Hey Girl, It's Paul Ryan

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Part of a series on 2012 United States Presidential Election. [View Related Entries]

About

Hey Girl, It's Paul Ryan is a single topic blog featuring photographs of Republican house representative, and Mitt Romney's 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan with "Hey girl" captions in the style of Ryan Gosling image macros. The captions often draw references to various pick-up line cliches and political rhetoric, similar to those found on Feminist Ryan Gosling and Poli Sci Ryan Gosling.^[15]

Origin

The Hey Girl, It's Paul Ryan Tumblr^[1] was inspired by an article posted on the political blog NakedDC^[6] by conservative political consultant Emily Zanotti on April 30th, 2012 . After reading a story about Republican congressman Paul Ryan^[2] catching fish with his bare hands^[7], Zanotti envisioned him as a Ryan Gosling-esque figure for the Republican party and created several image macros starting with the phrase "Hey girl."

The combination of politicians' quotes and Ryan Gosling's "Hey Girl" trope had been seen before with the Twitter hashtag #PaulRyanGosling^[18] as well as the single topic blog Ron Paul Ryan Gosling, which were both launched in February of 2012. That same month, the Washington Post^[17] published a compilation of Ryan Gosling image macros based on #PaulRyanGosling tweets.

Ryan Gosling Themed Blogs

After the launch of Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling in December 2008, several spin-off blogs began appearing in 2010 to cover a wide range of academic subjects including typography, film studies, medieval history, Shakespearean literature, biostatistics, feminism, international development and political science among others. In February 2012, former Republican presidential candidnate Ron Paul and Ryan Gosling were paired in the single topic blog Ron Paul Ryan Gosling^[16], which featured image macros based on photos of Gosling with quotes from Republican politician Ron Paul.

Spread

On May 1st, 2012, The Daily Dot^[3] reported on the single topic blog, followed by ABC News^[4], Right Wing News^[5] and the Washington Post.^[8] The next day, the blog was featured on AV Club^[9], Wisconsin newspaper the Journal Sentinel^[11], political news sites the Hill^[12] and Hot Air^[13], Yahoo! News and Washington Post^[10] a second time. Although the blog has not seen any significant scale of participation from its readers, Paul Ryan image macros were widely reported as the "latest meme" by the aforementioned news publications.

Notable Examples

Nancy Pelosi's Response

On May 3rd, 2012, NakedDC blogger Emily Zanotti received a press release e-mail from the Office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, which contained a set of rebuttals to the "Hey Girl, It's Paul Ryan" posts in the form of satirical image macros. The screenshot of the original e-mail along with the image attachments were posted via Zanotti's blog.^[19]

Time Magazine Photos

On October 11th, 2012, Time Magazine^[21] published a series of photos for his runner-up position as Time Magazine Person of the Year, which featured Ryan sitting on a workout bench while performing bicep curl exercises. The same day, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[20] published several of the Time photos in a post titled "Paul Ryan Did a Beefcake Photo Shoot and It's the Best Thing Ever" (shown below).

Also on October 11th, the Hey Girl, It's Paul Ryan Tumblr published several image macros using photographs from the Time magazine shoot (shown below). ABC News^[22] published an article titled "Paul Ryan Pumps Iron in Time Mag Photo Shoot," reporting that the photo series had inspired several image macros, a fake Twitter account and a fake OKCupid^[24] dating profile.