Like many people, I am repulsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Kennedy failson improbably appointed as US Secretary of Health and Human Services who has made quick work of allowing measles cases to surge with his vaccine skepticism. (For more on the dangers RFK Jr. poses to society, I recommend you read his late cousin Tatiana Schlossberg’s deft New Yorker essay outlining how his tenure as HHS secretary has degraded the state of public health in the US and imperiled the lives of cancer patients like her.)
Still, I can’t help being fascinated—in a gawking-at-a-car-crash way—by his less broadly harmful, but no less bizarre lifestyle choices, such as maintaining a “roadkill”-forward diet and wearing jeans seemingly all the time, including while he exercises. “I just started doing that a long time ago because I would go hiking in the morning and then I’d go straight to the gym,” Kennedy told Fox News of his penchant for denim-clad workouts. “I found it was convenient, and now I’m used to it, so I just do it.”
Much has been made of Kennedy’s jeans thing in the press, but we here at Vogue aren’t content to merely parrot the news of the day; we much prefer to follow in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson and get our gonzo journalism on. That’s why I donned some denim of my own yesterday and booked a bike at SoulCycle, determined to find out just what our HHS secretary is doing to himself during his workouts.
Prior to my 10:30 session at SoulCycle Brentwood, I hadn’t attempted a spin class in about five years. I used to be a regular at Flywheel’s Showtunes Spin nights in West Hollywood, where my friend Hannah and I would cycle out our angst over men not texting us back (Hannah’s crush from back then is now her husband and I no longer recall the name of mine, so all’s well that ends well, but I digress). Even then, when I was in the grips of an eating disorder and big on self-abnegation, I didn’t hate myself quite enough to sit through a heated, candlelit, 45-minute spin class in pants that actively weighed me down.
Luckily for me, the Brentwood class wasn’t too packed, so there weren’t too many fellow exercisers there to gawk at my unorthodox choice of attire. (In case you’re wondering, I cycled through my vast denim Rolodex of two whole pairs of jeans and selected a loose, boot-cut pair from Good American, agreeing with my colleague Margaux Anbouba that my dark-rinse flares would probably get caught in the bike pedals.) The employees at SoulCycle’s front desk, on the other hand, were absolutely delighted by my mission, conspiratorially telling me that they’d seen people join their classes in everything from scrubs to cargo pants—but never jeans.
“Actually, I did see a guy come in for his first ride wearing jeans,” interjected a studio employee named Bridget. “I think he was with his girlfriend and forgot they’d booked the class, but he did the whole thing. It was very brave.” Determined to be no less brave than this anonymous male Bridget-impresser, I mounted my bike and called over another kind SoulCycle employee to snap a “before” pic.
A moment later, the class started, bringing with it a deep, dark desire to unclip my shoes from their pedals and run for the hills. I don’t love working out even when I’m wearing the appropriate clothes for it. But attempting to keep pace with an incredibly fit (and, it should be said, very encouraging) SoulCycle instructor while trapped in a denim thigh prison made me more miserable than I can recall being in a group fitness class in quite some time.