What is muscular christianity and what does it have to do with Joe Rogan? We were joined by Derek Beres & Julian Walker of the Conspirituality podcast who are working on this very issue.
Christian nationalism has always been extremely obsessed with masculinity and extremely “muscular” for over two centuries. How prevalent it is in mainstream American culture ebbs and flows as times change, but especially during periods of crises (say a pandemic) it has historically tended to reemerge as a dominant political force. A lot of folks truly want to take us back to the Dark Ages.
Joe Rogan, in all of his 5’8” glory, is apparently the archetype of the kind of figure prized by this political and cultural movement. He professes self reliance, is already extremely wealthy, juices all the supplements all wrapped up in the American flag. If Flat Tummy Tea influencers are the people who attract women to these conservative cultish ideologies, Joe Rogan and folks who model themselves after him are the male equivalent. And while he used to have more left leaning guests on, lately under Covid-19 he’s made a hard and sad right turn.
Derek Beres is a fitness and yoga instructor and author based in Los Angeles. He is the Senior Editor at Eco & co-host of the Conspirituality podcast. Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/derekberes
Julian Walker has been teaching yoga in and around LA since 1994 . He is co-host of the Conspirituality Podcast. Julian also writes extensively on the intersections of cults, trauma, new ageism and yoga. Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/embodiedsacred
Recorded January 02nd, 2021
How Fancy Water Bottles Became a 21st-Century Status Symbol
On the surface, water bottles as totems of consumer aspiration sound absurd: If you have access to water, you can drink it out of so many things that already exist in your home. But if you dig a little deeper, you find that these bottles sit at a crossroads of cultural and economic forces that shape Americans’ lives far beyond beverage choices. If you can understand why so many people would spend 50 bucks on a water bottle, you can understand a lot about America in 2019.
The first time I coveted a water bottle was in 2004. When I arrived as a freshman at the University of Georgia, I found that I was somehow the last person alive who didn’t own a Nalgene. The brand’s distinctive, lightweight plastic bottles had long been a cult-favorite camping accessory, but in the mid-2000s, they exploded in popularity beyond just outdoorsmen. A version with the school’s logo on it cost $16 in the bookstore, which was a little steep for me, an unemployed 18-year-old, but I bought one anyway. I wanted to be the kind of person all my new peers apparently were. Plus, it’s hot in Georgia. A nice water bottle seemed like a justifiable extravagance.
Around the same time, I remember noticing the first flares of another trend intimately related to the marketability of water bottles: athleisure. All around me, stylish young women wore colorful Nike running shorts and carried bright plastic Nalgenes to class. “With Millennials, fitness and health are themselves signals,” says Tülin Erdem, a marketing professor at NYU. “They drink more water and carry it with them, so it’s an item that becomes part of them and their self-expression.”
.. Kauss says she always knew the bottle’s appearance would be important, even though positioning something as simple as a water bottle as a luxury product was a bit of a gamble. “As I moved up in my career, I was upgrading my wardrobe, and the bottle that looked like a camping accessory really didn’t serve my purpose anymore,” she says. When she noticed fashionable New Yorkers were carrying luxe disposable plastic bottles from brands such as Evian and Fiji, she realized reusable bottles could use a makeover, too.
.. Kauss and her contemporaries struck at the right time. The importance of fitness and wellness were starting to gain a foothold in fashionable crowds, and concerns over consumer waste and plastic’s potential to leach chemicals into food and water were gaining wider attention. People wanted cute workout gear, and they wanted to drink water out of materials other than plastic. Researchers have found that the chance to be conspicuously sustainability-conscious motivates consumers, especially when the product being purchased costs more than its less-green counterparts.
.. For a lot of people, they spark a little bit of joy in the otherwise mundane routine of work, exercise, and personal hygiene. For a generation with less expendable income than its parents’, a nice bottle pays for itself with a month of consistent use and lets you feel like you’re being proactive about your health and the environment.
Why Yoga Pants Are Bad for Women
Whatever happened to sweatpants?
Remember sweatpants? Women used to wear them, not so long ago.
.. No one looks good in sweatpants. But that’s not the point. They’re basically just towels with waistbands. They exist for two activities: lounging and exercising — two activities that you used to be able to do without looking like a model in a P90X infomercial.
.. But yoga pants make it worse. Seriously, you can’t go into a room of 15 fellow women contorting themselves into ridiculous positions at 7 in the morning without first donning skintight pants? What is it about yoga in particular that seems to require this? Are practitioners really worried that a normal-width pant leg is going to throttle them mid-lotus pose?
.. Women can, of course, be fit and liberated. We may be able to conquer the world wearing spandex. But wouldn’t it be easier to do so in pants that don’t threaten to show every dimple and roll in every woman over 30?.. Pantsuits had a moment, back in 2016. I think women are ready to give them another chance. And while we’re at it, let’s bring back slacks, too, and corduroys and, why not, even khakis. But the first step is to bring back sweatpants.Deep-sea divers need skintight polymer pants; so do Olympic speedskaters. The rest of us could use some breathing room. So step into some slouchy pants with me. We don’t have to look quite so good when we’re just trying to look a little better.
The Army’s Radical Fitness Shift
The Army Combat Readiness Test would change how the military measures soldiers, with no adjustments for age or gender
A proposed overhaul of the Army’s decades-old test includes a barbell lift, a sprint with 40-pound kettlebells and a brutal new style of push-up. The test would be a dramatic shift for the Army, a longtime bellwether of civilian health and fitness. The exercises in the proposed test are more challenging but the Army hasn’t yet set the passing standards.
.. The proposed six-event test known as the Army Combat Readiness Test, or ACRT, aims to encourage more practical physical training and prevent injury..soldiers formed lines behind a row of barbells loaded with weights ascending from 125 pounds to 425 pounds. Each soldier picked a weight and performed three dead lifts.
.. The second event was a reverse throw of a 10-pound ball, measured for distance. The seemingly awkward motion serves a purpose: It mimics a boosting move that’s “exactly how we get people into buildings,”
.. The proposed new push-up requires lowering all the way to the ground and extending one’s arms in a T between repetitions. The T push-up is easier to monitor in testing, Army leaders say. Col. Snider says he managed 50 T push-ups in two minutes “and I was completely destroyed.” He had done 84 regular push-ups while taking the Army’s current fitness test a few weeks earlier, he says.
.. The 250-meter shuttle event requires alternately sprinting, dragging a 90-pound sled and carrying two 40-pound kettlebellsThe leg tuck, the fifth event in the proposed test, requires lifting knees or thighs to elbows while hanging from a pull-up bar. Some soldiers struggled to do more than a handful of reps... The proposed test ends with a timed two-mile run, the only event identical to one in the current test... Staff Sgt. Jenna McKinney, who took the recent pilot test, says events like the sled pull would make the proposed test an easier sell than the current test to soldiers under her command.“It’s nice to be able to tell them: Imagine carrying your battle buddy downrange,” she says, using the Army term for being deployed overseas.
.. A universal testing standard will help legitimize women’s position in combat, Staff Sgt. McKinney says.
.. Jim Peterson, a former professor of physical education at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, says the test could discriminate against women and cause injuries to male and female soldiers. Dr. Peterson also says the dead lift is a particularly risky exercise if not performed correctly.
.. About 17% of Army soldiers are classified as obese, according to a 2016 Army report. That’s half the rate among U.S. adults overall, but up from 13% a year earlier.