You truly never know what goes on behind closed doors. That couple you play pickleball with once a month? They might be swingers. Your colleague Greg who works in IT? He might be a professional dom on the side. And former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s husband Bryon Noem? He might be into wearing cartoonishly large prosthetic breasts and bimbo-ifying himself. Oh, no, wait, that one is apparently public knowledge.
Earlier today, news that Bryon Noem enjoys becoming a “Barbie”—complete with gargantuan fake boobs—was reported by Daily Mail, who write that Mr. Noem has been spending thousands communicating with adult performers who encourage his crossdressing. “He appears to have put balloons in his shirt to mimic comically oversized, lopsided breasts – complete with fake protruding nipples,” the New York Post elaborated. His family is “devastated” and “blindsided,” a representative told the Post.
According to the allegations, Bryon spent upwards of $25,000 communicating with women in the bimbofication community, who would tell him to wear feminine items of clothing like neon pink bike shorts, pose with kissy faces and, of most import, to don some impossibly large knockers. One of the women he communicated with appears to have discovered his identity after calling his number and hearing the name “Noem Insurance” in his voicemail. When confronted, she claims he told her that he “did not care” about being exposed.
“He traded selfies with one woman he pledged to worship like a ‘goddess,’ telling her, ‘you turn me into a girl,’ before asking if he should ‘put in leggings,” wrote the Post.
While the pictures form quite the spectacle, the fetish of bimbofication is itself not entirely rare. Though many young women in the late 2010s and early 2020s adopted the “bimbo” identity as a mainstream aesthetic embracing hyperfeminity, it flourished as a kink for decades. Much like crossdressing, male participants do not desire to be women but instead get a sexual thrill out of presenting themselves as a sexual object—in this case, a caricature of a woman with outrageous breasts. In Bryon’s photos, he may be imagining himself as a stereotypical dumb blonde hungry for sex and aroused by subjugation. The reality that the photos are deeply embarrassing — and risky for his entire family’s reputation — may well be part of the thrill, too. It all suggests that Bryon found excitement in both becoming someone else and being powerless in that role.
Even though it makes for wild spectacle, “exposures” of the private sex lives of consenting adults should still accompany healthy questioning. Bryon is one of millions of people using the Internet as a sexual outlet, separate from their everyday lives. Plenty of people also engage in kinks like these—and still contribute to society as upstanding individuals. What we do behind closed doors to pursue our own exploration of our fantasies with other adults should, for the most part, remain our private business.
But the spectacle here doesn’t necessarily lie in the kink of it all. (Or, at least, not entirely.) Kristi Noem’s grand posturing as the Homeland Security head often came with deep and exhaustive propaganda—not just about what it meant to be an American, but what it meant to be a man. Whether it was posters that showcased a stereotypical penchant for a muscular, American male or the verbiage that many critics noted were reminiscent of white nationalist sloganeering, she was often the (female) spokesperson for the more aggressive, “more masculine” ICE.
Bryon—similar to the many religious conservatives who have been outed via Grindr leaks—is yet another casualty of a politics that is far too rigid in its definitions of gender and sexuality. In these impossible systems, we’re all set up for shame. We can only assume that Bryon is, true to his kinkster self, enjoying that shame.
