The smallest man that ever lived
The smallest man that ever lived
Calling bullshit on an Instagram grifter
CONTENT WARNING - misogynistic BULLSHIT coming atcha like a freight train from hell.
If you don’t want to read about a guy who looks like the head camp counselor for Hitler Youth and whose Instagram handle is (wait for it) @ NOURISHHERBODY, I love that for you. But if you DO want to join the many smart people who have torn this guy to shreds, I also love that for you.
Before we get started, I need to be very clear. Every single one of this dude’s Instagram posts is rage-inducing in some capacity. Every single post contains the type of misinformation that contributes to an incel worldview and a sexist belief that women (and only cis women) exist as baby makers and patriarchy nurturers. I could devote pages of vitriol to EACH post, but for the purposes of brevity and my mental health, I’m going to just throw one of the worst here and you can draw your own conclusions on the rest of this person’s social media oeuvre.
Looking at his face makes me uncomfortable!
In the above post, a guy who used to be known as Rubio Fuerte and is now known as Adrian Preuss (I’m betting he’s neither!) delivers a monologue in terrifying monotones about both men AND women failing as parents. The man is failing to find a job in today’s really friendly work environment that pays enough to support an entire household. The woman is failing to stay at home where she should be. There’s clearly zero consideration of families or households that don’t contain a cis-het man and a cis-het woman. It’s beautiful stuff.
Rubio/Adrian also has posts about doctors causing Alzheimer’s, unmanly men causing female infertility, and SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS about (I really don’t want to type these words) HOLDING YOUR HUSBAND’S HAND DURING LABOR. I’m sorry to yell at you but surely you can understand that I have no choice!!!
This charlatan’s page is, quite simply, hell.
I first discovered this cursed corner of the internet because a friend sent me this post, which, if you’re squinting and someone is reading the caption aloud to you (thus preventing you from hearing the red flags of evil being ripped to shreds in the fierce winds of word salad) MIGHT sorta kinda resemble allyship. It faintly appears to be a guy talking about women needing more sleep. Which is ok? Except it’s totally not because the only reason this completely accredited robot is talking about women’s sleep is because he wants women to have enough rest to be the best little self-sacrificial mamas they can be. Because that is all women are good for in Rubio/Adrian’s computer chip of a brain.
Ok, let’s have a little fun, shall we?
There are so many things to love about the phrase “degreed nutrition scientist 🧑🏼🔬.”
It’s creative and expansive and open to interpretation. A kind of Choose Your Own Adventure for the person deciding whether or not to follow Rubio/Adrian’s advice. Maybe his degree is in interior design? Maybe his degree is in linguistics? Maybe his degree is in Instagram grifting? WHO’S TO SAY.
Nutrition is a real thing that real people study but I fail to see how NUTRITION is relevant when we’re talking about “fathers being more important to the development of girls,” or mandates to “end your relationship if you don’t glow [YES GLOW] up,” or “age two [being] the most enjoyable age for mothers” (?????!!!!)
Science is great! It’s weird that Rubio/Adrian includes a mention of it in his bio when he doesn’t seem to know what it is!
PLEASE UNDERSTAND that Rubio/Adrian did not choose the default yellow scientist emoji, but took the time to select the most Aryan option available. Close reading will never go out of style.
Omg he used the Cinderella castle emoji for the University of Vienna, which I and others have found no proof he ever attended. ADORABLE.
As I age alongside social media, I keep reexamining our relationship. Addictive and toxic a lot of the time? Absolutely. A place where women can band together to create little nets of truth in order to protect thousands of vulnerable people from being targeted by the fuckiest fuckboy to ever fuck with people? ALSO ABSOLUTELY.
In the above post, Dr. Jen Gunter OB/GYN (whose credentials are not a toddler’s fever dreams but rather literal and actual!) and Dr. Lucky Sekhorn MD (MD stands for Doctor of Medicine NOT Mommy Dearest) work together to discover that Rubio/Julian has nearly 20% fake followers, is prone to blocking people who question his expertise, and really loves to go off about incredibly sensitive topics he knows nothing about! And Dr. Fatima Daoud, MD FACOG, has joined the good fight by tracking his follower numbers, his blockings, and officials from the University of Vienna denouncing his claims.
