The Real Reason WWE Are Sexualising Women Again
Hopefully you're picking up on the thread here. WWE occasionally dip their toe back into the water of this stuff because, well, their audience absolutely loves it. A TV-PG rating allows for "very little sexual content or suggestive dialogue", which gives them enough wiggle room to indulge in it every once in a while. It's rare, but according to reports on Wrestling Observer Radio, it might become a more common sight.
“So the idea is they want to bring back this idea of God only knows what. It’s like old time, old time stuff. It’s like whatever, that stuff’s on regular TV shows all the time too. It was an attempt to do something that was very awkward in execution, but it was an attempt to make things sexy."
The point that it's on other TV shows seems like a valid one on the surface as well, with plenty of other shows occupying similar time slots to WWE regularly do things that are considerably more "revealing" than these two segments. But again, that's only half the story. What we actually saw definitely wasn't that bad, but it's more what it symbolises in the mindset of WWE. Namely, that these women, who have trained for years and work every week to be taken seriously as professional wrestlers, are equally as useful to them as items of objectification.
It's a complex issue. On the one hand Alexa Bliss and Mandy Rose are grown women, and if they want to do these skits as a celebration of both themselves and their own sexuality then that's absolutely their right. They're their bodies, they're entitled to use them however they like, and in the long run it's a far smarter use of them than repeatedly bumping on a wrestling mat every single week.
However if they're being instructed by the higher-ups that this is how they want to use them, regardless of how comfortable they are with it, then it's obviously a problem. WWE's track record of punishing stars who won't do what they're told is long and storied. The only people who know where the truth lies in all of this, obviously, are Alexa Bliss and Mandy Rose.
The main problem with all of this from an audience perspective though is also the most baffling. Beyond YouTube views and the bump in revenue they'll bring (an almost literal drop in the ocean by WWE's standards, it should be pointed out) what's the point? What did Alexa Bliss receiving a coffee while holding on a t-shirt over her chest do for anything?
The short answer is nothing, and the long answer is, coincidentally, also nothing. In a week when we should have been talking about the official unveiling of the Women's Tag Team Titles, we're actually talking about Alexa Bliss being topless backstage. If you're a female wrestling fan, this is impossibly grim.
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