Behold the Power of Jocks With Feelings
Tim Walz, Travis Kelce, and the concept of "jock insurance."
Hello from the DNC in Chicago!
I’m writing from a buzzing hotel lobby after seeing Tim Walz speak (and also Oprah!). And speaking of Tim Walz… Everyone has been trying to unpack his appeal. What makes him so likable? So comforting? So… dad-coded?
Three weeks ago, Walz was hardly on the scene. And now, not only is he a major political character but we seemingly can’t get enough of him.
He’s the everyman; the kind of guy who — as the fan-posts go — would lend you his power washer; teach you how to put up shelves in your garage; and slip you a $20 bill on your way out the door because “you never know if some place doesn’t take credit cards.”
He’s got rizz, but he’s also got emotion — along with a healthy dose of masculine appeal: He coaches football. Hunts pheasants. Served in the military.
Political contests are masculinity contests, even in 2024. Which means that these things matter, even if we don’t recognize it (or wish they didn’t).
I wrote about Walz’s brand of masculinity, and how it all pertains to my new favorite new term: Jock insurance.
What’s jock insurance? It’s a term coined by a sociologist, and it refers to having masculine bona fides — athleticism, a military background, etc — that in turn allow men to behave in ways that are at odds with traditional masculinity without being seen as weak. Walz has got it. Travis Kelce has got it. Maybe Doug Emhoff has it… kind of?
I’ll let you read more about it at the link below; I’m posting the gift link (no subscription required) to the article here, as well as an excerpt below. Thanks for reading!
Meet the Sensitive Jock Brigade: What Tim Walz and Travis Kelce Have In Common
One is an N.F.L. tight end who cries openly and holds his girlfriend’s purse, when he’s not carrying one of his own. The other is a former high-school football coach and National Guardsman who speaks openly about his infertility journey, supports gay rights and was responsible for bringing free period products into Minnesota’s public schools — which resulted in him being cast as “Tampon Tim.”
These men have little in common, and only one of them is running for vice president. But taken together, Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, exemplify a kind of healthy masculine confidence we seem to have all but forgotten after eight long years of Donald Trump (and five long weeks of JD Vance). These guys don’t seem self-conscious about wearing their emotions on their sleeves, or in showing devotion and appreciation to the women they often stand behind. And yet it doesn’t feel like they are posturing — either by virtue signaling or doling out sensitive-guy breadcrumbs in order to earn clout.
What Walz and Kelce do share is an elusive quality of masculine identity that bears a clever name: Jock Insurance. It means, in a nutshell, that they possess the masculine bona fides — things like football, hunting, military service — that allow them to behave in ways that seem at odds with traditional masculinity, without being seen as weak.
Jock Insurance was coined by the sociologist C.J. Pascoe in the early 2000s, after she spent a year interviewing teenage boys at two public high schools in Northern California. At the time, she told me, there were a series of unspoken rules these boys abided by in order to keep the social hierarchy intact and ensure they were deemed appropriately masculine. In those days, the worst thing a teenage boy of any sexual identity could be called was a “fag” — and Dr. Pascoe’s subjects frequently detailed the behaviors, from being in the drama club to smiling too much, that might put them at risk of being labeled.
Except there was a caveat: the jocks. At each school she studied, Dr. Pascoe said, there were a handful of jocks who had somehow freed themselves of those rules and expectations. These boys — football players, often — talked tenderly about their feelings and were at ease describing the closeness of their male friendships and how much they loved their families. And they were seemingly unashamed to do so — all while other boys bent over backward to avoid anything of the sort.
“I was just like, ‘How do you get away with that?’ ” Dr. Pascoe told me. It was then that the equation began to add up. By virtue of their status as athletes, she theorized, these guys had stockpiled enough masculine capital — in effect, dude cred — to take emotional risks. For those willing to take those risks, sometimes the payoff was everything: It allowed them to be themselves.
Dr. Pascoe published her findings in a study and then a book, “Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School,” and I called her this week because it occurred to me that Walz and Kelce possessed these masculine characteristics, too. What was it about their easygoing, sensitive-dude vibes, combined with their masculine-coded exteriors, that made them so damn appealing?
Love the Selfie!!!!!!