CNN
—
Ashton Hall’s day begins at 3:52 a.m., if his most recent viral video is to be believed.
The online fitness coach starts his very early morning by removing a piece of tape from his mouth. Over the next five-and-a-half hours, he embarks on a series of endeavors that include repeatedly dunking his face into a bowl of ice water, rubbing a banana peel on his skin and diving into a swimming pool (an act that, according to the timestamp, takes a full four minutes). Cobalt blue bottles of Saratoga water feature heavily throughout.
Hall’s bizarrely involved morning routine has inspired numerous parodies and widespread ridicule, with viewers memeing the only line he utters in the video: “So looking at it bro, we gotta go ahead and get in at least 10,000.”
It’s not clear whether Hall’s routine is meant to be taken seriously — he didn’t respond to a request for comment, but many of his videos are about how he learned to maximize his social media views and parlay that into financial success.
Even if he’s baiting viewers, as some social media users have suggested, Hall is just one of many influencers who make up a broader online landscape of alpha male lifestyle content. In this digital universe, men rise and grind. They promote extreme, if not dubious, practices around exercise and wellness. And crucially, they look impossibly good doing it.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-discipline and vigorous exercise, or taking great care of your body. But also implicit in this genre of social media content, some critics and observers say, are more insidious messages — ones that distort our perceptions of masculinity.
American society has been obsessed with fitness and beauty for decades, but for much of that time, such preoccupations were considered unmasculine, writes historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela.
That attitude started to shift around the ‘70s and ‘80s, as bodybuilder Arnold Schwarznegger normalized caring about aesthetics and Calvin Klein advertisements objectified the male form. By the ‘90s, unrealistic body standards — six-pack abs, broad shoulders, bulging arms — afflicted men, too.
In recent years, those standards have been pushed to new extremes, while the project of physical self-improvement has become all-consuming, says Robert Lawson, an associate professor of sociolinguistics at England’s Birmingham City University and author of “Language and Masculinities.”
It’s no longer enough to lift weights at the gym — there are protein goals to hit, brain-enhancing supplements to take and hair loss prevention drugs to ingest. Some of the most high-profile male lifestyle influencers (including podcaster Joe Rogan and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman) promote the idea that through experimental diets and supplementation, you can hack your biology, and ultimately, optimize your life.
This optimization, of course, comes at a cost. Many fitness and lifestyle influencers are not only depicting an aspirational physique, but they’re selling products and regimens that promise to help you achieve it. Hall, for example, has his own line of workout supplements and protein powders, while his training programs will run you thousands of dollars.
What these influencers present “doesn’t capture the messy and complex realities of the vast majority of people’s day-to-day lives,” Lawson says. Waking up at 3:52 a.m. and training for hours before the purported workday even begins is highly unrealistic for men who work traditional jobs and have families. (As Derek Thompson notes in The Atlantic, the men in viral “morning routine” videos are typically shown alone, with no friends, spouse or kids in sight.)
“To me, it seems like quite a sterile existence — one that doesn’t have space for the messiness of real life,” Lawson says.
For all the viewers who mock Hall’s “morning routine” video and other content like it, there are other impressionable young men who buy into their “grindset” and hustle mentality, says Patrick Wyman, who hosts the “Tides of History” podcast and has written about American “bro culture.”
Those messages are alluring for a reason, he adds.
Many boys and men are struggling by a number of measures. Data suggests that fewer men are working or pursuing college, while more of them are dying by suicide and drug overdoses. And while there are broader, systemic forces behind these circumstances, Wyman does feel that they’re connected to the appeal of “fitness bro” lifestyle content.
“On some fundamental level, men are trying to work out what their place is in the world, what they can do about the state that they find themselves in, and who gets to belong,” he says. “And fitness, the body that you display to the world, becomes one of the most fundamental ways in which you can do that.”
“Morning routine” videos and the male lifestyle influencers behind them offer a sense of purpose and control, Wyman says. They imply that if you just wake up earlier, work smarter and follow a set path, you can become more attractive, more successful and more fulfilled. Maybe you, too, could live in a Miami high-rise with a faceless woman bringing you breakfast and staff handing you towels at the gym. Maybe you, too, could say goodbye to the 9-to-5 slog and start making seven figures through social media posts.
Read another way: If you don’t have the perfect body, or if you’re struggling financially, mentally or emotionally, it’s because you’re not doing enough.
Some observers are concerned that this kind of social media content presents a singular approach to being a man.
“For some percentage of people, maybe that’ll work out. Maybe if they just grind hard enough, things really are out there waiting for them,” Wyman says. “But I think it’s much more likely to lead them down the rabbit hole of a culture that rewards grifters and superficial nods to the idea of self-improvement without actually making yourself a better person.”
And if it doesn’t work out, Lawson adds, it stands to make men feel worse about themselves — setting them up for disappointment and possibly resentment. (Research has shown that seeing #fitspiration content, which for men includes visibly muscular bodies, can negatively affect body image.)
“The worry is that this paints a really unrealistic and unattainable form of masculinity,” he says. “Then further down the line, when men don’t get that kind of lifestyle, they somehow think that they’ve failed.”
