Barking, Screaming, Breaking: The Long, Sad History of Body Shaming in Women’s Wrestling

There’s one sad truth that’s haunted professional wrestling’s attempt at booking women’s wrestling – the specter of body shaming, the easiest and cheapest heat you can possibly garner, will eventually rear its ugly head. The innocent feminine-coded good girl versus aggressive, masculine bad girl, pay per views co-sponsored by Girls Gone Wild, bikini contests and gravy bowl contests,  Tough Enough contestants required to shout at each other about the ‘wideness of their gapes,’ and the most recent sight of Alexa Bliss making fun of Nia Jax for being ‘big,’ pro wrestling has always had a problem that screams out for change.

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Purity Politics: Molly Holly, Dawn Marie and two different struggles against the booking machine in the Attitude Era

The Attitude Era was a complicated place for female athletes. The booking was infamous, and character-wise there weren’t many options. If you weren’t a sexy Sable type charged with stripping down and rolling in oversized gravy boats with pinnacle pushes usually centering around Playboy centerfolds, then you were a slightly more chaste Chyna type, forced to deal with slings and arrows aimed at your gender or body image. Basically: you were a Madonna or a whore, and the current business model favored the whore. In WWE, everyone is disposable, but to be female and attractive was to be seen as doubly homogeneous by management.