Putin's birthdays have routinely been used by his supporters as opportunities for propaganda trumpeting his swaggeringly aggressive masculinity.
Valerie Sperling, the author of a new book: Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia, has written a blog post detailing this history.
With her permission, I'm including an extended section from the beginning of her blog post on Oxford University Press's site:
A key element of Vladimir Putin’s legitimation strategy has been the cultivation of a macho image. His various public relations stunts subduing wild animals, playing rough sports, and displaying his muscular torso, drew on widely familiar ideas about masculinity. The purpose was to portray Putin as a strong, decisive leader who could be counted upon to solve challenging problems with a convincing mixture of cool levelheadedness and the credible threat to use force as needed. But while masculinity is demonstrated through such displays, it is also reinforced by the sexualized attention of traditionally feminine, attractive young women.
The mobilization of masculinity as a political resource has been visible in Putin’s birthday gifts, as well as in other Putin-oriented cultural productions. While Putin has been receiving elaborate birthday presents almost since the start of his first term as Russian president, this post largely focuses on a handful of gifts in recent years that have come from organized pro-Putin activists and emphasized Putin’s masculinity.
In October 2010, as a gift for Putin’s 58th birthday, twelve female students and alumni of Moscow State University’s prestigious journalism department published a calendar featuring photographs of themselves looking as if they had walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Offering witty, sexualized quips, each young woman suggested herself as a potential lover for Mr. Putin. “You put the forest fires out, but I’m still burning,” smiled a student illustrating the month of March.
In
Sex, Politics, and Putin, Sperling examines how the Putin regime has mobilized masculinity in order to solidify his dictatorial powers at home and promote aggressively militaristic foreign policies abroad.
Oxford University Press describes the book in these terms:
Is Vladimir Putin macho, or is he a "fag"? Sex, Politics, and Putin investigates how gender stereotypes and sexualization have been used as tools of political legitimation in contemporary Russia. Despite their enmity, regime allies and detractors alike have wielded traditional concepts of masculinity, femininity, and homophobia as a means of symbolic endorsement or disparagement of political leaders and policies.
By repeatedly using machismo as a means of legitimation, Putin's regime (unlike that of Gorbachev or Yeltsin) opened the door to the concerted use of gendered rhetoric and imagery as a means to challenge regime authority. Sex, Politics, and Putin analyzes the political uses of gender norms and sexualization in Russia through three case studies: pro- and anti-regime groups' activism aimed at supporting or undermining the political leaders on their respective sides; activism regarding military conscription and patriotism; and feminist activism. Arguing that gender norms are most easily invoked as tools of authority-building when there exists widespread popular acceptance of misogyny and homophobia, Sperling also examines the ways in which sexism and homophobia are reflected in Russia's public sphere.
(Full disclosure: I live with and love Valerie Sperling. We're steady sweethearts and long-term marriage resisters (but that's a different diary)). But as someone who has read this book multiple times I can attest it is both extremely well-written and readable by a general (not just an academic) audience.
If you want insight into Russian politics, Putin's regime, Russian propaganda, Russia's "liberal" opposition, Pussy Riot, or Russian feminists, this is the book for you. I think it is also politically valuable for advocates of human rights everywhere.
The book raises key questions for activists:
• How are our opponents using political masculinity to promote various forms of oppression?
• How are our opponents attempting to demonize us by using sexist and homophobic tropes?
• How might we be acting in self-defeating and misogynist ways by echoing these themes in chants, posters, and critiques deriding our opponents?
• How might we promote feminist critiques of abuses of power and develop feminist campaigns that challenge, instead of re-inscribing, patriarchal scripts?