If a large group of people are experiencing a form of catharsis, release, relief, however we say it,
or re-energising as well, that suggests that that large group of people are not allowed to
behave like that, that they're having to experience it through somebody else because society says
you cannot behave like this. So, if you're getting more and more young women going to watch
wrestling, you might want to think about what pleasures that they are getting from that,
and I think that reflects something about the way that society says you cannot behave in these
times. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, tonight's main event has
history in the making. The women of professional wrestling are here to make a stand, putting wrestling
at the forefront of providing a progressive platform for women in sport in general. However,
this will not be an easy fight. Women in wrestling face a battle that is socially and historically
an issue within not only wrestling but society itself. Professional wrestling is a form of sport
and entertainment that combines athleticism and the combat sport of wrestling with characters,
performance and scripted storylines. As the WWE, the world's largest wrestling company,
and wrestling hit the mainstream in the 1990s, women's wrestling introduced an emphasis
on the hyper-therminisation of these athletes and sexualisation within the product.
Dr Louise Fitzgerald is a lecturer at the University of Brighton for Film and Screen Studies.
Her research specialises in contemporary culture and feminism. She believes wrestling
is portraying an act of feminism itself through its female performance.
You're talking about a cultural platform that is a performance, so they're performing a sort of
hyper-femininity, but they are absolutely deconstructing it by then wrestling. You could read this
as a feminist act in itself because they're saying these are the ideas about femininity
and now we're going to challenge them through our actions. You know, if we're going to have that
conversation about hyper-femininity and how I understand that is a very excessive performance
of femininity that's written on the body as well, so the way that they're dressed,
then we have to have the same conversation about masculinity and we don't. And that's a question
you should be asking. You know, why aren't we concerned about men doing that, that we are about
women doing that? The difference here is that ensamen in media have been a strong influence
in constructing what socially-approved gender roles are for men and women. Competitiveness,
strength and aggression are behaviours associated with masculinity and these are encouraged for men
to gain success and status not only in wrestling but society itself. If anything, you could say
that the excessive performance of these ideals create a sense of hyper-reality which only
reaffirms the conventions around masculinity and femininity. Alex Windsor is a professional
wrestler from Norwich. She describes so many obstacles women must face due to the emphasis
from some on their physical appearance and feminine attributes.
You know, as soon as women get involved in wrestling we're already like fighting an uphill
battle because as soon as you know you talk about women wrestling people immediately just think
we're just like things to look at. They just want to see two girls in a ring with each other
like beating each other up because you know they think that's hot. A lot of the girls that do
try and break that sort of mould where you know we don't want to just be seen as wrestlers for our
looks. It's always going to sort of be a challenge because you're always going to get fans or just
people that do say oh women shouldn't wrestle. So I think whatever like progression women's wrestling
makes there's always going to be that little bit of negativity that is the simple fact that
women shouldn't wrestle. It's a guy's sport. Are we as a society unwilling to see women not conform
to gender roles put in place or before actions not usually associated with being a woman?
Dr Alex Chanan at the University of Brighton is a senior lecturer in physical education and
sports studies and is the co-author of a paper looking at the global perspectives of women in
combat sports. It's not that people are you know having some sort of crisis of humanity that
it's really wrong to watch a person hurt or the person. It's that we've been very heavily
socialised throughout our lives to view women as weak and vulnerable compared to men. So what it
makes perfect sense in our culture for you know for a man to step into the boxing ring or the
wrestling ring and be thrown around it doesn't really make sense for us to see women do the same
because that's not the role that we've been prepared to see for women. They're made to look
even more feminine than they are actually in the ring and so in some ways what they're doing is
kind of rescuing their femininity as well by then putting them forward as fashion icons. But it's
a discourse that surrounds them that doesn't allow that that redefining to be established. There's
talking, there are articles, social media, journalists that can't break out of those
kind of traditions. With popular culture and social media the representation of these wrestlers
is not solely down to the 15 minutes they are in this ring for. David Ewell is a former professional
wrestler known as Dave Mercy and also runs and promotes the Bristol based wrestling company
Pro Wrestling Chaos. He acknowledged wrestlers social media platforms can have an adverse effect
on how they are portrayed in the ring. To deputy women sometimes portray themselves on their own
social media is necessarily helped with the connotations of how they can be portrayed in the
ring when he's potentially over sexualising themselves to try and get themselves more over
to get themselves more time to get back to being wrestlers on the TV. Wrestlers now have the
opportunity to express themselves and their characters through different platforms thus
ultimately creating their own perception of themselves despite what viewers see on TV or in the
media. Since the latter part of the 20th century we've seen a lot of change making sport more
progressive, more gender neutral, more gender equal but yet it's far from a complete process and that
there's a problem in that some women get an unfair advantage over others given that they have
that sort of physical capital and male athletes don't have that same problem you know if you're not
a good looking male athlete you're probably going to be all right same can't be said for women.
