Gay Clown Putin

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About

Gay Clown Putin refers to a series of photoshopped images depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin as a clown wearing garish makeup. The images were widely circulated online following reports that the images had been banned in Russia in early April 2017, leading many to cite the spread of the images as an example of the Streisand Effect.

Origin

In April 2013, the Tumblr blog Putin A Rainbow^[9] was launched, featuring photoshops of Vladmir Putin edited with rainbows made in protest of the Russian gay propaganda law, which would include a ban on the LGBT rainbow flag.^[8] On April 9th, a picture of Putin titled "Drag Putin a la Warhol," in which he is shown wearing makeup in front of a rainbow, was posted to the blog (shown below).^[10] The Putin A Rainbow blog has since been removed from Tumblr.

Spread

On August 23rd, 2013, Getty Images photographer Denis Doyle photographed a demonstrator outside the Russian embassy in Madrid, Spain holding a sign in which Putin is shown wearing colorful makeup in front of an rainbow with the words "Stop Homofobia" written on his forehead (shown below, left).^[7] On October 31st, 2015, several photoshops on Putin were posted on the Russian Wordpress blog Kosmologelei, included an image of Putin wearing blush and eye shadow (shown below).

Russia Ban

On March 30th, 2017, the Justice Ministry of Russia listed the images of Putin in their "Federal List of Exremist Materials."^[1] That evening, REdditor GorillaS0up submitted a Gay Clown Putin image in front of an LGBT flag titled "This image is now illegal in Russia" to /r/pics,^[4] where it gathered upwards of 279,000 votes (76% upvoted) and 4,100 comments in 14 hours (shown below, left). Meanwhile, the image reached the front page of the /r/ImGoingtoGulagforThis^[5] and /r/ImGoingToHellForThis^[6] subreddits. On April 6th, the /r/GayClownPutin^[3] subreddit was launched, with the first post submitted by Redditor TheDavyStar featuring a picture of Putin with yellow hair, teal eye shadow and pink lipstick (shown below, right).^[2] Within seven hours, the post gained over 1,800 votes (81% upvoted).

Also on April 6th, Redditor NUDEandCONFUSED uploaded a Gay Clown Putin photoshop in which he is shown riding the Bearsharktopus to /r/MemeEconomy^[11] (shown below).