WWE Divas: Entertainment or Exploitation
If a wrestling fan watches any wrestling programme these days, they will no doubt see a WWE Diva. A Diva is a female talent who takes part in a wrestling show either as a wrestler, a manager, a sidekick, a backstage interviewer or a ring announcer. Over the years, a Diva has only been seen as a beautiful distraction by some while they have also been seen as professional wrestlers by others. The entire WWE concept at the moment is fixated with sexual images. The role of a Diva in the organization, and to wrestling overall is interesting and needs to be looked at in more detail.
Even though there were women who were part of the WWE in the 80s when it was known as the WWF, the first modern version of a Diva appeared in 1996. The new version of the Diva was very different from the women who came before because now the female talent was heavily sexualised. 1996 marked the entry of soon to be famous Diva, Sunny, who would accompany the tag-team of the Bodydonnas as their manager. She started a trend of the company hiring good looking women entering the ring wearing skimpy outfits. Sunny was followed by Marlena, Sable and Chyna in 1997 and together they started to become very popular with the fans.
In time, one of the original Divas, Sable, became so popular that she ushered in a new division in wrestling, female wrestlers that would actually compete in matches and were simply not eye candy. Admittedly there were still all good looking women wrestling in skimpy outfits but they were wrestling instead of simply standing next to the ring. The popularity of Sable led to Chyna becoming very popular as well. Sable was the first female wrestler to be featured in Playboy and the WWE capitalised on this fact by having themed matches and pitting women who were then featured in the magazine against each other.
The year 2000 rolled around and a new era; Divas came about with the entry of Lita into the business. Lita performed much more dangerous moves and did stunts that no other Diva had done before her, thus she became very popular as a result of it. Soon another very famous Diva made her appearance; Trish Stratus entered the WWE and blew everyone away. She was first a valet or one of those women who appeared along with other wrestlers for no reason, but then she trained as a wrestler and actually won the women’s championship title.
Over time the Divas became more and more sexualised and the whole industry took on a seedy image. With the WWE moving to a PG rated television slot for its broadcasts, the sexual nature of the female talent was toned down. But debates still raged whether it was good to have female wrestlers who were mere props or whether the company should introduce proper female wrestlers. Today the women’s division is not as popular as the men’s and its popularity seems to be waning.
Some people have said that there are not enough female wrestlers and some fans are sick and tired of seeing the same storylines and clichéd contests such as bra and panties matches or lingerie matches. Also a lot of female wrestlers would get injured frequently and since there were already only a few of them to begin with, it would put a dent on the storylines and matches that could be staged. Other women’s wrestling promotional companies sprung up slowly that focused more on extreme women’s wrestling and these have started to appeal to fans.
The question remains that whether there should be highly sexualised eye candy matches in wrestling today. Well the fact remains that a large proportion of professional wrestling fans tend to be young men and one thing that young men like to see is young attractive women. So like it or not as long as it pulls paying fans in through the door wrestling promotional companies will continue to follow the practice. Maybe in time we might see women wrestlers who are serious athletes and the fans do not care what they look like but that day may be a long time away.
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