The Minister of Health and Social Care is a strange guy. Yes, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has shown an openly dangerous closeness to vaccine conspiracies and disregarded scientific consensus — but he also has some damn strange habits.
From saying his Super Bowl snack of choice was yogurt (“meats and ferments”) to his penchant for animal carcasses, Kennedy’s antics were a source of endless public fascination. The more access we’ve gained to Kennedy through his government work, the more one question has seared itself into the American consciousness: Why does this man always wear jeans?
Kennedy doesn’t just wear them in everyday life. He wears them in situations where jeans would be several degrees less than optimal for the activity at hand. While swimming, exercising, in the sauna. Jeans and belt. No shirt though, just extremely wet denim.
Jeans and public confusion
The bizarre habit reached a peak of public confusion on Tuesday when Kennedy released a video promoting his “Make America Healthy Again” initiative alongside famously healthy guy Kid Rock. To Rock’s “Bawitdaba” – a song about hard drugs and a lot of alcohol – the duo presented their vision of a “Rock Out Work Out”.
The video showed Kennedy working out on fitness equipment wearing blue jeans and what appeared to be hiking boots. At one point, Kennedy takes off his shirt for the camera and sits on a stationary bike in a sauna (while still wearing jeans). He steps into a cold pool (while still wearing jeans). He jumps into a pool (while still wearing the jeans). And he drinks a glass of whole milk in the pool, which may be a very large hot tub (wearing jeans again).
The jeans stay on
The message was clear: the jeans stay on.
When asked for an explanation, the Department of Health referred ROLLING STONE to an interview Kennedy gave to Fox News in August in which he said he “started doing this a long time ago” because he “would go hiking in the morning and then straight to the gym, and I found it convenient, and now I’m used to it, so I just do it.”
This is a bit nonsensical and didn’t apply to his training with Kid Rock. In the absence of a plausible explanation, the online masses have come up with their own: RFK Jr. could be a Never Nude.
Pop culture diagnosis
For the uninitiated, the concept of “Never Nude” entered common parlance after the sitcom “Arrested Development” made a running gag out of neurotic, sexually inhibited character Tobias Funke’s habit of constantly wearing cut-off denim shorts under his clothes.
Over the course of the series, Funke — masterfully played by comedian and actor David Cross — can be seen crying in the shower while wearing his shorts, under a Speedo, under chaps, even under workout clothes at the gym. “Sorry, are they effectively hiding my rumble of thunder,” he asks in one episode.
Now, “Never Nude” is not a diagnosis found in psychiatric diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5, at least not under that name. Funke’s impairment was probably based on gymnophobia, an irrational fear of nudity.
Meme culture and reactions
Comparisons to Funke were a common reaction to Kennedy’s training video on social media; Users posted clips and memes from Arrested Development and expressed general amazement at RFK’s jeans fixation.
“RFK Jr is a Never Nude,” one X user wrote in response to the video. A top comment on the post photoshopped Kennedy’s face over a still of Funke in his safety shorts.
“As crazy as you think this video is, I urge you to watch it in its entirety. It’s so much crazier than you can imagine. RFK Jr. jumping into a pool wearing jeans,” comedian Milo Edwards wrote in a tweet with over three million impressions.
“I don’t know about you, but Kid Rock doing 3 push-ups in a sauna and looking like he smells like wet socks and RFK Jr. getting into a bathtub wearing Walmart jeans really makes me healthier,” another user quipped.
Previous incidents
That Kennedy would wear jeans in any context where showing the calf and perhaps even the knee would be appropriate is bizarre, but Tuesday’s video wasn’t the first time questions have been raised about Kennedy’s denim fixation.
Last May, Kennedy made headlines after he was photographed swimming with his grandchildren in Rock Creek in Washington, D.C. — ignoring local warnings. While the main concern was the poor water quality of Rock Creek, Kennedy swam in the river in jeans. In July, he posed for a sweat-soaked photo of himself hiking Camelback Mountain in Arizona in 107 degrees Fahrenheit wearing jeans. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth worked out together in jeans in a social media video in August.
The “Rock Out Work Out” video was released as Kennedy celebrates his one-year anniversary as HHS secretary. The year was marked by dismantling public health systems, conspiracy-driven changes to the country’s vaccination policy, reversals of U.S. measles eradication, and cuts to medical research funding. While Kennedy obsesses over whole milk and Super Bowl commercials, the FDA goes back and forth on whether to pursue mRNA vaccine research that Kennedy tried to scrap.
Political legacy
While Kennedy’s term produces public policies that will be felt in every aspect of Americans’ health and health care systems for decades to come, it is clear that the mess he leaves in his wake will be as difficult to get rid of as getting to the shore in soggy Levi’s.
