“As tough as she is beautiful”: Discourses of female professional wrestlers in World Wrestling Entertainment’s “Evolution”

Background

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is the world’s biggest professional wrestling promotion company based in North America, owned and run by the McMahon family, with two weekly televised shows attracting around 11 million viewers; its paid subscription service reaches around 1.8 million subscribers (WWE, 2018), demonstrating the potential reach of this pay-per-view (PPV). Global viewing figures suggest that, at the time the research was conducted, 30–40% of its audience was female (Harrington, 2017).

Since its inception, WWE programming has been dominated by large, muscular men who exemplify traditional masculine traits (Souilliere, 2006). Whilst females have always had a presence, Sitterson and Moreno (2018) remark, “WWE would regularly prioritize swimsuit model physiques over in-ring prowess and charisma” (p. 168); women have been more likely to occupy the role of love interest of, or valet to, a male wrestler than to actively wrestle.

Nevertheless, Wood and Litherland (2017) and Dunn (2015) note a slow but definite increase in the number of female wrestlers featured in WWE. From the 1990s to 2015, females signed with WWE were called divas, a term implying self-important, spoilt women. But in 2015, WWE announced a “women’s revolution,” renaming the Diva’s Division and Diva’s Championship the Women’s Division and Women’s Championship. Female wrestlers from WWE’s training ground NXT were promoted to the two main programmes, Smackdown and RAW, and serious coverage of women’s wrestling began to increase (Sitterson & Moreno, 2018). This “revolution” was epitomised in 2018 by the Evolution PPV, which featured female-only wrestlers, the first and (so far) only programme of its kind. Since 2018, women have continued to feature in weekly shows and PPVs. This was epitomised by three of WWE’s top female stars headlining Wrestlemania 35, the biggest wrestling event of 2019, and the unveiling of women’s tag-team titles in the same year. We might therefore ask whether such changes indeed constitute evidence of “progress” and of the reach of feminist ideals into this most male-dominated and masculine of sports. We might also expect to see significant changes in the ways women are represented in wrestling commentary.

Gender in sports media and sports commentary

Gender bias in sports media was identified by researchers throughout the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Jones et al., 1999; Kane, 1989). More recently, Brandt and Carstens (2005) argued that print media positioned women within a discourse of hegemonic femininity. The concept of “hegemonic femininity” has been the subject of much discussion and defined in various ways. In this paper, we adopt Schippers’s (2007, p. 94) definition as “the characteristics defined as womanly that establish and legitimate a hierarchical and complementary relationship to hegemonic masculinity and that, by doing so, guarantee the dominant position of men and the subordination of women.” The portrayal of women’s participation in various forms of exercise in news media has been found to focus on a narrow version of femininity (McGannon & Spence, 2012), including the infantilisation of female athletes and compulsory heterosexuality (Bruce, 2016). Televised sports programming, too, perpetuates the idea that sport is a male domain and that sportswomen should not challenge the gender binary (e.g., Messner et al, 2004; Dunbar & Hunt, 2000; Thorpe, 2008).

Sports commentary has similarly been criticised, highlighting the role it plays in perpetuating structural gender inequalities (Koivula, 1999; Lavelle, 2010). In a content analysis of commentary on the Olympic Games, Eastman and Billings (1999) found that despite the amount of coverage of men’s and women’s sports becoming more equal, the representation of female athletes trivialised them through such terms as “America’s little lady or America’s little sister” (p. 160). Similarly, Billings et al. (2002) found that commentary framed women’s sport as less about athletic ability, emphasising what may appeal to the audience about the sportswoman herself. In a study of Australian coverage of the 2016 Olympics, Xu et al. (2019) found that women were more likely to be referred to in terms emphasising their femininity and undermining their athletic achievements.

The voices of commentators are often the dominant, if not the only, voice heard throughout a televised sports event. Their main role is to ensure audiences are involved and invested in the action (Lavelle, 2010), but they also make subject positions available to the competitors and audience members. This is particularly so within professional wrestling’s “colour commentary” that is often used to construct and enhance competitors’ characters; compared to play-by-play commentary (on the moves and performance of the wrestlers), colour commentary comments upon the wrestlers’ personal attributes and personal lives. Further, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon regularly interjects into commentary, through headsets worn by commentators (Taylor, 2021), making WWE commentary also a product of the organisation, its culture, and its leadership. Examining commentary, therefore, allows us to explore how those who have the most interest in the success of the company wish to see competitors represented.

Postfeminism, neoliberalism, and women in sport

We are now said to be in a cultural era of “postfeminism.” This term is often used to refer to the cultural condition where “feminist gains of the 1970s and 1980s are actively and relentlessly undermined” (McRobbie, 2009, p. 11). However, Gill (2007) prefers the term “postfeminist sensibility,” referring to ideas, images, and meanings circulating in a culture, and we adopt this approach here. According to Riley et al.,:

[I]t is a term that helps analysts to recognise how a set of otherwise contradictory notions of femininity come together to form a cohesive way of making sense about what it means to be a woman and to live a good life. (2019, p. 1)

Indeed, research in a wide range of sports has examined how these issues play out for the women who take part in them. Women today are perhaps generally more visible in public life than ever before, and this is also true in many sporting arenas. But greater visibility for women does not necessarily bring with it a radical change in popular representations of them (Banet-Weiser et al., 2020). Despite discourses of choice and empowerment, Gill (2007) argues that the postfeminist sensibility also has a disciplinary function, exhorting women to comply with cultural values of heterosexuality and feminine attractiveness. Furthermore, if women choose to reclaim their femininity and see this as “empowering,” if they harness their sexuality and attractiveness in presenting themselves to the world, this “choice” signifies that they are in control of their own identity and not subject to patriarchy (Toffoletti et al., 2018). A number of researchers have examined how female athletes use social media to negotiate their sporting identities, and have questioned the extent to which they are able to combine their sporting and feminine identities in a way that offers resistance to the gender order. For example, Thorpe et al. (2017) looked at the social media self-representation of professional surfer (and self-proclaimed “bikini model”) Alana Blanchard, and conclude that her Instagram images do not challenge existing discourses of femininity. Toffoletti and Thorpe (2018a) examined how five international female athletes used social media to present their sporting and feminine selves. They argue that the most visible sportswomen, those with the largest social media followings, are those who do not challenge norms of “sexy” femininity and who practise “neoliberal feminist discourses of self-entrepreneurialism and empowerment” (p. 20); and Toffoletti and Thorpe (2018b) looked at Instagram feeds of five international female sport stars, examining fan responses to these. They conclude that the women are encouraged to present a successful, empowered but hetero-sexy feminine subjectivity involving personal choice, responsibility, and self-management.

Choi (2000) argues that the female bodybuilder poses the greatest challenge to society’s gender boundaries and that she must therefore “limit her sporting achievement for fear of becoming, or appearing, unfeminine” (p. 47). Marshall et al. (2019) analysed Instagram posts of female bodybuilders. Although there was evidence that these women challenged the view that muscularity is incompatible with normative feminine (hetero)sexuality and sexual attractiveness, they were also subject to surveillance by other Instagram posters who showed admiration for them only if they presented themselves in ornamented and sexualised ways. If they did not, they were criticised as masculine and unattractive. Women in strength-based sports such as wrestling, where the body’s muscularity is developed, may therefore pose a particular threat to these masculine preserves and to key features of hegemonic femininity. Indeed, it may be argued that women in any arena, sporting or otherwise, in which they demonstrate power and aggression are likely to raise similar issues, as in, for example, Inness’s (2004) analysis of tough women in movies. Nevertheless, those sports particularly associated with masculinity may keenly raise this issue for participating women, as shown by Kavoura et al.’s (2018) work with female judokas and Weaving’s (2014) research on mixed martial arts (MMA).

Discursive approaches to gender in sport

Social constructionist and discursive approaches to gender highlight how it is contradictory and power-laden, constituted by prevailing societal discourses. These discourses, in turn, make available subject positions (Davies & Harré, 1999), which both constrain and enable actions and experiences. Subject positions in discourse bring with them certain speaking rights and obligations, but also have implications for subjectivity; it may be argued that our experience is “read” through the lens of these positions, rather than preexisting them, so that our thoughts and feelings, as well as our behaviour and talk, are heavily mediated by the subject positions from which we speak. Discourses therefore place affordances and limitations upon what certain people can be and do, and these are visible in sports media and sports commentary.

Gender in sports and exercise texts (including media texts and interview material) has already received attention from researchers using discursive analytical methods, and such research demonstrates the contribution of discursive analyses to our understanding of gender issues in sport. A small amount of discursive work has also been carried out on sports commentary, examining discourses of Black masculinity in National Basketball Association (NBA) game commentary (Lavelle, 2010), and the discursive framing of nationality within NBA commentary (Lavelle, 2011) and within broadcasts of international basketball and handball matches (Ličen & Billings, 2012). Discursive work has been carried out in diverse fields such as gymnastics (Tynan & McEvilly, 2017), flat racing (Roberts & MacLean, 2012), and exercise (LaFrance, 2011), and on a variety of media texts.

Within this body of work, several researchers have focussed on the discursive constructions that frame women’s participation in sport. Cooky (2006) carried out a Foucauldian analysis of issues of Sports Illustrated for Women (a magazine devoted to female sports and female athletes). She found that sportswomen were encouraged to subject their bodies to constant surveillance and intervention (through diet, the use of beauty products, etc.) in order to repair the damage to their femininity caused by participating in sport; McGannon and Spence (2012) used critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the discourses and subject positions carried within exercise narratives in U.S. newspapers. They found that such media position women’s bodies as not fit or attractive enough, reinforcing the normative thin, heterosexually attractive body ideal, which is presented as attainable through exercise and consuming the right products. Thorpe (2008) examined discourses of femininity in snowboarding media as well as how these are read by female snowboarders. Discourses of female snowboarders were found to emphasise their physical appearance and heterosexuality. But the women themselves either drew upon second-wave feminism, seeing hyper-sexualised images as degrading, or (consistent with postfeminism) claimed that the binary between sexiness and being good at sport no longer exists, and that demonstrating one’s sexuality is empowering. Such work therefore suggests that sportswomen are encouraged to present selves that, whilst claiming choice and empowerment, nevertheless conform to normative feminine, heterosexual ideals.

Representations of masculinity and femininity in wrestling

One of the earliest writers to have given attention to media practices specifically in relation to wrestling is Barthes (1957/2009). He argues that wrestling relies heavily upon the performance of identities and the overexaggeration of gender, ethnicities, and sexual identities, reflecting the concerns of the wider society. Research into gendered representations in professional wrestling has tended to focus upon the promotion of a hyper-masculine, aggressive ideal. In a content analysis of representations of masculinity in WWE programming, Souilliere (2006) found that it promoted a view of manhood that supports dominant cultural ideals of violence, heterosexuality, and emotional impotence. Messner et al. (2000) and Barrett and Levin (2014) also report that males in professional wrestling are framed as authoritative, heterosexual, and violent. By contrast, female wrestlers in WWE programming have often been featured as valets or love interests, serving to justify the excessive masculinity of the male performers whilst acting as an object of gaze for the viewing public (Messner et al., 2000). The content of WWE shows has been found to invoke the conventional gender roles in heterosexual romance (Barrett & Levin, 2014); women were represented as shallow, spiteful, overly emotional, and in need of protection from men, who were emotionally impotent, struggling with internal conflict, but ultimately chivalrous. In a similar vein, Fox (2016) argues that professional wrestling contributes to “patriarchal hegemony through the depiction of ‘tough’ and excessively muscular men and vulnerable or flirtatious women” (p. 13). Roles played by wrestlers embody gender norms, and those who flout them are often represented as “the bastard” or “heel” who must be vanquished by the hero, “face.” These ideas are illustrated in Heinecken’s (2004) essay on the representation of former female wrestler Chyna, who, through her muscular, imposing appearance disrupted the masculine/feminine dichotomy, resulting in WWE labelling her a “monster” and positioning her as heel. Women wrestlers’ bodies are expected to be thin, model-like, and regulated (Dunn, 2015; Hart, 2012). In an analysis of the WWE-produced reality programme Total Divas, which follows female wrestlers in their private lives, Dunn (2015) found that it served to support and promote idealised, hegemonic femininity. The face (babyface) is the hero or “good guy/girl” who is scripted by the promotion so as to be cheered by fans. Their protagonist, the heel, is the villainous antagonist or “bad guy/girl” character. Indeed, professional wrestling is widely understood to be scripted (in terms of the lines spoken and moves made), and the outcomes of matches decided beforehand. Although the physicality and strength demonstrated in matches is not “fake,” wrestling may therefore be described as more performance than sport, raising questions about the extent to which women are able to engage in performances that challenge the gender order.

The increasing visibility of women in wrestling as competitors makes Evolution a potentially rich text through which to examine changing gender representations in this sport, and the discursive construction of women wrestlers from in-game commentary forms one part of the discursive field within which women wrestlers position themselves. But commentary also has a central role in constructing competitors’ identities in the eyes of the audience. There are therefore good reasons for focusing on this element of televised wrestling. Our research aims therefore were:

To identify the discourses that are used by WWE commentators in relation to female wrestlers.

Method

The analysis was approached from a social constructionist standpoint, which posits that society and the categories within it are constructed by discourses (Burr, 2015). However, in line with many critical discourse analysts, we take the view that, although categories such as gender are constructed through discourse, there are structures existing outside of discourse that serve to reinforce societal inequalities; it is therefore important to recognise the power relations at play within texts.

CDA focusses on exploring how societal power relations are reinforced through language use, drawing attention to inequalities and exposing the actions enabled and constrained through language use. It developed from and shares many of its analytic intentions with Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), adding to it a concern with the relationship between discourse and social institutions and structures, as well as how the text is produced, interpreted, and consumed.

We were principally interested in the ways that female wrestlers are positioned within discourses and the implications for their subjectivity. But we also wanted to acknowledge influential forces operating upon the text from beyond it, such as the role of WWE as an organisation and its mode of commentary production, as well as wider social structures and gender ideologies; we therefore regard our analysis as “critical.” As a method of data analysis, CDA is not a single approach (Blommaert, 2004), and we chose to use Willig’s (2013) six-step operationalisation of FDA whilst additionally drawing on Fairclough’s (1992) approach to CDA by paying attention to lexical choices and the ideological and hegemonic processes operating through discourses.

Findings

Five discourses were identified by the analysis: female wrestlers as real athletes in a real combat sport, as conventionally feminine, as emotionally driven, as in need of validation, and as smart versus physical. The first two of these are of particular interest and are presented and discussed in depth here. They are not only pervasive in the text but work together to problematise the discourse of female wrestlers as “real athletes” by promoting hegemonic femininity. We illustrate each of these discourses and consider their implications for action orientation and practice, and for subjectivity and subject positions.

Discussion

WWE aligns itself with calls for gender equality by increasing their coverage of “serious” women’s wrestling and proclaiming a “women’s revolution.” This is epitomised by WWE’s Evolution event, which would seem to signal a sea change in the position of women within professional wrestling.

However, this research has illustrated how, through its commentary, Evolution offers multiple, contradictory positions to female professional wrestlers who want to become successful in WWE. The neoliberal feminism it subscribes to is extremely marketable to the American public and has widespread appeal, upholding WWE’s reputation whilst creating for them a steady income stream and maintaining their market position. Furthermore, Cooky (2018) also reminds us that sports media are male-dominated and male-controlled industries, and inevitably inflect representations of female athletes with particular gendered meanings. As noted above, Vince McMahon, Chairman of WWE, is known to feed into match commentaries and therefore into constructions of the female wrestlers.

The subject position offered to female wrestlers as real athletes arguably resists hegemonic femininity, representing a potential threat to the gender order and giving Evolution feminist credentials. But, at the same time, the commentators’ response to the women’s displays of physical power is to praise their toughness while at the same time emphasising their normative femininity and heterosexuality. Winning at the expense of personal relationships is constructed as problematic, despite the women being portrayed as responsible for their own success. This, therefore, works to resist the position of “real athlete” even as it is offered; the discourses endorse hegemonic femininity and promote neoliberal feminism, creating contradictions, tensions, and dilemmas for both women wrestlers and female viewers who may wish to follow in their footsteps. Strength-based sports like wrestling may be seen as posing a particular threat to the gender order, since women in such sports appear to appropriate key features of normative masculinity such as muscularity and physical power. As demonstrated by both Choi (2000) and Marshall et al. (2019), female bodybuilders are required to demonstrate their femininity by both their professional governing bodies and their fans.

It appears that, like women in many other sports, and indeed any arena where women are taking up traditionally masculine activities, those participating in wrestling have been both conscripted by neoliberal feminism and subjected to the draw of the postfeminist sensibility, so that the “women’s revolution” in wrestling enables women to take up what were once male positions, but without seriously threatening the gender order. This scenario raises some important questions about the subjectivities of women positioned by discourses that shore up both hegemonic femininity and neoliberal feminism, and the possibilities for resisting these.

As Riley et al. (2019) argue, “There is now a growing recognition of the ways cultural discourses ‘get inside’ and come to feel truly part of our own ‘authentic’ selves” (p. 6). Research that has examined the social media posts of sportswomen or interviewed them demonstrates that the widely available discourses of neoliberal feminism and hegemonic femininity, and the contradictions contained within these, are manifest in these self-presentations. For example, Krane et al. (2004) interviewed female college athletes about their perceptions of muscularity and femininity, and found that the women experienced being both athletic and feminine as a contradiction, but that they were proud of their strong, developed bodies and felt empowered by them; in their own use of social media, sportswomen present identities that are normatively feminine and heterosexual, but also empowered (Thorpe et al., 2017; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018a, 2018b). This empowerment is often presented as rooted not only in their athleticism but in their deployment of their femininity and sexiness. There are real difficulties in taking these claims of empowerment at face value, as Gill (2007) has already argued. Cooky (2006), referring to her analysis of Sports Illustrated for Women, puts the point well:

Sport studies scholars should encourage the general public to question how empowering discourses of sport, such as those produced in SI for Women, can be for girls/women. What kind of empowerment does this magazine offer for its girl/women readers? Is it an empowerment that should be celebrated and embraced, or are we just singing the same song to a different tune? (p. 104)

Likewise, just how successful sportswomen can be in challenging, and even changing, the gender order is very difficult to assess. Indeed, what would count as evidence of such change? For example, Weninger and Dallaire (2019) interviewed female barrel-racers, and claim that, “gender performances are thus on display … where women continually defend their athletic legitimacy while maintaining a certain brand of femininity” (p. 1077). Similarly, Davies and Deckert (2020) interviewed female Muay Thai fighters, and argue that they are “forcing a re-imagination of femininity” (p. 327), a femininity that combines physical and emotional strength with beauty, relationality, and compliance. Both Finley (2010) and Beaver (2016) argue that the “rollergirls” who participate in roller derby resist hegemonic femininity by mocking and parodying it, producing what Finley calls “pariah femininities.” Nevertheless, Beaver notes that their sexualised, feminised uniforms are sometimes “misinterpreted” by men in the audience.

The increasing visibility of women in wrestling and other male-dominated sports is therefore perhaps cause for both celebration and concern. While it cannot be denied that this visibility represents progress of a kind, it has arguably contributed to the increased visibility and circulation of neoliberal feminist discourse; furthermore, the choice and empowerment implied by this discourse is problematised when viewed through a postfeminist lens.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

In this analysis, we have focused on the “colour commentary” element of the competition. We chose to focus on this since it was here that discourses around femininity and their compatibility with professional wrestling seemed most likely to become manifest. However, we recognise that our findings do not necessarily represent the content of commentary per se, and recommend that further research attends to the discursive construction of female wrestlers in other parts of the commentary.

Although reference was made in the commentary and in our analysis to the wrestlers’ social media posts, we did not directly analyse these; exploring how women wrestlers position themselves in areas over which they have more control may reveal to what extent they are able to, or desire to, construct resistant identities. The meanings that female and male audience members draw from the performances of female wrestlers may also be of particular interest.

Conclusions

The analysis of sports commentary offers a unique opportunity to examine the moment-by-moment construction of sportspeople, revealing how these constructions may draw upon, support, and resist prevailing discourses. The WWE, like many sports organisations, is male-owned and controlled; the action is scripted, and both the action and the commentary on it are inevitably informed by this. Our critical discourse analysis of the colour commentary on Evolution suggests that female wrestlers face similar contradictions and challenges to other sportswomen, particularly those involved in strength-based sports. They are openly lauded for their toughness and athleticism, whilst their normative femininity and heterosexuality are simultaneously foregrounded in contradictory ways. Reading the findings through the lens of a postfeminist sensibility raises difficult questions about the extent to which events like Evolution should be seen as a challenge to the gender order.