Dr. Shannon M. Clark, MD, FACOG (wouldn’t you know it, another factually accredited medical professional!) also lends her voice to the chorus of women whose life work is actually helping women by digging into Rubio/Adrian’s past appearances on podcasts where he talks about his experience giving nutrition advice to athletes. Now, do I believe Rubio/Adrian is an actual athletic nutritionist? Why should I?! But even if he IS, Dr. Clark rightly points out that such expertise has absolutely nothing to do with women’s health, clinical experience treating people with uteruses, diagnosis, or medical treatment for people experiencing pregnancy loss or infertility!!
In her efforts to de-platform Rubio/Adrian, Dr. Clark has also publicly invited Rubio/Adrian to public debate (do you think he said yes?!) and made this excellent (and fascinating) TikTok about placentas in response to Rubio/Adrian’s fear-monger-y misinformation about a father’s genes being entirely responsible for placenta health.
When Drs. Gunter, Daoud, Clark, and Sekhorn first started revealing Rubio/Adrian’s villainy, he had over 600K followers (truly we need to burn everything down and start again) and now he has 274K, which is an improvement but still indisputably shitty. Even if half of these followers are fake (entirely possible), that’s still over 100,000 people who are following him for health advice or following him to reinforce their bigoted beliefs that women are best suited as men’s handmaidens.
Mothers are regularly censored on social media and elsewhere. Eyemamaproject, a beautiful photographic celebration of real motherhood, has been frequently censored and banned from Instagram, for, you know, sharing photos of moms. PROFANE shit.
Cookbook author
’s Times Square billboard for lactation cookies was deemed “too racy” for public consumption. The Instagram accounts 4th Trimesters Bodies Project and The Leaky Boob have both been regularly censored, and when I was reporting Momfluenced, Grace Kapin, one of the founders of the maternity clothing company Storq, told me about Meta’s frequent censorship of such content as THIS.
COOL.
It’s not just motherhood content. It’s also any content having to do with women’s health or women’s bodily autonomy. In this Glamour article, Emma-Jade Stoddart reported that “a survey of more than 50 organizations by the CensHERship campaign found that nine out of ten respondents that shared women’s health content said they had experienced some form of censorship in the past 12 months.” Maybe this means sharing something about menopausal night sweats. Maybe this means sharing bikini photos in an event to promote bodily joy rather than cater to the male gaze.
The fun doesn’t stop with our bodies and our health. Women and mothers can be shamed and censored in every which way. See Cheezits Stigma, Socializing Stigma, Dress Stigma, and Working Stigma. To say nothing of the ways the US has censored and stigmatized experiences of Black motherhood, Indigenous motherhood, and disabled motherhood through legislation rather than mere Instagram blocking.
Deplatforming misogynists on social media will, of course, not solve all the systemic and societal problems plaguing mothers. But the fact that mothers are so frequently censored for fucking wearing gray cardigans (!!!!), promoting oatmeal cookies (!!!!), and sharing photos meant to help parents find non-painful latches is a particular kind of maddening. For better or worse, most of us spend a LOT of time on social media, and I don’t want the breast pump photos of the world to be whisked away while people who argue that “a baby from the wrong man will irreversibly destroy your health” can simply skip from one bullshit handle to another without breaking a sweat.
We are not totally without agency here. In the spirit of the good doctors cited above, I tapped on the 3 little dots to the right of blondie’s head and reported him for misinformation. There are over 15,000 subscribers to this newsletter. If we ALL reported Rubio/Adrian/Little Mr. Make Believe to the Meta overlords, just maybe one horrible man might have a slightly harder time spreading his horribleness across the inter webs. In my book, that’s a few seconds of my one wild and precious life well spent.
Omg I feel so HAD. I actually used to follow this guy (until approximately 30 seconds ago when I unfollowed and reported). I got served up one of his more Ally-sounding posts and liked/followed. Then the Great Algorithm in the Sky served me a few more posts of his in my feed and I increasingly found myself being like “wait, what is he saying?” And not “liking” it but not really “figuring it out” either. So because I stopped liking his posts, I stopped seeing them and basically forgot about him. 🤦♀️ I feel like my Feminist card should be put on probationary status or something.
Love your column. Thanks for calling this guy out!