She's More Of An Object Than A Steel Chair

A few days ago I was blurry eyed, bored, and channel hopping throughout the endlessly frustrating sleepless night I was enduring. By chance I happened to pause for a moment on a channel I would otherwise have skipped nine times out of ten. On it appeared a face from my childhood. Someone whom reminded me of my many moments of childhood ecstasy as I observed the faux violent dance of oiled up, muscular, grown men in Lycra, I am of course am referring to wrestling. As a side note, the wrestler in particular was Rhino who happens to be as far from the stereotyped image of a wrestler as it is possible to find, but as I will get to that later.

What caught my attention, in an otherwise unremarkable piece of uninterested gazing, was the marked difference in the portrayal of gender. 

You might be forgiven for believing that a piece of entertainment that has attempts to pass itself of as a legitimate sport (even having its own dedicated bleacher report section), at least to make the audience suspend their belief, so that it appears the pain and coordinated attacks have an impact upon the outcome of this tightly scripted play-fighting. For any kind of casual viewer you will know how badly this is achieved but never the less it is attempted. Additionally, with the presence of female wrestlers comes the assumption that scripted entertainment attempting to portray real sport, you would hope that they would legitimately wish to portray female sporting prowess and power realistically. This was not the case.

Perhaps the most illuminating moment was presented in a mixed gender tag team match between two teams, so three versus three with one female and two males to a team (and an extra person ring-side on both teams, I do not know why they are needed), when Crazy Steve kissed the opposing teams female wrestler Velvet, thus rendering her somehow disorientated. 

If you take this further and look at the match (The BroMans and Velvet Sky vs The Menagerie) from a deeper perspective, including names, persona's and even the camera angle, attire, and coverage of the proceedings, it paints an even richer picture of the gendered performances. 

Here is the television footage from the event.

The first thing you will notice from the match is the ring entrances, choreographed to encourage the audiences gaze to fall upon the female members of the tag teams. They are treated by their own team, and by extension the viewers, as objects of desire as the parade around beside them as 'trophies' and provocatively crouch and wiggle their bottoms for the male team members and home audiences respectively. The attire they adorn deliberately designed to only heighten the sexual fantasies being teased out of a predominately adolescent male fan based. Both female members considerably less 'toned' than their male counterparts, whilst adhering to the values associated with beauty in western society, they are slim, light haired, large breasted, and white.

The menagerie's entrance in slight contrast does not focus primarily upon the female member of the team, it at least initially is far more concerned with (not so) Crazy Steve's exploits. that is until Rebel takes centre stage (or to the ropes). At this point the camera pans to her bottom once more, revealing it to be once more upholding western beauty standards, although arguably equally athletic in nature. One adorning the ropes she begins to to play a subservient role to the teams 'leader', Knux, a role often associated with femininity. However, it does not end there, once Knux is halfway through the ropes being held open by Rebel's legs, which once again the viewers eyes are drawn towards, he sniffs her foot in a fetishistic manner in keeping with the teams persona's as outsiders. Then comes the most revealing contrast between the dignified, powerful and sexually controlled entrance of the male members and the overtly sexual entrances of the female members. As the team have all made their respective ways into the ring Rebel takes to the bottom rope slowly lowering herself into the splits, revealing her 'flexibility' as the camera begins to centre itself to allow the viewer to look directly up at the face of Rebel via her now focused upon vagina.

Whilst all of this is going on the commentators are encouraging the audience further to view these wrestlers as sex objects (and little more). They achieve this through the use of language and buzzwords such as talking about the previous segments subject (a man named Sandie Shaw) having "game", and of the menagerie's Rebel "what do you like better then balloons or the horn""err Rebel", "oh what a lady" and "oh there we go that's rebel showing her..." "amazing dexterity".

Once the match starts, Crazy Steve proceeds to blow a kiss at Velvet which infuriates her also generically good looking partner (might be both team and romantically as the commentary suggests, I do not watch enough to know for sure) Robbie E. This once again says something about the role of the female 'wrestlers' in this match, they are there to double as objects, both to move the 'plot' forward and to be looked at.

After a few moments of fighting what better time for the commentators to announce the new 2015 'knockouts calendar' now being on sale? Especially as there is currently three of these 'knockouts' in the ring for this matchup. As this is going on Velvet is tagged in to face off against Crazy Steve. Is it finally possible that some equality in physicality will be attempted here? Two 'athletes' will be shown competeting on an equal playing field despite being differently gendered. Nope, she will just slap him and tag back out, that is the limit of female sporting excellence displayed thus far in this piece of entertainment. They have been limited to the realms of stereotypically feminine 'physical violence'. Ending with the announcement about an announcement later in the show, which will be announcing who is deemed to be the most beautiful amongst their roster of eye-candy.

Finally, there is some brief fighting between the two female participants in this match, before Velvet is rescued by her teams mates from a pin (this happens all the time so I wont call sexism on that). However, this is done putting Rebel at risk of being hit by one (or both) of the opposing teams male members, she assumes a pose reminiscent of a damsel in distress and not at all like a fighter. At this point Rebel then is assisted by her knight in not so shining armour to coming to her rescue by removing the threat. 

Then comes the forced kiss between Velvet as the victim and Crazy Steve as the perpetrator of the assault. This too as 'light-hearted' entertainment is very concerning for anyone who looks at the bigger picture. It says a lot about women's bodies that invasiveness like this can be considered entertainment, as Crazy Steve is depicted using his physicality to subdue an unwilling participate for his own satisfaction, whilst the commentators laugh it off and the crowd cheer. What was that about rape culture?

Finally, Velvet runs around a bit in an overly feminised way, Rebel body slams her, kicks the other female wrestler (who otherwise did nothing) in the head, gets pinned and fight over. 

As the Beautiful People and The BroMans make their way from the arena, Velvet appears to be trying to remove the horrible taste of Crazy Steve from her mouth. 

Likewise I am off to do the same and remove the taste of this horrible piece of sexism from mine.