crisis” is raging (or isn’t). The “manosphere” is raging, in every sense. The HHS and Defense Secretaries are doing pullups and pushups on camera. And the president, by the way, has bragged on television about the size of his [cough] hands and his testosterone level and also for some reason talked about Arnold Palmer’s penis on the campaign trail. He’s planning UFC fights at the White House, for Chrissake.
All of which is to say: if you’re writing about a candidate’s boxers peeking out of his pants, or a couple of sports guys drinking beer, or a “fat” and “hairy” guy just bein’ himself, if you’re talking about “rugged” and “working class” candidates who “work with their hands” and you DON’T clearly address gender, in the year of our Lord 2025, you’re missing the story.
So let me say it. The story is this: masculinity is the default in American politics, and to this day, even when women have been at the top of two presidential tickets, masculinity to a large degree defines what kind of behavior, what kind of signifiers, are acceptable in top political candidates.
It’s the water we’re swimming in, and we have to name it.
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Now, that’s not to oversimplify things: is the masculine mystique we’re talking about here usually about white men? Yes. Straight? Sure. Blue-collar (or at least attempting to look the part)? Usually.
And that particular brand of masculinity is most visible when we’re talking about that elusive quality of authenticity. All the pieces about the Democrats’ crop of refreshing, outsider-y guys go to great lengths to talk about how NORMAL these guys are, how they’re just being themselves.
From The New Republic:
The question—how will he talk to Trump voters?—is one that only makes sense if you’ve never lived near many. It’s a question off an SAT proctored by political consultants: a test you have to pass to be taken seriously by people who think “real America” is a riddle to solve. But Platner isn’t solving a riddle. He’s just existing.
Just existing — just being his (manly) self. Ask women candidates how “just existing” works.
Or look at the Politico piece (subhed: “The elusive hunt to solve Democrats’ authenticity problem.”):
Scholten tucked his 6-foot-6-inch frame into a booth toward the back of Barley’s on Broadway. Turek rolled up and slid out of his wheelchair and into the space beside him. Scholten, in a three-quarter-sleeve, baseball-style shirt and an American flag cap, ordered an Easy Eddy IPA. Turek, in a navy-blue polo and light gray slacks, did the same. “Cheers,” Turek said.
Could they, I asked, help solve the Democrats’ authenticity problem?
“I don’t know about solve,” Scholten said, “but I’ll say that I think we both come from such similar backgrounds …”
“They can’t necessarily define us as being politicians because we both have spent the majority of our life playing sports,” Turek said. “There’s an authenticity, a genuineness, that I think has been lacking in our party.”
Or the WaPo piece:
“Authentic” is what they’re going for, McDonald says — you film at worksites, you keep the tone conversational, you let the candidates dress how they want.
“A lot of candidates have to go to Carhartt and buy a shirt. Most candidates don’t have them,” McDonald said. “These guys have them.”
Carhartts, worksites, semi-pro baseball. Authenticity is maddeningly male-coded. And if you don’t believe me, go back to the boxer shorts thing.
Imagine a lady candidate going to her job cleaning houses (working class!) while slammajamming her fourth Diet Coke of the day (relatable!) wearing a messy bun (authentic!) and also letting her underwear peek out over the decade-old, pilling leggings she’s wearing (authentic AND it involves undies!).
And imagine her bringing a political reporter along for all that romance.
OK, actually, I’m HERE for that whenever it happens. But you bet your ass gender would be the whole story by the third paragraph. Is this lady probably mainly attracting lady voters? Is she mainly talking about “women’s issues”? Can she attract men? Lordy Lordy how will this work?
My read: even in the party that’s perceived as girly, men are the default. Masculinity is aspirational. And the men who can wear that masculinity best? Those dudes are cool.
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I want to be 1000% clear: I’m not saying it’s BAD for some dude candidate to get on a stage and talk about cracking open a cold one or throwing a spiral pitch or shooting a 9-point pheasant or [stop it Danielle you’re embarrassing yourself]. Parties can run who they run and elect who they elect. I take no position on that.3 These candidates are probably all reasonably nice dudes with whom I’d like to drink a beer brightly-colored girly cocktail.
The issue is whether we journalists (not to mention voters, pundits, and everyone else) are attuned to — or alternately, blind to — the fact that men have a gender, too.
Consider how this apparent wave of manly men both stands in stark contrast to the diverse wave of Democratic women who ran for office after Trump was first elected. Consider also how all of this comes after two of the last three Democratic presidential candidates were women – both of whom lost.
All of which means that it’s too simplistic to say that rugged men are the flavor of the year, as Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha put it in that Washington Post article:
“Every cycle, there is a different hot candidate profile that everybody’s trying to be,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who has worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). Suburban soccer moms, veterans, self-funders. “This year, it seems like it’s these blue-collar workers.”
It’s so much more than that. It’s about winning men voters, for sure. But also, you could see this not as voters being fickle, but as a retrenchment of sorts – a decision to run back to a trope that feels safe and familiar after years of women’s gains (and, at the presidential level, losses) and years of abortion and sexual assault being central to the Democratic political conversation.
It is very possible that rugged men doing Dude Drag on the campaign trail is really what voters want, which again — not the point I’m making, not what I care about here. I’m saying that if that expression of gender trumps femininity every time, regardless of party, we need to be abundantly clear that that’s what’s happening, rather than labeling it refreshing and normal and — most importantly — neutral.
Men can do identity politics, too, and it looks like we’re going to see a lot of it in 2026.
Housekeeping and updates and links
Danielle, aren’t you leaving Substack? Yes. Yes I am. But migration is a friggin’ chore, and I desperately wanted to get this newsletter up and out and into the world. Please stay tuned and get ready for Very Professional Journalizing to show up in your inbox, looking slightly different and being from a different domain. (Side note: if you have strong recommendations re: Ghost vs. Behiiv, please reply or comment.)
Tariffs! Tariffs for everybody! The Supreme Court is taking up IEEPA tariffs. Do you know what IEEPA means? Because boy howdy can I explain it. In addition, I went on the NPR Politics Podcast with the wonderful Mara Liasson and Ashley Lopez to explain it all.
I went on vacation! And have been pretty burned out! Hence the long, long break. Thank you for staying subscribed! I think you’re pretty great! My tip for traveling internationally with a toddler: get Airbnbs with two bedrooms. Also let them watch whatever damn screens they want on the airplane.
YOUR OLD INTERNET JOY OF THE DAY: We’ve been using Sesame Street videos to render the toddler catatonic while we brush his teeth. And so here is the Bert and Ernie sketch that has made me giggle every damn time for more than three decades now.
I have, on multiple occasions, holed up in a side office at NPR and cried for an embarrassingly large chunk of the workday after Online Douchebags tore apart my articles at great length. I promise I don’t want to be a dick, for serious.
Little-known fact: all ladies were born without hands. Shhhhh don’t tell anyone. If the men find out they’ll tell the church.
In fact, I’m not allowed to! Hooray!