Vladimir Putin may be willing to joke around about things like the global climate crisis, but he is very serious when it comes to his own masculinity. In fact, the Russian president — who once outlawed a Photoshopped image of himself wearing makeup and who’s been photographed doing things like riding horses shirtless and holding big guns — recently told filmmaker Oliver Stone his secret to leading the country with aplomb.
“I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days,” he explained in Stone’s four-part documentary, The Putin Interviews. He went on, “I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles.”
Get it? Natural cycles. Not that he doesn’t admire women — after all, they “care day and night for [their] children, grandchildren, and [families],” which is great! All he’s saying is that maybe they should keep doing that.
