President sparks social media buzz as users ask whether he is getting
ready to take on Vladimir Putin after images posted to Instagram
The release of official photos showing Emmanuel Macron hitting a punching bag have been met with a mixture of praise and consternation in France.
The
photos of the French president, posted on Instagram on Tuesday by his
official photographer, Soazig de la Moissonnière, are coloured in moody
black and white, and show the president with teeth gritted and biceps
bulging as he works out.
Social
media users soon began comparing him to Rocky Balboa, while others
questioned the timing of the pictures, coming as Macron has called on Europe to ramp up its response to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Some said the photos showed him getting ready to take on President
Vladimir Putin, himself no stranger to photoshoots designed to show off
his sporting prowess.
Women’s magazine Femme Actuelle
described the photos more flatteringly, writing that they showed
“Brigitte Macron’s husband” with “a determined look, as if he wants to
do battle with his opponent … He seems to hit so hard that his biceps
pop out from under his black T-shirt.”
Other
commentators voiced dismay at the images. French Greens MP Sandrone
Rousseau reposted one of the photos with the comment, “What a defeat for
progressivism. And what poverty of political communication.”
Writing in the centre-left Libération newspaper,
Jonathan Bouchet-Petersen said the photos were a “rather dismaying
communication choice” and said it would have been preferable if the
photo really were the product of a cheeky social media user as he had
initially assumed.
Éric Anceau, a history professor at the University of Lorraine, wrote on X
that the photos were “part of the neo-populist virility that certain
leaders are fond of today, starting with the master of the genre (until
now) Vladimir Putin”.
Putin has previously been photographed fishing,
shooting and riding bare-chested, playing ice hockey, vanquishing his
opponents at judo and riding in tanks and submarines.
Brigitte Macron revealed last year in an interview with Paris Match that the president boxes twice a week and he has previously posed with boxing gloves to promote exercise ahead of the Paris Olympics.
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