{"id":11845,"date":"2019-03-30T16:10:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T20:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/?p=11845"},"modified":"2019-03-30T16:10:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T20:10:19","slug":"the-female-fan-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/30\/the-female-fan-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Female Fan Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The\nFemale Fan Revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Women\u2019s Revolution in WWE has been in\nfull swing for roughly four years. In those four years, we have seen leaps and\nbounds for WWE\u2019s female talent, including dropping the \u201cDivas\u201d title in favor\nof just calling them female superstars. We have titles on par with their male\ncounterparts, a women\u2019s Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber, and even crowned\nWomen\u2019s Tag Team Champions this year, the first we\u2019ve had in decades. At\nWrestleMania 35, a women\u2019s match will be the main event for the first time\never. The Women\u2019s Revolution has opened a lot of doors for female talent in\nWWE, but there\u2019s another part of said revolution that we don\u2019t often talk\nabout: the effect on the fan base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I started watching wrestling as a\nyoung girl, my favorite women were Chyna, Victoria, and Mickie James. To me\nthese women were beautiful, talented, and strong. I wanted to see them fight\nand win and hold their titles up in victory. And they had some great matches,\nbut that wasn\u2019t enough to distract me from the way the women were generally\ntreated as eye candy, sex objects, and plot devices. Their entrance videos\nalways showed skin, they were constantly paraded around in skimpy outfits or\nbathing suits, and the commentators made all sorts of objectifying and\nuncomfortable statements about their bodies and what they\u2019d like to do to them.\nAs girls and women, we are constantly reminded that our appearance is the most\nimportant thing about us, that how attractive we are determines our worth. The\ntreatment of the women throughout the Divas Era was just another source of that\nmessage. The \u201chot\u201d women got pushes and a lot of attention, even if that\nattention wasn\u2019t always the best. The women who didn\u2019t fit the \u201chot\u201d mold, like\nMolly Holly or Mickie James after she\u2019d gained some weight, got humiliated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fast forward to current era of women\u2019s\nwrestling and we\u2019re seeing more types of women\u2019s wrestlers being celebrated;\ndifferent sizes, different races, different sexualities. And this in turn is\nbringing in a whole new generation of female fans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A lot of women my age and older and have\nbeen fans for a long time, transitioned from the Divas Era to the current era\nalongside everyone else. These moments in history, from the first Iron Woman\nmatch to the new WWE Women\u2019s Championship at WrestleMania 32 to 2018\u2019s\nall-women\u2019s pay-per-view Evolution have meant a lot to us because they\u2019re\nthings we thought we\u2019d never see. I feel like the empowerment of WWE\u2019s female\nsuperstars has lead to the empowerment of the female fans. It\u2019s amazing to see\nall the women of twitter showing off their merch, their selfies, and their\nknowledge. For a long time, pro wrestling was a boys club, but we are making\nour own space at the table. The gatekeeping is still real, but we are showing\nup, being heard, and demanding to be taken seriously as fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As much as this revolution means to us as\nadult women, I also have to think about how this is affecting the younger girls\nof the fandom. At live events, I\u2019m seeing more and more girls with their\nfavorite superstar\u2019s shirt or their toy belts and it makes me smile. Rather\nthan being just objects for male fans and commentators alike to ogle, the women\nare being presented as serious competitors. Little girls can see themselves in\nthese women and see that these ladies are just as smart, talented, and\nhardworking as their male coworkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I take nothing away from the Divas or the\nother women of the past as without them, this current era could not exist. But\nI am so glad and so thankful that we have moved past oiled up bikini catfights\nand into serious matches and main events. Even if WWE is technically behind the\npower curve, there is something behind having the biggest, most global,\nwrestling promotion actively supporting and promoting its women\u2019s division. I\u2019m\nthankful for all of the female fans, both longtime and new, that are here in\nthe wrestling community and I hope we continue this energy for a long, long\ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">-Wynter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Female Fan Revolution The Women\u2019s Revolution in WWE has been in full swing for roughly four years. In those four years, we have seen leaps and bounds for WWE\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":11846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,2,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-editorials","category-featured","category-wwe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9jnWd-353","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Women.jpg?fit=1400%2C788&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11847,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845\/revisions\/11847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}