Over a year ago, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed met the political commentator Hasan Piker at the Hype Recreation Center in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, for a live online conversation hosted by the Twitch star. At the time, El-Sayed was in the early stages of a highly competitive primary race. As the campaign unfolded, he would be outspent on advertising, and his opponents would garner the backing of many old guard Democrats. He would also find himself having to address issues and concerns that had little to do with his policy positions: his Egyptian lineage and his Muslim faith, as well as his relationship with Piker, who has grabbed public attention for, among other things, criticizing Israel and its war in Gaza.
But none of that was the centerpiece of El-Sayed’s gym time with Piker. The two men mostly focused on working out. And they were quite a display of musculature. Piker, wearing a loose-fitting white T-shirt printed with “Gaza” on the back, is 6-foot-4. He also has shoulders like bowling balls. El-Sayed, 5-foot-7 with grapefruit biceps that strained against his black Nike T-shirt, was more than Piker’s match. The two communed over bench presses, lat pulldowns and Turkish get-ups for which El-Sayed used a 50-pound kettlebell as a warm-up. Huffing, puffing and sweating, they counted out reps and generally nurtured their bromance amid the barbells.
El-Sayed, who has a medical degree from Columbia University, directed much of his attention to technique, explaining how his shoulders were pinched back or the way in which his core was stabilized. “Michigan, you want a guy who can demonstrate perfect form,” said Piker, offering a political endorsement.
When the two finally put their weights down, Piker stopped in front of a mirror to flex his guns and encouraged El-Sayed to join him in showing off for the viewers. “It’s not that kind of show, man,” El-Sayed joked as his face glowed with perspiration. “I want them to want me for my policy.”
While health care and the Trump administration were mentioned, the meet-up had not been in service of explaining “Medicare for All” or commiserating over the rising cost of groceries; it had been about publicly bench pressing 315 pounds. So, the candidate obliged. He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal a farmer’s tan and awkwardly flexed.
“You never take your T-shirt off, huh?” Piker observed. “I don’t,” El-Sayed said. “Ever.” But he doesn’t have to. Everything anyone needs to know about his sense of self, the place he claims in today’s male hierarchy — his masculinity — is delineated by his rotation of form-fitting black tees that perfectly highlight his physique.
As the country heads into the midterm elections and Michigan once again plays the role of swing state, I was initially confused as I watched the archived video. I presumed the stretching at the outset would be a prelude not only to a workout but also to a serious conversation about issues important to voters. I assumed the chosen setting was simply a backdrop, a way to humanize a candidate who was being reduced to a caricature of leftist extremes. Surely the talk would eventually revolve around affordability or Gaza or tariffs. But by the time El-Sayed was winding down the conversation with a series of tricep pushdowns, I realized all that weightlifting was the point. It was his form of deliberate rebuke to Republicans, as well as his sales pitch to voters.
The workout was essential to a story El-Sayed was telling about himself and his worldview. Since the rise of MAGA, masculinity has been propelled into the political spotlight as a kind of competition, one based on bicep circumference, chest-forward bombast and grunting effort. But El-Sayed is a progressive who has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers union. He also favors some of the policies espoused by the Democratic Socialists of America such as abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is about as far from the MAGA universe as you can get.
Essentially, El-Sayed is using his ability to pump significant amounts of iron to send the message that progressive politics shouldn’t be equated with weakness. He is articulating and embodying a muscular form of liberalism — one that is impolite, unapologetic, and jacked. More than any other contemporary politician, he is trying to reclaim masculinity for the left. Is that a good thing? It’s gratifying, certainly. But it’s also complicated.
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When I listen to El-Sayed speak, the cadence of his sentences, the flatness of his vowels and the clarity of his pronunciation all sound familiar to me. I was born and raised in Detroit. He was born in Michigan, too, and grew up in Bloomfield Hills — one of the wealthier suburbs north of the city. To me, he sounds like home. El-Sayed has an American accent. He doesn’t have the inflections of the South or Texas, the upper Midwest or New York, Baltimore or Chicago. His is the accent by which all the others are defined. It’s baseline. Standard. All-American.
That’s no small thing. His full name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, which President Donald Trump has tried to turn into a smoking gun of otherness and danger. The president pronounces “Abdul” as if he’s just sampled some exotic morsel and can’t wait to spit it out. The vice president has referred to him as “very, very evil.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) called him a “TERRORIST” and “RADICAL ISLAMIST” on social media. El-Sayed has done what he can to defuse these attacks, including producing a campaign ad starring his grandparents and featuring Popsicles and the American flag.
But one of his primary means of fighting back has been to declare his version of masculinity the better, more American one. The Piker livestream wasn’t his only exercise video. In May, he worked out at the Detroit Body Garage with founder Terra Castro. In the clip, she’s talking about how “Medicare for All” would benefit her clients; he brags that his wife can lift 1.5 times her body weight.
Last month, he posted from his own home gym, which looks more like a half-finished basement stocked with free weights than anything out of a glossy magazine. Once again, El-Sayed was dressed in his preferred workout uniform, a black T-shirt and pale gray shorts. He made his intentions around masculinity explicit to his interviewer: Weightlifting, he said, “is something I’ve always done. A lot of what I’m trying to do is be like, ‘Hey, look, being a man is not about how you show up at the gym. It’s like how you show up for your family. It’s about how you show up in your community.”
