ArcaMax

PARIS — Barbie’s performative womanliness has an equivalent, and it’s not Ken, who’s famously neutered by design. It’s Donald Trump and the rest of the bros virtue-signaling “manliness” like it’s a lost art.

Barbie dolls were once seen as the exaggerated feminine ideal, until they started dressing as doctors, lawyers, engineers and astronauts. Then they became feminists. These days, real life mirrors Barbie World. You either live in a pre-fab identity box, or you’re accused of dodging one. You might even think that you’re in the right box — until someone moves the walls again.

Vice President JD Vance warned earlier this year that the conventional wisdom was trying to turn everyone into “androgynous idiots" and needed more boxes, defined by guys like him, presumably.

“I think that our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge,” he said. Like this one, maybe? “It’s that face, it’s that brain, it’s those lips, the way they move. They move like she is a machine gun,” Trump said of his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, last week.

The only thing missing was the fanny slap. So much for these manly men “protecting women” — even those perfectly aligned with the agenda. Leavitt likely assumed that she was inside the approved box. Turns out that even being the perfect avatar doesn’t spare you from being objectified like a booth babe at a gun show.

These days, there’s no shortage of talk about how Trump’s return to the presidency marks the onset of a culture shift where women and men stay in their rightful lanes. And let’s just say that those lanes are painfully narrow. “Tradwives have evolved to become pin-ups of the religious right,” writes the Financial Times, highlighting the viral resurrection of 1950s femininity, filtered through social media and political grievance. Which is fine, if that's what you choose and are into. But not everyone is.

Trumpism has now grafted this same theater of submission onto foreign policy. Entire nations are now being asked to curtsy on demand.

Those of us women on the right aren’t asking for men to become weak or apologetic, but why has strength become indistinguishable from dominance? Since when did global affairs hinge on who salutes first? In the same way that a sputtering relationship exhibits overbearing and controlling behavior, is this also the hallmark of a gasping empire?

Just last week, an online argument that once might have ended with a rage-quit ended up concluding with the deployment of nuclear submarines. “Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

So what exactly did Medvedev say to spark nuclear escalation? “Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10… He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!”

And the reply to this jab had to be nothing short of war games with submarines? Really? All because Trump couldn't think of a better clapback?

Similarly, Trump’s use of tariffs has followed a similar script: a demand, a threat, a tantrum and a punishment. India failed to meet his negotiating deadline, resulting in a 25 percent tariff. And when Russia failed to indulge his deadline for ending the Ukraine war, Trump used the fact that they were trading oil with India to further beat up — on India. Canada wasn’t responding the way he wanted in economic negotiations, so he threatened more tariffs, then doubled down after Canada recognized Palestine. Brazil dared to prosecute Trump’s ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro, so he hit back with a 50 percent tariff threat.

Trump is failing to offer any alternative framing, like the anti-globalization that Americans actually voted for. Instead, he just talks like every other country in the world is some kind of gold digger intent on “ripping off” America. And because of that, he has to show those broads who’s boss. So now he’s sitting on the global bus with his knees spread as wide apart as possible.

Even the European Union, which bent over backward to offer concessions — pledging to somehow mobilize billions for American weapons, investments and gas purchases, despite having a highly questionable capacity for doing so — wasn’t submissive enough. Because the performance isn’t just about mere compliance. Instead, Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected head of the European Commission, had to also sit there in a spectacle of total submission to Trump.

This is how power behaves when it’s shaped by the worst myths of masculinity. Not the kind that builds or protects, but that needs a constant stage, enemy, and audience. And if one can’t be found, it’s manufactured.

Trump bombed Iran on Israel’s behalf after Tehran missed his deadline for renegotiating a nuclear deal — the same one he unilaterally killed in his first term. More recently, he said that Russia must make peace with Ukraine on his schedule, or face sanctions. And when Russia ignored him, he seemed unusually resigned, saying of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Don’t know that sanctions bother him.”

Putin essentially ghosted him, Didn’t call back. Didn’t flinch. So now Trump has parked a couple of nukes on his metaphorical front lawn, hoping that he notices and flies into a panic.

This isn’t strength. It’s cheap theatrics using nukes, bombs and tariffs as props. Weaponized masculinity makes a lot of noise, but it doesn’t dismantle Davos-grade corruption. That takes the precision of a sniper, not a swaggering, manspreading circus act that treats anti-globalism as little more than an ego gym where masculinity just does endless reps in front of the mirror.