Fine, I Wrote About Huberman Husbands
Fine, I Wrote About Huberman Husbands
But we also need to talk about their wives.
Let me start with this disclaimer: Andrew Huberman is a person, a brand, and an ideology, that I have been deliberately steering clear of, for quite some time now. I do not listen to his podcast. I didn’t read the New York Mag cover story when it first came out. I have done my time in the trenches of male diet culture—the intermittent fasting, the biohacking, the Peter Attia of it all—first for this story, and later for Chapter 9 of Fat Talk. There is only so much of gym bros doing their research and tracking their macros that one woman can take.
But a few weeks ago, while co-writing our Ballerina Farm essay,
mentioned how she cringes when straight couples work out together because it so often veers into the territory of husbands mansplaining fitness and body ideals to their wives. We know, we know, that’s not every straight couple that works out together. But I immediately recognized the dynamic of which she spoke from my previous reporting on diet-y men. This is Crossfit Dads. This is 75 Hard Bros. And, this is Huberman Husbands.The Huberman Husband, as best we can tell, was first defined last summer by surf mom and TikTokker Sierra Campbell, who detailed the many specific habits that are “required of me bc of [my husband’s] health & longevity obsession.” Sierra takes beef liver supplements, she wears blue light-blocking glasses when they watch TV, she tapes her mouth shut when she sleeps to prevent snoring and sleep apnea. All of these practices—“there’s a new one discovered every week” says Sierra—come from the Huberman Lab, a health podcast hosted by Stanford neurobiology professor and Internet Famous Dude Andrew Huberman. Since Sierra’s first reel, Huberman Husband content has proliferated on TikTok, rated a New York Times op-ed, and a Daily Beast feature.
Across the discourse, there is absolutely some eye rolling about the intensity of Huberman Husbands and their obsession with protein and Athletic Greens (Huberman is a scientific advisor for the brand and they sponsor his podcast). But there is also a kind of affection for Huberman’s brand of endless life hacks and optimizations. Sierra compares her spouse to an Almond Mom, but frequently posts her own Huberman-esque content talking about how every day she plunges her face in a bowl of ice cold water, meditates, stretches, does vigorous exercise, and sprays her family’s pillows with a “vagus nerve spray” to help them sleep. Women often identify themselves as the Huberman Husband in their relationship.
As Kerry Howley’s recent cover story on Huberman for New York Magazine revealed, there are at least five women who thought the actual Andrew Huberman wanted to be their husband—until they discovered that he had been stringing them all along for years in a complicated webs of emotionally abusive affairs. It’s an important piece of journalism that also raises questions about Huberman’s scientific credibility and professional ethics. And in reading Howley’s piece, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the other Huberman Husbands out there. Why are so many women are so forgiving of them? And what is so attractive about a definition of health rooted in control?
