A Fox host's ‘rules for being a man': no leg-crossing, no public soup drinking

The Guardian

24-05-2025

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman, would like you to know that he is not a straw man. No sir. Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, the Tennessee lawmaker explained that he is a red-blooded American male who does not 'drink out of a straw' because 'that's what the women in my house do'. And no self-respecting man wants to be like the women in their house, do they? Yuck.
Why did Burchett feel the need to tell us all what he likes to put in his mouth? Because the Fox News host Jesse Watters has some very strange ideas about masculinity and, back in March, came up with 'rules for men'. These include: don't drink soup in public, don't cross your legs, don't drink from a straw (it makes your lips purse in an 'effeminate' manner, don't drink milkshakes and 'don't wave simultaneously with two hands').
The Fox News host is so proud of these rules that he now has his producer running around Washington DC asking lawmakers their thoughts on Watters' guide to masculinity. Burchett, as we've seen, is fully on board. So is the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, who has written a book called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.
Meanwhile, in a stunning example of ClickHole's 'The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point' meme, Ted Cruz seemed a little more dubious. 'Jesse Watters has rules for men,' Watters' producer told Cruz. 'He said men should not have male best friends. What do you think?' Cruz replied: 'Jesse needs a friend.' I think he needs a lot more than that.
Watters has said his rules for men are just a bit of fun. But it all starts to become a little less funny when you look at the massive impact Fox has on America, and how influential Watters himself is. More than 4 million people tune into Watters' primetime show and the man is constantly reinforcing toxic ideas about gender. Watters, for example, has suggested that he doesn't really think fathers are responsible for raising their daughters. 'When you raise a son, you are responsible for that son,' Watters said last year. 'It's not like raising a daughter, it's different.' He's also denigrated fathers who leave work early to spend time with their children.
Watters, who is on his second marriage, to a much younger woman who was an associate producer on his show at Fox News, also has some very disturbing ideas about how to approach women. Want to know how he courted his second wife? He's boasted on TV that he let the air out of her car tires. 'She couldn't go anywhere. She needed a lift, I said: 'Hey, you need a lift?' She hopped right in the car,' Watters laughed. (He later claimed it was a joke.) By the way, Watters was still married at the time. Fox News likes to style itself as a paragon of family values, but these are the values it promotes.
Again: Watters isn't just some kook with a niche show. A large body of research shows that Fox News shapes American politics. There is a direct line between the misogyny and rigid gender roles amplified on Fox News and laws that treat women as nothing more than incubators and walking wombs. There's a direct line between the sort of attitude towards women that Watters espouses and the fact that a brain dead woman in Georgia is being kept alive to carry out her pregnancy because of the state's abortion ban. Watters may say his rules for men are just a bit of fun, but his viewers are gulping it all down. Obviously without a straw.
It's funny how Watters seems to think 'effeminate' is a slur when you've got women like the local news co-anchor Olivia Jaquith calmly delivering her newscast even after her labor contractions began. 'I'm happy to be here and I'll stay on the desk for as long as I possibly can,' Jaquith said. 'But if I disappear, that's what's going on.'
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Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist