On June 14-16, 2024, Georgian (1;2;3;4) and Russian-speaking (1;2;3) Facebook users shared footage from a video showing a man wearing a dress and high-heeled shoes. The authors of the posts claim that the video depicts a senior NATO officer.
The authors of Facebook posts disseminate video manipulation. The claims that the video depicts a senior NATO officer are false. In fact, the footage depicts Mark Bryan, who is a robotics engineer, American football coach, and a model.
The video shared by Georgian and Russian-speaking Facebook users depicts 64-year-old Mark Bryan living in Germany. With his style, he has been the center of attention of various media outlets many times in the past.
Mark Bryan is from the US but currently lives in Germany. Bryan, who is a heterosexual man, has a wife and 3 children. He has been married for 11 years and his wife supports his decision to wear high heels and dresses. As he explains to the media, after working in an office for 20 years, she got tired of the monotonous style, so in 2015 she decided to start wearing high-heeled shoes, and from 2018 – dresses. According to her own explanation, he does not think that clothes should be selected according to gender and he likes the feeling of freedom he gets from tailoring men’s and women’s clothes. According to him, he wants fashion to be desexualized, which means that everyone has the opportunity to wear what they want and they don’t judge their sexual orientation by clothes. Bryan notes that this is an issue on which he differs from the LGBTQ+ community in his position – although he does not see their position as a problem, he thinks that clothing and fashion should not define or indicate gender.
Mark Bryan is not a senior NATO officer. As evidenced by numerous media interviews and articles (1;2;3;4), he is a robotics engineer, American football coach, and fashion model. According to him, the only place where he does not wear high heels is the football field. In a 2021 Vogue article, he described himself as: “I’m just a married heterosexual guy who loves Porsche and beautiful women and enjoys including high heels and skirts into his daily outfits.”
In 2022, Bryan took part in the show at Paris Fashion Week.
The claim that Mark Bryan is a senior NATO officer has also been verified by foreign fact-checking organizations. According to See Check, which since 2020 brings together fact-checkers from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, the same video with false claims has spread rapidly in different countries.
About the Sources
Levan Tavdishvili systematically publishes anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian posts and conspiracy theories. “Myth Detector” has debunked a number of false claims spread by the user.
Russian-language Facebook user Zurab Nikanorov systematically publishes anti-Western, pro-Russian, and anti-Ukrainian posts about the Russia-Ukraine war, including false information. Many of his posts have been flagged by various fact-checking organizations.
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