The Tamesis
Like many people, I was disgusted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the improbable appointee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary whose skepticism about vaccines quickly led to a surge in measles cases. (For more information on the danger RFK Jr. posed to society, I recommend reading his late cousin Tatiana Schlossberg’s masterful work new yorker The article outlines how his tenure as secretary of Health and Human Services worsened America’s public health and endangered the lives of cancer patients like her. )
Still, I can’t help but be fascinated – just like a car accident – by his less harmful, but equally bizarre lifestyle choices, like maintaining a “roadkill”-esque diet and seemingly wearing jeans at all times, including while working out. “I started doing this a long time ago because I would go hiking in the morning and then I would go straight to the gym,” Kennedy told Fox News of his love of working out in denim. “I find it convenient and now I’m used to it, so I just do it.”
There’s been a lot of media coverage about the Kennedy Jeans thing, but here we are Fashion Not content with merely parroting the day’s news; we’d rather follow in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson and continue our gonzo journalism. That’s why I put on my own jeans yesterday and reserved a bike at SoulCycle, determined to find out what our HHS secretary was doing to herself during her workout.
I hadn’t tried a spin class in about five years before attending SoulCycle Brentwood’s 10:30 class. I used to be a regular at Flywheel’s Showtunes Spin nights in West Hollywood, where my friend Hannah and I would vent on a loop about our anxieties about men not texting back (Hannah’s crush at the time was now her husband, and I can no longer remember my name, so it was all well and good, but I digress). Even then, when I was in the midst of my eating disorder and my passion for self-denial, I didn’t hate myself quite It was enough to weigh me down for a 45-minute candlelit hot spin class in my pants.
Luckily for me, the class at Brentwood wasn’t too crowded, so there weren’t too many fellow exercisers there who were surprised by my unorthodox clothing choice. (In case you’re wondering, I dug through my giant denim rolodex, which contains two full pairs of jeans, and selected a pair of baggy bootcut jeans from Good American, agreeing with my colleague Margaux Anbouba that my dark-rinse bell-bottoms might get caught on bike pedals.) SoulCycle, on the other hand, The staff at the front desk were so pleased with my assignment that they told me conspiratorially that they saw people coming to their classes wearing everything from scrubs to overalls. pants – but never jeans.
“I actually did see a guy come in wearing jeans for the first time,” interjected a studio employee named Bridget. “I think he was with his girlfriend and forgot they had booked a class, but he did the whole thing. It was very brave.” Determined to be as brave as Bridget, the unnamed male, I got on my bike and called another kind SoulCycle employee to take a “before” photo.
After a while the class started and I had a deep, dark desire to take my shoes off the pedals and run for the hills. I don’t like I can work out even if I’m wearing the right clothes. But trying to keep up with a very fit (and should I say, very inspiring) SoulCycle instructor while I’m stuck in cowboy-thigh prison is making me more miserable than I can remember attending a group fitness class in quite some time.
