Female Empowerment
Female empowerment is often associated with Beyoncé Knowles, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren, Queen Elizabeth II, Frida Kahlo, and Billie Jean King. They’re beautiful, intelligent, talented, and fit into what is generally accepted as the ‘right kind of women’ to advocate for female equality in a male-dominated world. We celebrate them for their tireless efforts in trying to bridge the wage gap, for giving women around the world a voice with their campaigns against gender-based violence, for overcoming the odds of breaking through the glass ceiling of their respective jobs.
So, how is it that we often overlook the skimpily-clad, fake-tanned, butt-kicking women in wrestling when we think about female empowerment?
Professional wrestling is one of the few spectator sports that evolve rapidly to please their paying crowd. One moment you think you’re still watching one professional wrestler body slam his opponent, before BAM! The federation has signed on a champion martial artist to kick some sense into the current title holder. The crowd goes wild, a new fan favorite is born, and the public buys their ticket to the next event without blinking an eye.
So, how come we conveniently forget that professional wrestling has been adding female wrestlers to their rosters since the 1930s?
A Quick History of Women in Wrestling
Mildred Burke, who fought between the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, wrestled over 200 men and lost only to one. June Byers took over as a fan favourite from Burke and was renowned for her athleticism and technique, which often gave her an advantage over much larger opponents than herself. She pretty much changed public perception of women in wrestling. In the 1980s, the so-called ‘Wrestling Boom’ happened in the USA when the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) revolutionized the sport by cross-promoting with various other industries.
The big boom, however, only happened when Cyndi Lauper, known for her timeless hits like ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ and ‘Time After Time’, joined the WWF in 1984. Fast forward to the 1990s and we have women like Chyna strutting around in the ring … Beautiful, deadly Chyna. Oh, what joy she brought when she showed those muscled men who really runs the world. But we forget about Chyna, regardless of the fact that she was the first woman to qualify for the ‘King of the Ring Tournament’, because she isn’t the ‘right kind of woman’ to celebrate.
Now, we have Ronda Rousey, a bronze Olympic medalist in Judo, who has been making news on the mixed martial arts (MMA) scene since 2010. She only recently signed with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), though, but the question isn’t whether she’ll kick butt and take names later, the question is whether she is the ‘right kind of woman’ for us to get behind because she has an Olympic medal to prove her worth.
Women in Wrestling Today
Perhaps, in the beginning, wrestling did exploit women for financial gain, but does that mean we can’t celebrate the female fighters who somehow managed to make us feel strong just because we watched them fight? Is it fair to brush those women off as ‘fake’ because professional wrestling is considered the equivalent of a ‘soap-opera for men’? Alright, so these women show a little skin when they’re punching the living daylights out of each other … What makes them unworthy of being celebrated for owning their bodies?
Professional wrestling, like most sports, has its flaws, but one thing it does right is by giving women equal opportunity—at least, on the surface. Fake or not, at the end of the day it basically comes down to: If a female wrestler is good enough to compete against her male counterparts, by all means, she can go to town on them.
Isn’t that, after all, the most literal representation of female empowerment?
