Truth, Heels and Gender Roles: Why Kelly Kelly Is the Real Diva Villain

The actions of an honorable woman?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

All Beth Phoenix wants is to be taken seriously. It's hard for her to do so when she's one of the few in a division who strive for that. When most of the Divas base their offense on how hot they are, or how well they can shake their asses, it can be hard for a legitimate female wrestler to ply her trade when all she wants to do is bust skulls. What was her repayment? She's painted as the villain, and furthermore, Kelly Kelly, the most egregious of the ass shakers and stink-facers, gave her the waylaying of a lifetime.

Coincidentally, K2 is considered the face of the Divas division.

While this may not seem "right", it has been the status quo in WWF/E for a long time to some degree. The heels were the ones who told the truth, often times uncomfortable, while the faces spun propaganda to some degree. This was no more evident than in the broadcast booth in the '80s and '90s, when Bobby Heenan and Jesse "The Body" Ventura would point out flaws in Hulk Hogan's or the Ultimate Warrior's games. Obviously, they were bad for a reason; they'd often ignore the misgivings of their bad guy counterparts, but this is nothing new for WWE.

However, the level at which this attacking of the truth, at least from an institutional level, seems to be a bit excessive from where I sit. Let's switch the narrative around a little bit. Instead of Beth wanting to turn the Divas away from looks, splits and booty-shaking, what if she came out and wanted to rid the Divas of politics and ass-kissing? She'd be CM Punk, right? CM Punk's a good guy, or at the very least, he's a fan favorite (which may still yet make him a bad guy if the fans are into that kind of thing), correct?

So, basically what the WWE is saying is that it's okay for the men to have real competition, but the ladies should be there to shake their asses. I'm no feminist, and believe me, I've gotten my fair share of erections looking at sexy photo shoots, but that's not kosher from where I sit, ESPECIALLY when the one company that does nearly everything WWE tries to do, only worse, gets it better than they do in this instance, even now when their women's division is at its worst. When Impact books women better than you, you have problems.

Even more troubling are the demographics for WWE. Apparently, 36% of the audience is female. That's not a trivial number, and it's one that needs to be catered to. That begs the question, what caters to women? Do you assume they're all vain and easily fooled by platitudes like being called "smart, sexy and powerful" without any evidence of that being the case, or do you assume they're real people who like real, three-dimensional characters, or at the very least, two-dimensional characters who can actually wrestle? The WWE thinks it's the former, but I'm going to make the not-so-wild assumption that 36% of their audience would like to see more of the latter.

So you can very much agree on why I feel like positioning Beth as a heel is a bad thing, right? Especially when the thing she's been fighting against was so expertly personified as a bad girl trait during LayCool's epic run on Smackdown. Strong women are good role models. Conversely, the woman with minimal wrestling skills maybe shouldn't be held as the paradigm. I mean, K2 uses the Stink Face, a move that was used by someone 300 lbs. her heavier. The girth was the efficacy, but now, it's reduced to lesbian homoerotica. While I'm not exactly going to argue that I dislike that kind of thing, I don't think it should be used in something that is being staged as legitimate competition. Then, in response, she Pearl Harbors Beth, partially out of retaliation for last week, but you could assume she was a bit miffed at the criticism. Then again, when did the good guy sneak attack someone? Oh yeah, that's right, it's SOP in WWE. No one fights with honor anymore. But I digress.

The point is, if the gender here was inverted, Beth Phoenix probably would be a folk hero. Instead, she's used as a monster to get over the paradigm that you need to be PRETTY PRETTY OH SO PRETTY to be a good girl in WWE (completely oblivious to the fact that there are people in the fandom, of which I'm a member, that think Beth is way hotter than Kelly). When you have a significant portion of women in the audience, especially impressionable youths, maybe it's time you start portraying the fairer sex as more than just pretty faces, fake tits and shrinking waistlines.

Instant Feedback: PUNK HARDER AGAIN

If tonight was any indication, the WWE is going to miss CM Punk if he's really leaving. While all this pomp and build makes me believe that they're not going to be letting him walk, well, tonight he proved that when he's on, he can take wrestling to another level. Even though it was a little crass, he was right when he said the only times wrestling gets front page pub is when he talks or a wrestler dies. That's publicity you can't buy. And really, this is only half of what Punk can do. He wrestles just as well as he talks, and he'll prove that at Money in the Bank, because Cena can too.

Speaking of Cena, outside of the beginning of his spiel after interrupting the contract negotiations, where Bad Goofy Cena reared his ugly head again, he was on point when he was serious. Hell, both bookend segments were outstanding. Vince McMahon acquitted himself well too, but he almost always does. He even broke out the "LET'S HEAR IT FOR VINCE MCMAHON" schtick again. Love that. Although one last note, is it a sad commentary on the city of Boston that it was Punk calling Cena the Yankees that made him snap? I'm from Philly, and we take sports very seriously, but even I think that's an almost sad breaking point.

Anyway, the rest of the show was just there, but it didn't really have to be anything but just there. The Money in the Bank prep was hit or miss. I will say that R-Truth talking about being afraid of spiders and the grits hitting the fan was again surreally entertaining. Christ, he should just do stand-up. He'd be like Tracy Morgan, only less controversial. Other than that, it felt warmed over. Miz was okay in his promo. Swagger was good. Bourne was actually decent on the mic, and then Kofi comes out and cuts the most generic promo I've ever heard. I mean, he's got good delivery... but who's writing this bullshit for him? Then after Truth's manic awesomeness, we get Alex Riley clearing the ring in the most nonsensical fashion ever... like, wouldn't he want to come out before SWAGGAH BOMBU? I don't know. The match was okay though.

Also, the Bella Twins should probably stay away from weight-based insults altogether. Calling Kharma fat is the wrong message. Calling Kelly Kelly overly skinny? Uh, have these twins looked in the mirror lately? Nattie, Beth Phoenix, Eve and Melina all have great body types. The Bellas are just as bad as K2. Maybe they should eat something more than bean sprouts and their fingers. And if you want to get a good reaction over the number of handicap matches on the show, just ask Razor. He'll give you the what for.

But then again, the sandwich portion of RAW could have been 90 minutes of monkeys on tricycles trying to fling poop at Santino and Hornswoggle and it wouldn't have mattered. Punk, McMahon and to a lesser extent Cena made this show. Is wrestling back? I'm not qualified to make that statement, because I'll probably continue to watch even if it turtles into further cultural obscurity. That, and if Punk leaves after Sunday, it's all for naught. However, RAW for the last three weeks has felt special, a certain kind of specialness it's lacked for a long time. Vince, Cena and ESPECIALLY Punk are the reasons why.

Whatever Happened to the Athletic Fat Guy?

Steen: Not svelte, but definitely the goods

Earthquake. Vader. Big Boss Man. Bam Bam Bigelow. The mainstream feds used to be full of athletic big men who had beer bellies to go with their technical prowess and in some cases, high flying moves. Commenter Lucius lamented on Twitter that the athletic fat guy has gone to the wayside. True, if you scour the WWE's roster right now, you'll find one guy who fits the "athletic" mold, rather than the monster role. That guy is Brodus Clay, who's also totally not on TV right now. Mark Henry is a fat guy, but he's also very much a monster-type. He fits a stereotype more than anything else. There's nothing wrong with that at all, as Henry is among the best things going right now in my opinion, but again, variety is a spice of life that WWE doesn't use a whole lot of.

Impact is slightly better. Samoa Joe and Bully Ray are both beer-gutted wrestlers who move around quite well for guys their size. The indies have two other really good examples, one being Kevin Steen, obviously, and the other being Eddie Kingston. Kingston is a borderline example, as he's not really that fat. Steen is a better example in terms of body type. Both men are tremendous wrestlers. Then again, enumerating all those guys, plus adding in maybe Husky Harris, and it's six guys tops who fit the mold. In terms of how many sheer wrestlers are out there, that might be a small number, but then again, what fat people in America today are athletic as well?

Body types have changed over the years too. Be it steroids, better conditioning, better diet, more discipline, more pressure from management to have a better body type or whatever, you don't see nearly as many barrel chests or doughy stomachs anymore. Like it or not, WWE's neuroses over body type have ruled the day to the point where if you want to be a wrestler, you have to acquiesce to WWE's idea of what a wrestler looks like.

Be that as it may, how many truly great athletic fat guys have there been? I wonder if the number of guys with beer guts who can fly around the ring with ease now is just the same as it's been historically. However, the difference is, Boss Man, Earthquake, Vader and Bam Bam all were near the top of the card in WWF, WCW or both. Bam Bam main evented WrestleMania. Boss Man teamed with Hogan and Quake and Vader both feuded with him. Meanwhile, Clay and Harris aren't on TV, Joe and Bully are in a company with no direction, and Steen and Kingston both are kings of the indies.

So maybe Lucius has a point here. It's the number of athletic fat guys, but how they're presented. As a fan of guys like the four historic guys and as boosters of Steen, Kingston, Brodus and Joe, I love seeing this wrestler archetype get its due. So I say yes, let Clay back on WWE TV. Yes, sign Steen, War King and even Joe (if he's available) to WWE and push them to the moon. All body types are welcome, actually. Homogeny is never a good thing. Variety is a spice best applied liberally.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Randy Orton Puts Foot in Mouth

Criticizing her in-ring? Cool. Insinuating she's a slut? Totally not cool.
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Via Cageside Seats

Randy Orton recently did an interview with a local rock station in Arizona where he made some hair-raising remarks. The one he's catching the most flak for is his insinuation that Kelly Kelly may be a bit on the promiscuous side:

Egged on by the two hosts, he makes some very unflattering remarks towards current divas champion Kelly Kelly after noting he worked a short romance angle with her in early 2009. ("I would be a method actor, and actually sleep with her," jokes host John Holmberg. "I could name a few method actors in WWE," Orton says. "Like, ten guys.") The disparaging remarks about who Kelly has or hasn't slept with continue throughout the show. Kelly has yet to directly respond to the remarks, sans a cryptic remark on Twitter which could be interpreted as a response to Orton: "The best way to fight stupidity, is by ignoring it."

On the surface, those some pretty heavy implications. These comments have caused a furor on the Internet, both by people outraged by the continual double standard about the number of sexual partners you can acceptably have based on gender and by people who think those complainers are taking things way out of proportion. I feel like I sympathize more with the former, but there's a lot of context here that we need to wade through before we start carrying effigies of Orton through the street with our local chapter of NOW. That isn't to say that what Orton said wasn't heinous, because it was. However, I'm not so sure he's the only one upon whom we should be heaping scorn.

First thing's first, there is an overt double standard in society about the acceptable number of sexual partners that each gender can have. That number for men seems to be infinite, while the number for women approaches zero. It's awful, heinous and it supports the culture of victim blaming in sexual assault cases where "she was asking for it" is an acceptable defense of a predator. This double standard seems to be more prevalent in the sports community, even moreso in the combat sports/sports entertainment community. I mean, look at how poorly women seem to be treated in WWE. That treatment has gotten better over the years, but in a promotion where babyface Jerry Lawler fat-shames heel Vickie Guerrero when Vickie Guerrero is not fat, there's still a lot of work to be done. And of course, who could forget the whole Joe Rogan/Maggie Hendricks hullabaloo where people were falling all over themselves to make excuses or defend Rogan's use of the word "cunt" as a modifier for Hendricks' justified calling out of a borderline sociopath who just happened to work for the same company as Rogan.

That being said, there is some merit to the argument that Orton may have been goaded, or that he realized his mistake and backtracked or that maybe he was just joking. For one, the actual wording reads like a joke. If you listen to the actual audio, the host, John Holmberg, keeps hounding and hounding Orton for salacious answers. This is his MO according to Arizonan and TWB superfan Joe O'Toole. Orton also tries to backtrack, and his tone is never really all that sure. There's an argument for mitigation here.

That being said, any mitigating factor, to me, is trivial at best and irrelevant at worst. It certainly does not absolve Orton of criticism. Whether he was sorry or not or whether he was goaded or whatever is irrelevant to me. It still speaks to a much larger problem in this double standard, or slut-shaming as I'll be calling it from here on out. It wouldn't be as big of a problem if it didn't affect people professionally, which I really feel it does. A woman has to feel shame for whom she chooses to share a bed, regardless of whether it's for a sinister motive or not. Regardless of any ulterior intentions, whom people fuck is their own damn business, and if they choose to share that business with you, you're a piece of shit if you share it against their will to an audience of strangers. So, for that to affect a woman professionally, especially if those relationships were non-career advancing, is beyond reprehensible. No one has the right to know these things, and now they're making an impact on the work environment?

Furthermore, those mitigating factors? They're out the window when looking at Orton's history. He has a history of anger issues and disrespecting other co-workers, ESPECIALLY women. I mean, do we remember his alleged bag-defecation? Yeah. When you're a repeat offender, you're looked upon with much more scrutiny than if you're a first-timer with a clean track record.

Then again, the truth is Orton is a product of his environment to some degree. This doesn't excuse him, but it means he isn't the only one whom we should be blasting. Again, going back to the fat- and slut-shaming in angles (hell, Impact's entire Knockouts division is built upon accusations of sleeping to the top) in both major companies and the general "boys club" atmosphere of wrestling, it can be hard to make changes. That doesn't mean the business is long overdue for a women's equality movement. Change has to start with the workers, especially as women wrestlers are starting to become more than just tits, asses, pretty faces and personality-devoid automatons built for nothing but boner fuel for the target audience.

And again, if Orton realized he said a dumb-shit thing and started backtracking, that's a start. However, he needs to train himself to not make those kinds of comments in the future. I don't know if you've noticed, but with the Vickie fat-shaming, John Cena making homophobic statements IN CHARACTER and then backtracking by saying the problem was us, not him, Michael Cole calling Josh Mathews a "faggot" on Twitter and a couple of questionable segments involving R-Truth, the WWE isn't exactly setting an example for being the friendliest or most accepting company for which to work. The WWE shouldn't be so accepting of these kinds of incidents, and they need to start cracking down. Whether you agree with it or not, sponsors don't generally like associating with companies that are seen as controversial in a bad way, or harboring unsavory characters.

However, I'd rather see change be made by the wrestlers themselves. I know that's a tall order, but instead of having to backtrack on the air or make excuses, maybe in the future, Randy Orton should not make those kinds of comments towards fellow co-workers, and most importantly, maybe he ought not to think those things either. Then again, I can't police a guy's thoughts.

Therefore, I'll just take him shutting his mouth and not insinuating that a female co-worker of his sleeps with everyone she can spread her legs for, okay?

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Vickie Guerrero Is Totally Not Fat, Pt. 25,193

Pictured: Not Fat
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Monday night, Jerry Lawler was at it with the fat jokes on Vickie Guerrero again. The outcry predictably came from Twitter, and yeah, it was like shouting into the abyss. That wasted breath was made compounded because in a recent interview, she stated the fat jokes didn't bother her:

They really didn’t bother me. Well, I guess they did to an extent, but not to where I was feeling bad about myself. It was who I was. We have beautiful women that work with us, and when I was in the locker room with them and we’re dressing and stuff, I would look at them and be like, ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. I’m going to change.’ I wanted to feel good being a part of their group and to live a lifestyle that was going to be promoted with the WWE. Now when they say the jokes, it’s like, ‘Whatever.’ [laughs] The jokes have helped grow my character to what it is. I just kind of roll with it and leave it behind me when I leave the arena. Again, there's the character and then there's the real person. You can't take what's going on at work personally.

Okay, so she does it for the character. I get it, it doesn't offend her much any more. The fact that she's feels an inkling of intimidation or shame is bad, but let's pretend that the shame is negligible. She's not offended by fat-shaming.

Well, I am, and I'm not the only one.

See, like Vickie Guerrero, I lost a shitpile of weight over the last year or so. I started out my journey at 336 lbs. I'm down to 265 lbs. It took a lot of work. The fact that Vickie lost all that weight, and quite frankly looks AMAZING, is a testament of will and should be commended. Instead, an old pervert calls her fat in order for her to gain heel heat. The fact that she's NOT fat is not only insulting to her, but it's insulting to our intelligence.

And in case you haven't noticed, Vickie can garner heel heat just by opening her mouth. She doesn't need to be fat-shamed. And if Vickie truly isn't offended by the fat jokes, she should be. Again, she worked hard. Fifty-two pounds is no joke. To allow Lawler (or really, Vince McMahon since the order probably comes from him) to call her fat belittles all the work she did to take the weight off.

It's especially asinine now that WWE is involved in this anti-bullying campaign. The face is the bully, and a woman who took off all that weight is now portraying the message that it's okay to insult people for being fat, even if they aren't. It's stupid.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Mixed Messages: Why Jerry Lawler Shouldn't Be Calling out the Bella Twins

The wrong messenger
Photo Credit: WWE.com

So yeah, the Bella Twins came out and interrupted Kharma's heartfelt speech about her pregnancy on RAW, throwing insults at her like she was fat and disgusting and all that jazz. While this might have thrown me for a loop a couple of years ago, now, it doesn't bother me as much, given that the Bellas are faces, and Kharma will become a sympathetic babyface out of this... well, as sympathetic a babyface as a destructive monster-type wrestler can be. Obviously, someone in the announce booth had to step up for decency and common sense, right? They did. It was Jerry Lawler.

I have a HUGE problem with that.

You see, it's not because someone came to Kharma's verbal aid. Honestly, the babyface narrative SHOULD be that this kind of bullying is wrong and shouldn't be tolerated. However, Lawler is about as far down the list of guys delivering that message as you can get in WWE, next to John Cena and about every other heel in the company. Why? Just earlier in the broadcast, Lawler was making mean-spirited comments about Vickie Guerrero's weight. Yeah, they were tame compared to what he was saying about six months ago, but yeah, those comments alone would have made Lawler not the guy to deliver the message.

There's such a thing as moral authority. Lawler doesn't have it. You can't say that fat-shaming is wrong in one case, but it's alright in another. It's not a case of joking around either. Lawler and Cena spent a whole segment making fat jokes at Vickie because, in their minds, she wasn't a good person. She did abuse power, but at the same time, she obviously wasn't fat, and on Monday, it appeared as if she'd lost even MORE weight from November. But Lawler still made cracks.

In this culture of unrealistic portrayals of what bodies should look like, being called fat when you have the body type Vickie Guerrero has can those who may not be the most stable-minded into a destructive spiral towards anorexia. Granted, the people targeted do bear some responsibility to know what body types are healthy and not to let what other people think about them bother them, but at the same time, WWE is promoting this anti-bullying campaign (which laughably, the Bellas are spokespeople for) where they're trying not to get people to act that way. They're talking out of both sides of their mouth. It's stupid, and they should definitely be called out for it.

There are definitely different ways that Lawler could get heat on Vickie than fat-shaming her. If he were more noble in that endeavor, then yeah, maybe he could have spoken up, but he wasn't. The fact is, he was the last person who should have been taking the Bellas to task over their bullying rhetoric.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!