(Image: Private Media)

Standing on the world stage, Putin declares Ukraine is his for the taking and young troops his to sacrifice. Individualistic, brazen, aggressive and entitled, he is embodying his carefully curated image of a strongman, the image of hypermasculinity and heterosexualism.

This visceral, macho image has made Putin all the more easy to hate. Backlash against him from the West has been immense — and personal. After ongoing natural disasters and two years of a pandemic, it seems the last thing the West wants to see is Putin shirtless, riding a horse and aggressively attempting to redraw the map of Europe.

Hypermasculine image no accident

The world isn’t angry that Putin is acting like a macho strongman — the world is angry he is invading a sovereign democratic nation whose people have pushed with their votes and their protests to join the European Union, murdering citizens and shooting at childrens hospitals. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is terrifying. And for Europeans, Russia’s expansion is closer to home than conflicts in the Middle East. 

(The West is likely angrier still that the Ukrainian victims are European — with some media rhetoric around seeing people killed with “blonde hair and blue eyes” and from “developed” nations who are “intelligent” — laying bare some of the racist tendencies at the bulk of the West’s support.) 

But one of the reasons the backlash against Putin has been so brutal is that he has been so public in his aggressive image.

Some academics have referred to “Putinaina”: a personality cult that surrounds the Russian leader. The cult is no accident, but has been carefully curated to appeal to mostly Russian males. 

Across his 22-year reign, his PR team has released photos of Putin riding a horse shirtless and demonstrating his black belt in karate, and videos of him “saving” a crew of journalists from a Siberian tiger.

Women are also dragged into this narrative, but as worshippers rather than voters: there’s the 2002 Russian pop song used in his campaigns “A man like Putin”, which endorsed Putin as an “ideal man” who doesn’t drink (never mind the murders), and a group called Putin’s Army who set up a “rip it for Putin” contest where chesty women ripped their tank tops open, asking “What are you prepared to do for your president?”

Putin’s team often pits him against his “feminine” opponents, showing pictures of former US president Barack Obama holding a poodle next to Putin patting a leopard. His team has photoshopped his political opponents wearing dresses (although when one artist gave Putin the same treatment, he was thrown in jail). 

To some extent, this PR campaign has been successful both in Russia and in the West — former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was been accused of having an “embarrassing crush on the swaggering statesman” and Trump’s adoration for Putin is well known.

But it also inspired anti-Putin groups, with performance art group Pussy Riot famously protesting against Putin’s anti-LGBTIQA+ agenda, abortion restrictions and authoritarianism.

While already outdated across the 2010s, these aggressive reinforcements of masculine and heterosexual status look even more aged in the wake of the #MeToo movement. 

Meanwhile, there’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy — the Ukrainian president every straight woman has a crush on, if social media is to go by — who has won Ukraine’s version of Dancing With the Stars, performed a comedy sketch in latex and platform stilettos, and who is standing in the trenches with Ukraine’s soldiers until the end. A man who appears to be comfortable with his sexuality and aligned with the ideals of his nation. 

(We can’t pretend Zelenskyy is ideal either: Ukraine’s gender disparity is poor, and he’s been embroiled in the very same allegations of corruption he says he’s against. Frustrations have been raised by some men’s rights groups that women and children are permitted to flee the country, but men of fighting age must stay. But that all pales in comparison to Putin.)

But as the swift and severe sanctions and backlash show, there’s a shift away from the “strongman” leader in recent times. 

The world is rightfully alarmed. So are young women

Feminist, academic and scholar Eva Cox AO says one of the reasons the public backlash has been so immense is that Russia’s threat, and the threat of a large-scale war, is something new to younger generations.

“There’s this sudden shock when you get Putin behaving in this bizarre manner doing things that don’t mirror [what younger generations] have seen before … where he believes he has the right to invade another country,” she said.

“It’s a very macho picture … and there’s been a reaction to this almost naked masculinity.”  

While China’s Xi Jinping might not be popular among some, he’s never crossed a line so brazenly in an international context — and doesn’t go around cultivating a hypermasculine image. While the Taliban is unpopular, they’re contextualised as religious zealots, Cox said, and have a clear motive. Meanwhile, Putin’s logic is less clear, with allegations of genocide and Nazism and frustrations at NATO influence to justify his invasion. 

Feminist historian Michelle Arrow tells Crikey it seemed Putin was acting on his own. Emerging videos of captured Russian soldiers appear to show young men and boys crying, saying they felt like cannon fodder and had no idea they were heading to war or that they’d face backlash from the Ukrainians, while Russians took to the streets to illegally protest against the invasion.  

“It’s like he’s high on his own power. Is it expansionism, it it nostalgia, or is it men who think that they need more conquered territory?” Arrow said.

Are we moving away from hypermasculine leaders? 

The “strongman” leader image isn’t new. Former US president Donald Trump in some ways attempted to embody a masculine image – although, Arrow said, he appealed to a different kind of masculinity. 

“He appealed to men who felt disenfranchised, arguing men had become too soft and was going to remasculinise the electorate,” she said. Trump, like Putin, reacted poorly to negative coverage, responding multiple times to insults about the size of his hands. 

As the Capitol riots showed, this aggressive image can be dangerous. But that hasn’t stopped Australian politicians from attempting to embody a strongman image. Every election cycle, Australia’s politicians quickly drum up the threat of war, with Dutton regurgitating the threat of China over and over. 

But it seems the appetite to fight is no longer there.

Arrow points to former prime minister Tony Abbott’s historic loss in his electorate of Warringah. His Speedo-wearing strongman persona stopped resonating with voters: “A lot of people in the electorate didn’t respond to his blustery sort of masculinity … and I think people would be worried if he were in charge today.” 

She said that historically in the West, anti-war movements had been led by women, and the current wave of feminism could lead to greater support for peace movements.  

“[The wars] seem pointless, and I think it’s being read that toxic masculinity is going to ruin the world.”