Rep. Aaron Schock and Men’s Health have started up a campaign to make us all feel terrible about ourselves and our bodies. Oh, wait. I misread that. They’re actually trying to get Americans “to lose weight and get healthier this summer” as part of the Fit for Life Summer Challenge. Of course, their campaign involves putting pictures of a shirtless Schock, the “Fittest Congressman,” on their cover so side effects may involve us all looking in the mirror and sobbing. Anyway, Morning Joe brought Schock on this morning to discuss the initiative and somehow refrained from force-feeding him burgers so as to bring down the handsomeness curve for the rest of us.

In an interesting move for someone who has previously tried to affirm his heterosexuality (yet a fairly expected one for someone who is now being called a gay icon), Illinois Representative Aaron Schock, with his camera-ready smile and infamous physique, showed up on the Bravo channel last night.

Several states are reportedly using expensive stimulus-funded signs to promote stimulus-funded projects that are “putting America to work,” and a handful of Republicans in the House are less than pleased. Illinois has put up 950 of them for $650,000, and Pennsylvania has bought 70 at an average cost of $2,000 per sign.

Thank you, Scientific Community, for brightening up our Friday afternoon with this wonderfully hilarious proving-what-we-all-secretly-suspected study. Published this year by a group of Israeli scientists from the University of Haifa’s Department of Communication, the study proves there’s a link between the attractiveness of political figures and how much attention the media lavishes upon them.

Judy Garland is a “gay icon.” Her daughter Liza Minnelli also counts. Toss in Bette Midler and Madonna and Lady Gaga. You could probably even include Christiano Rinaldo and David Beckham as “gay icons,” of a sort. But it’s fair to say that a conservative member of Congress who is opposed to gay rights probably isn’t a “gay icon,” even if the gays find him attractive.

Congressman Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) has acknowledged that his turquoise–or was it teal–web belt may have been too much after a picture of him attending a summer party went viral.

The Republican Congressman tweeted “Never thought a pic of me w/ my shirt on would go viral. Learned my lesson and burned the belt” after a weekend of tittering tweets about the sexy Congressman who looked like he was headed to Fire Island instead of his hometown, Peoria, Ill.

In an attempt to get in on all that social networking has to offer, House Republicans are staging their first Congressional New Media Challenge, a competition modeled after NCAA March Madness in which representatives vie for the largest number of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube followers. Round one, on Twitter, begins today. Time to fire up the Congressional Blackberries!

Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, 28, is the youngest member of Congress and a product of the GOP’s Young Guns program, which works to get young Republican talent into office. Serving in Abraham Lincoln’s district, he’s an honest hard-worker, who began his IRA at age 14. And, if you ask NPR, he also “has the best abs.”