The right-wing-masculinity complex that El-Sayed is challenging is formidable and pervasive. For many conservatives, masculinity has become a showcase of strength — not moral, intellectual or spiritual, but literal. How much weight can a man hoist over his head? How many push-ups can he do? How much manliness does a man project when the cameras are on and the microphone is hot?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been the most visible administration officials portraying masculinity as something bellicose and bullying. Kennedy exhorts Americans to exercise by presenting himself as the masculine ideal: tanned to the hue of a walnut, preserved in testosterone and sweating through a workout in a pair of jeans with his sidekick Kid Rock. Hegseth works out alongside service members. Videos show him flinging his legs — or kipping — to gain momentum to execute pullups (not good form). He has launched a battle against low testosterone among the troops, promising to test all his “war fighters” aged 30 and older to make sure they have plenty of it coursing through their body.
Nestled in all that lovingly tended chest cleavage is the right’s license to belittle those who are different, to hold sway over who gets to be defined as a true God-fearing, patriotic American. The version of masculinity that MAGA puts at center stage is, to be blunt, mean. It rewards those who shove the slower or weaker out of the way so they can reach the finish line first, instead of celebrating those who help pull the struggling to victory.
I see meanness in Trump’s ICE officers who move through cities hunting for Black and brown people. As the ranks of these officers swelled to keep pace with the administration’s deportation quotas, the primary hiring qualification seemed to be brute strength and a nasty streak. As the officers hide their faces behind sunglasses and neck gaiters, I can see no hint of courageousness or morality. I see a thug. I see a bro.
Yet the phenomenon of the mean, self-absorbed bro is not confined to the political right. There are the tech bros who went off and got buff just as the algorithms they created threaten to destroy childhood, democracy and maybe even our humanity. On the left, there were the Bernie bros, the young, mostly white men who were acolytes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during his 2016 presidential campaign. Initially viewed as representing a sort of craft-beer-drinking, NPR-loving, super-progressive ethos, they took on a dark tinge as they became associated with sexism directed toward Hillary Clinton.
El-Sayed aims to be a different kind of bro. And his efforts are not without merit. I love a quintessential guy’s guy who wears his masculinity proudly. I appreciate that he’s trying to reclaim the mantle of decency, morality, kindness and empathy on behalf of gym rats, the guys who love the adrenaline rush of physical competition and who are strong enough to flip over a tractor tire just for fun. I applaud him for trying to offer an antidote to the poisonous ideals associated with the manosphere. “My name is Abdul El-Sayed. You can imagine what that was like as a kid. And I learned very quickly that if you let a bully pick on you, they’re going to pick on you forever,” he recently told Alex Roarty of The Washington Sun. “So, I don’t let bullies pick on me. I don’t let bullies pick on other people.”
But then he added: “I think they’re learning very quickly that I give better than I get.” El-Sayed might do well to take his willingness to punch back as a warning. It’s all too easy to fall into the MAGA masculinity trap. When El-Sayed calls the vice president “eyeliner JD Vance,” is he striking a blow against a bully, or is he just using taunting, gendered language in service to his own bullying? Or consider when he mocks Vance’s relationship with his wife, Usha, and then Vance retaliates by warning El-Sayed to “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth” — reminiscent of what Will Smith said at the 2022 Oscars after he performed toxic masculinity by storming on stage and slapping Chris Rock in the face. Did El-Sayed win a victory for liberalism in this exchange? Or did he simply descend into the most immature version of schoolyard masculinity with each side bringing out the worst in the other?
El-Sayed played football in high school. Campaign ads for his Republican opponent Mike Rogers have highlighted that he played high school football, too. El-Sayed has ridiculed those ads, not because of Rogers’ lack of skill on the gridiron but because, unlike El-Sayed, he was not team captain.
As someone who was among the last to be chosen for elementary school dodgeball, I may be slightly biased when I say this, but arguing that Rogers shouldn’t be a senator because he wasn’t team captain is … ridiculous. Petty. Eye-rollingly absurd. The same is true for El-Sayed’s repeated use of the neutering social-media insult “beta” to describe Rogers. “If Mike Rogers is your image of masculinity, good luck,” El-Sayed told Roarty. “He’s been a beta his whole life. He’s a guy who shows up to laugh extra loud at the alpha’s jokes. That’s what he does with Donald Trump. … [The President] says, ‘Mike, jump.’ And Mike says, ‘How high?’”
In the big picture, El-Sayed is right. Masculinity — like femininity, patriotism or religion — does not belong to the right. And if you want universal health care or you worry that ICE has gone from enforcing laws to murdering American citizens or you simply can’t stand the unanswered chest-thumping of MAGA loyalists, then El-Sayed — a left-wing alpha who cannot be bullied or bossed — undoubtedly strikes a chord. But in his effort to reclaim masculinity for the left, he should take care not to bring the toxicity along with it. Otherwise, he might be standing up to right-wing masculinity, but he’s not proving that he’s the better man.
Robin Givhan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic and a former senior critic at large for The Washington Post.
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