Rise of the Maha Mothers: The Mother Influencers Who Embrace RFK’s Pursuit of a ‘Healthier’ America
For Mikyla Page, keeping a three-year-old daughter healthy is serious business. Before eating anything, the stay-at-home mom reads an ingredients list and stays away from artificial colors, flavors, colors and excess sugars. She is not in favor of vaccination, but instead believes that “bathing in the sun” will keep her family healthy and get her family outside every day to absorb vitamin D.
At first, Page felt alone in her choices. “You’ll be called crazy if you even question the medical profession,” she said. “My intuition told me one thing, but the world told me something else. My husband said, “Are you sure this is where you want to go?” I just went with my feelings.”
Now Robert F Kennedy Jr. was appointed by Donald Trump to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services, Page, who is 26 and lives in Utah, feels vindicated.
Kennedy is known for his history of pushing baseless health claims that sometimes tread into aluminum foil territory – he has said that chemicals in the water supply are a the child’s gender identityand that was Covid “ethnically focused” to spare Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese people. He has also long argued against vaccines, repeating discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield’s debunked claim that the vaccines cause autism.
Among Kennedy’s supporters is an army of self-described “crunchy moms” like Page, who are drawn to one proposal in particular: improving American eating habits and taking over the processed food industry. In November he has accused major manufacturers of ‘poison(ing)’ children.
Moms on social media have adopted the hashtag #MAHA, which has been used in more than 224,000 TikTok videos (Kennedy has promised to “make America whole again” — a play on Donald Trump’s signature catchphrase often shortened to Maha). Anyone can consider themselves a Maha, but mothers in particular have become the fiercest evangelists online, posting videos explaining their policies while cooking dinner or resting a swaddled baby in their arms.
Maha can be seen as the alliance of multiple health-oriented subcultures. In addition to crunchy moms, there are influencers and entrepreneurs who are using the movement to sell supposedly non-toxic brands of baby wipes or moisturizers. There are chronically ill people who feel abandoned by the medical establishment. There are yogis and wellness brothers who believe that it is possible to optimize your path to a better life, to heal yourself without the help of conventional medicine. And then there’s Trump – famously a McDonald’s lover, and not exactly a paragon of health – and his supporters, who are politicizing Maha as a rallying cry against science-based elites.
But mothers have a special place within the movement. These are the kind of voters Democrats thought they had locked up when Kamala Harris had a history of prosecuting sex offenders and a platform for abortion rights. But, Page says, it was Kennedy who first gave her a sense of legitimacy.
“It’s nice to have someone to support you, especially a man (like Kennedy), because I feel like sometimes men take longer to figure these things out because they don’t have maternal instincts,” Page said. “It’s nice to have someone like Robert Kennedy and Trump who sees these problems.”
Page says she is most pleased that Kennedy will “address dyes in food and help the (Food and Drug Administration) regulate that.” One specific food coloring, the petroleum-based Red 3 that is ubiquitous in American junk food, may soon be banned for use in food by the FDA – it has been banned in cosmetics since 1990 – because it has been found to be a carcinogen in animals. A number of Democrats, including New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone, have tried to ban the dye. The FDA’s current review does not include Kennedy, although he favors a ban.
“If you look at the food labels in Europe, there are no dyes, and then when you look at the labels here, it’s completely different,” Page said. “I’m really excited about RFK getting real, raw ingredients back into our food.”
To some, Kennedy may seem an unlikely defender of America’s families. Last year, a woman babysitting his children accused the lawyer of sexual assault, saying he groped her in 1998, when she was 23 and he was 45. Kennedy has not outright denied or addressed the allegations, saying only that he was “not church boy…I have so many skeletons in my closet”.
And yet most Americans approve of Kennedy – according to a According to CBS/YouGov poll, RFK is the most popular nominee of Trump’s transition teamwith 47% of respondents saying the environmental lawyer is a good choice for the job.
“It’s not that I’m overlooking the facts, but everyone has made mistakes,” Page said. “When someone is in the spotlight, people go after him. I think about things I’ve done in the past and I’ve made mistakes, but I’m just working on getting better every day. If something comes out, I’m not really going to pay attention to it because I don’t know the full truth. I just know what I want to happen and how I am going to help.”
Kristen Louelle Gaffney, a former Sports Illustrated model and mother of three, recently started Super True, a snack bar brand that she says is inspired by the Maha ethos. Gaffney, who is married to former NFL running back Tyler Gaffney, enthusiastically supports Kennedy and Trump.
“I choose to focus on the positives,” Gaffney said. “No one is perfect, and (Trump’s allegations of abuse do that) does not personally blind me or my admiration for his goal of putting America and our families and God first. That goes above and beyond anything I see on a news headline.”
Over the past decade we’ve seen the rise of the momfluencer, women who project an impossible image of soft, mess-free, domestic bliss. They’re selling new mothers a fantasy – and also promoting the products they say are needed to make it a reality. These brands are always ‘non-toxic’ or ‘organic’. Kennedy uses this language too, and his audience is ready to respond.
Kennedy also declared war on the “chronic disease epidemic.” That’s women disproportionately affected by chronic diseases such as depression, endometriosis and Alzheimer’s disease, but doctors are less inclined to listen to them. Kennedy’s promise to overhaul systems like the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is running into a common enemy: the idea of a traditional doctor in a white lab coat. Maha women may have felt rejected or abandoned by this figure, so they resist the status quo and look for alternatives – no matter how untested or potentially dangerous.
Gaffney believes Maha is a feminist movement because some of the loudest advocates online are women who feel “empowered” by making choices about their children’s health – regardless of whether it conflicts with modern science.
“How many times do you go to Instagram and see moms saying, ‘Look at this new cabbage soup I’m making,’ or ‘Look at this raw milk I have,’ or ‘Look at this – no seed oil ,” she said. “They are really proud. So I think this is a feminist movement within households.”
Kennedy has faced widespread criticism from the medical and scientific community. Alistair McAlpine, a pediatrician at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, wrote on X: “It is difficult to overstate what a terrible decision this is… The last time he interfered in the medical affairs of a state (Samoa), 83 children died of measles.”
McAlpine was referring to a devastating 2019 outbreak of the preventable disease on the island, which occurred after Kennedy met with government officials and other vaccine skeptics to carry out what health experts called “a significant disinformation campaign.”
Maha mothers acknowledge this outpouring of disapproval, but say Kennedy’s focus is on “just educating people,” as Gaffney puts it. Gaffney uses the language of anti-vaccine groups calling for “freedom of choice” and believes that “RFK’s entire policy ultimately gives the freedom of choice back to parents.”
“Whether it’s food or removing dyes, giving freedom to the families is what excites me most,” she said.