Russian Style

As the West liberalized its stance on sexuality and gender between 2000 and 2020, Vladimir Putins Russia moved in the opposite direction, remolding the performance of Russian citizenship according to a neoconservative agenda characterized by increasingly exaggerated gender roles. By connecting gendered and sexualized citizenship to developments in Russian popular culture, Julie A. Cassiday argues that heteronormativity and homophobia became a kind of politicized style under Putins leadership. However, the multiple modes of gender performativity simultaneously helped citizens resist and protest the states mandate of heteronormativity. Examining everything from memes to the Eurovision Song Contest and self-help literature, Cassiday untangles the discourse of gender to argue that drag, or travesti, became the performative trope par excellence in Putins Russia. Provocatively, Cassiday further argues that the exaggerated expressions of gender demanded by Putins regime are best understood as a form of cisgender drag. This smart and lively study provides critical, nuanced analysis of the relationship between popular culture and politics in Russia during Putins first two decades in power.