But then if the industry is set up in that way that means that women the only way women can engage
in this is to sexualise then that's a problem. So I don't think it's about the women it is about
how those systems operate. In terms of W they have got to think you know they're producing
like a project at the end of the day and whatever they feel the fans were like the most they can't
really think about how people will feel about it how the wrestlers will feel they've just got to
think right you know whatever's good for business I guess you know that doesn't always work in the
favour of like you know your Nia Jax and your Chinas because they're not like you'd say the good looking
ones. Sometimes you have got to think like wrestlers are supposed to be these people that
that are not normal you don't want fans to just think that anyone could just get walking and become
a wrestler you have got to make it you know make people believe that you've got to work or you've
got to have a certain look or you've got to be a certain bill to like meet the stature to be a
professional wrestler. What we're seeing is is a change in what it means to be a sector attractive
woman certainly to an extent in mixed martial arts and in wrestling is a sexualisation not
despite being strong and athletic but sexualisation while also being strong and athletic so now we're
seeing perhaps a change there where women are being eroticised for being powerful and that's
probably a good thing but then you sort of flip down its head and you say well you you're still
sort of insisting that women have to be sexy if they're going to be taken seriously. Many athletes
worked hard to get their bodies into shape embracing this and expressing this may not have
anything to do with money or attention itself. Shakara is a professional wrestler from South
London who regularly performs with motions such as progress wrestling and IPW. She spoke of
how performers work hard to achieve their dreams and empower themselves through their own appearance
of performances. I'm my own brand so I represent myself so from what I wear to how I look like
is what represents me so if you want to come out you know like you know boobs out bum out that's
my choice if you want to be covered up that's my choice it's anyone's choice you're saving the
males we have to keep our cardio up we have to go to the gym we have to look after ourselves
look after our bodies because if you don't look after ourselves we're not going to go far and
we're not going to be able to present ourselves in the best way we can. Despite the success and
ever grand status of women's wrestling the process of women being put at the top of the business
and into the main events regularly is still rarity as progressives wrestling aims to be
there still seems to be a limitation for how far this can go. I think that's always going to be
the case when the biggest company in the world still portrays males as being us on on top of
the business but that's not necessarily just a wrestling thing if anything I would suggest to
you that wrestling might be in some ways ahead of that curve because you've at least got them on
the same show on the same product but I'd still suggest to you that the WWE probably wouldn't
be in a position to on a regular basis put women at the forefront of their product yet because
I don't think we as a society are willing to accept it or WWE are not willing to take that risk
to see a society will accept it. The women of wrestling have battled hard and long to show why
they should be taken seriously in some ways these women have progressed the ideals in a sport
that was socially structured against the idea of them performing and succeeding within it these
performers are demanding that we bust out the straight jacket like ideologies that surround
femininity and what it is to be female. It's always going to be that group of people in the crowd
who are going to shout horrible stuff and those people will either change over time or just stick
to the the ways that they're always used to which is you know just shouting at discussing stuff because
of the way it all looks because of like if they're beautiful or not. Women serve just as much as
spots on the show than a man does which is where I think the fans now see it as like okay they're
not people we should just you know sexualise in that sense but now we should take them seriously
and watch what they are because it's art what we do and I think that um I think fans are now
getting that and they're being respectful towards that. You know like the fans change like the rest
of the change you do just sort of you know naturally just come into the stage where it's like
there isn't such a thing as women's wrestlers and male wrestlers anymore it is slowly starting
to become you know it's just wrestling now. Women's wrestling has become so big now that is
becoming more equal to men if not superior in that sense and like there's no difference like
we're not divas anymore we're women's wrestlers we're not we're not like these girls like big boobs
big bums and they're showing out just because we're models we're actual wrestlers and we're we
fight as who we are. Yet the larger battle that needs to be won is how we as a society accept
this on a whole. Wrestling is a small part of popular culture and within itself it's able to
take risks by putting women in these positions yet just like other forms sport and entertainment
is heavily influenced by the media and reliance to succeed as a business to transgress society norms
would be at risk of alienating it on a commercial scale. Women's wrestling is saying these are the
things that you don't expect I can do as a woman and bang just like that these women are laying
the smack down on these ideals until the media that surrounds it in other patriarchal structures
are willing to take these risks wrestling may just be the progressive platform
the sport and entertainment need.
