Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, I’ve noticed a steady stream of rhetoric that attempts to make health and fitness partisan.
Trump announces return of Presidential Fitness Test
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to bring back the Presidential Fitness Test in schools, joined by several professional athletes at the White House.
unbranded – Newsworthy
It’s the heart of summer, and the days are long and toasty. Beaches on the coasts (or Lake Michigan, closer to where I live) are packed and clothing is minimal.
Some people look good showing extra skin. Most of them don’t.
The reality is that more than 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, and the trend has been moving rapidly in the wrong direction, leading to a plethora of preventable health problems and costs associated with them.
It’s concerning, and the effort to combat obesity should be something we can all agree on.
Sadly, it’s not.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, I’ve noticed a steady stream of rhetoric that attempts to make health and fitness partisan.
If you’re fit and enjoy working out (or even sport a tan), chances are there’s a progressive who will eye you with suspicion of being MAGA.
It’s an extreme example of the “if-Trump-is-for-it, we-must-be-adamantly-against-it” mentality that has infected the left.
To borrow a phrase from former Democratic vice presidential contender Tim Walz, it’s weird.
Trump wants kids to be more fit. Why is that a negative?
Trump brought physical fitness into the limelight on July 31 by signing an executive order reestablishing the Presidential Fitness Test for America’s public school students. The test had been around for decades until the 2012-13 school year, when President Barack Obama replaced it.
The order states: “We must address the threat to the vitality and longevity of our country that is posed by America’s declining health and physical fitness. For far too long, the physical and mental health of the American people has been neglected.”
The rise in obesity and the decline in health is especially disheartening when it comes to the country’s kids.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2024 report, about 20% of children are obese (2 in 5 adults are obese). That’s a sharp increase from when childhood obesity rates were 5% in the 1970s.
Not only is this a national health concern, it’s a national security one, as Trump acknowledges in his executive order.
The CDC report found that only 2 in 5 young adults are weight-eligible and active enough to serve in the military.
“The military has experienced increasing difficulty in recruiting soldiers as a result of physical inactivity, obesity, and malnutrition among our nation’s youth,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling said in the report.
Yet, Trump’s commonsense approach to boost fitness was met with consternation among media progressives.
“Trump is reviving an outdated and problematic practice for American schoolkids,” proclaimed MSNBC.
“Generations of Americans who struggled to complete a pull-up in front of their classmates winced as President Trump announced that he was reinstating the annual assessment,” The New York Times opined.
Doing Pilates does not make you an authoritarian. Nor does having a tan.
Leftists also have thoughts about fitness for adults and what it says about conservatism.
Earlier this year, fitness influencer MaryBeth Monaco-Vavrik posted a video that went viral connecting the “popularization of Pilates & running instead of strength training … and the rise of extreme American authoritarianism.” She also equated conservatism with “smaller bodies.”
Men, on the other hand, must avoid looking too manly and the trap of toxic masculinity and the “manosphere,” which liberals tell us have flourished under Trump. For instance, actor Sacha Baron Cohen’s appearance on the August cover of Men’s Fitness UK sparked criticism over his newly chiseled body.
One headline said his physique “is repellent to most women.”
(It must be because I’m a conservative woman, but I found Baron Cohen’s new look the opposite of repellent.)
In 2024, a columnist in The Guardian warned, “There is a dark side to wellness, which I always, for shorthand, thought of as political: getting fit makes you more rightwing.”
And now, enjoying sunshine and getting a tan could mark you as a MAGA fanatic. After all, Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sport a perennial bronze shade.
As The Atlantic recently observed: “Tanning is back. Only this time, it’s not just about looking good − it’s about embracing an entire ideology.”
I’d wager the vast majority of people who are fit and spend time outdoors do so because they know it’s beneficial for their health and simply enjoy it. It has nothing to do with Trump or how they vote.
Progressives trying to demonize fitness to “get back” at Trump are hurting themselves − and the next generations of Americans.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques