Filed to: let me be shallow for one damn minute

Photo : Ethan Miller ( Getty Images )

We need to talk about the president.

No, not the bloated Twitter troll serving happy meals to world-class athletes, I’m talking about Barack Obama, a man whose post-Oval Office glow-up has been so painfully apparent and so well-documented, it’s actually fucking rude.


Take this latest example from Wednesday, when Mr. 44 stopped by the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy in Southeast D.C. to play a little ball with the kids. According to the Washington Post, Michelle Obama’s husband hit a double during a softball game (gotta let those kids know you still got it!) and even threw a touchdown pass (actually, you didn’t need to stunt on a bunch of 12-year-olds that hard, sir).


It was all very adorable and very refreshing considering the current state of affairs in the capital. But allow me, if I may, to direct your attention to one very important question that is begging for an answer.

Has Barack been working out?? I know our former president has switched out the dad jeans for a sleeker, sexier fit (the better to put white people at ease for eight years) but I don’t recall Obama being quite this trim and toned. I invite you to take a little scroll through the Post’s photos of Obama and weigh in—were those pecs always there? Has my man been doing pushups in between writing those memoir chapters? Has he converted all his political energy (Obama has stayed, for the most part, out of the burgeoning 2020 presidential race) into Retired Dad Just Wants to Hit a New Deadlift PR energy? Barack, drop the workout routine, por favor! Summer is nearly upon us, after all.

Or you know, maybe I’ve been looking at a human garbage bag posing as a president for nearly three years and my standards have shifted. Also possible.

As a matter of patriotic principle, I will never refer to Barack as a Zaddy. But after seeing Obama surprise—and subsequently flex—on these kids at the park, if such a spirit moves you to refer to him that way, I won’t judge.

