Chip and Dale? No. Wallace and Gromit? No. How about Dumb and Dumber? On April 12, Argentine President Javier Milei and Tesla CEO Elon Musk met in Texas. In the space of a few hours, they visited Tesla Giga Texas, the company's factory which opened in April 2022. Then they had a long one-to-one chat. On the agenda? "The need for free markets and [to] defend the ideas of freedom." Even sartorial freedom, apparently.
Let's get straight to the matter with the pants worn by the Argentine president. Technically, they're cargo pants, recognizable by their side patch pockets inspired by those in which British soldiers stored their maps at the beginning of the 19th century. Visually, they're a total disgrace bordering on outright visual aggression. Too narrow? Yes. Too dirty? Affirmative. Too faded? Yes. Too wrinkled? Definitely.
By comparison, Musk's black, spandex-inflated skinny jeans are no less tacky, but they do have the merit of being clean, and of highlighting the Tesla boss's recent physical transformation. In the space of a few weeks, he has indeed lost some 15 kilos, arousing concern and wild rumors. Musk finally revealed the recipe for his diet: Deprivation, intermittent fasting, but above all, Ozempic, an anti-diabetic medication that strongly stimulates insulin production and curbs the appetite. Always on the cutting edge, Elon.
The belt buckle is no less interesting. The oval plaque, adorned with a star and the message "Don't mess with Tesla," sold for around €40 on the company's website, gives us the opportunity to shatter a powerful myth: No, the big belt buckle is not an authentic, ancestral cowboy craze. Cowboys have long preferred to wear suspenders. But Hollywood changed all that when it imposed the belt buckle on the heroes of early Westerns, to better characterize them from a sartorial point of view.
Finally, how could we not notice the two thumbs raised by each our heroes of the day, clearly delighted to be there to bring together, for the common good, their ideology, politics, tech vision and business practices. In the Middle East, a thumbs-up is historically perceived as an aggressive gesture, the equivalent of a middle finger. Concretely, it suggests that you want to slip your thumb into the anus of the person you're addressing. Make of that what you will.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.