I Finally Figured Out What Pro Wrestling Has That Most Entertainment Nowadays Fails at: Positive Male and Female Rolemodels

I used to be a big fan of pro wrestling, and still consider myself a fan, even a big fan at times, but don't quite keep up with it like I used to. It's often hard, if not impossible, to explain the charm of wrestling to someone who doesn't follow it, because, at its core, it's very dumb. And especially people of intellect are often weirded out by the entire premise of it.

I was watching a WWE Pay Per View event last night, since it featured a rare match from a childhood favorite of mine, and one of the preliminary matches was a women's match between champion Bayley and challenger Charlotte. During the match, it finally hit me what pro wrestling, in all of its silliness, actually accomplishes that so many other entertainment forms nowadays fail at.

In wrestling, wrestlers are divided into two groups: babyfaces and heels. Babyfaces are the good guys and gals, those who are designed to get cheers from the crowd, and heels are the evil antagonists, who are supposed to be booed. Money is drawn in wrestling when a good babyface, who the crowd can live vicariously through, successfully gives the heel his or her comeuppance.

People pay money to see the evil heels get their asses kicked, basically.

The oversimplified scenario above has obviously been skewed since the late 80s and early 90s when people started to figure out that wrestling is, indeed, not "real", but rather a scripted entertainment show, but nevertheless the babyface and heel dynamics have remained to this very day.

In the above women's title match, Bayley is the happy go lucky babyface. She's an extremely likeable, sweet girl, who is feminine, but not a feminazi. She smiles, she's happy, she's optimistic, she wants to hug the kids. She wears her brown hair on a cute side ponytail that makes her girlish and easily approachable.

The challenger Charlotte is the exact opposite. She's a bitchy cow with a superiority complex, has no respect for anyone but herself, is snarky and snide, feels that everything should always be about her and her feelings and is generally a mean person.

I spent a moment thinking about this last night, and realized that women like Charlotte are actually often the protagonists in entertainment these days. They are the role models for women in the entertainment world. Yes, there are sweet girl characters like Bayley, but quite often they are not the main female heroes in stories, but rather comedic side characters, with the message being that they are something the viewer should not aspire to be. They are not necessarily the antagonists, but they are not role models, either.

Personally, I only just recently got myself a TV, and it's exclusively for gaming, since I'm not a big fan of TV in general, but I often take care of my mom's dogs at her house, and do browse the channels on her TV.

What I've noticed more and more and more during the past few years are the following factors:

• Men are generally not masculine, but rather female characters in male bodies; they are chatty, hysterical, talk about their feelings and are incapable of solving problems.
• If men are masculine, the masculinity is often used for comical relief, and the character is someone who is either old, or otherwise living in the past, not realizing the wonders of modern gender neutrality
• Female characters are bitches, and the bitchiness is portrayed as a positive trait; they are especially sarcastic and mean to men, who ask them stupid questions, and instead of solving the issue in a constructive manner, the women resort to treating the men like idiots, often with a disgusted look.
• Male characters are also overgrown teenagers. They are not Adult Men who take responsibility for themselves, they're forever stuck in high school kid mode.

Pictured above is Bill Goldberg. Talk shit about his wife and son, and he will rip your head off and eat you whole. Because he is a man.

Okay, okay. So resorting to violence to solve your problems is not exactly a positive message overall, but it's also a message of standing up to yourself and those you love. And obviously wrestling shows are shows about, well, professional wrestling, so the violence comes with the territory.

Wrestling has always had its array of ridiculous, over the top characters and even those that are embarrassingly bad, but by and large, the big heroes and villains have represented the classic traits of heroes and villains: the good guys have stood for what's right, don't cheat in matches, have a strong moral code and generally send out a good message.

Male wrestlers have also, to this day, been men and the females have been women.

And something that is important to take not of is the fact that even though there is a division between the men and the women, neither gender is considered or portrayed as superior or inferior to the other.

For the longest time, admittedly, women were little more than sex objects in wrestling, and women's wrestling was not something that ever taken that seriously. In Japan, it was, but that's another topic entirely. In recent years, the WWE has started to focus on quality women's wrestling, and it's actually started to feature some of my own personal favorite stuff in the WWE, even though I'm someone who is very anti-feminist. You see, when the focus in the marketing shifted towards bringing more of a focus to the women, it had a very feministic vibe to it, it made me skeptical, but the end result was actually anything but.

I find great humour in the fact that pro wrestling, which is something that intellectuals often look down upon, is an entertainment avenue that was able to - get this - bring a focus on female performance, showcasing specifically female talent, and have an audience that watches wrestling not crap over it at all. In fact, the WWE audience has welcomed the female focus, and has responded to it very well. Last year, for the first time ever, a women's championship match that headlined the WWE's weekly TV show, was actually a ratings draw, which means that the TV ratings went up from the week before and there was a significant amount of people who tuned in specifically to see that match between two women.

And I think a lot of it has to do with how the characters are portrayed. The babyface women are likable, and the bitch characters are the bad guys, not the other way around.

So, in your face, Hollywood and other intellectuals: it's been proven that it's entirely possible to market talented women to a "dumb redneck rassling audience".

One of my personal favorite wrestlers right now is actually a female wrestler called Alexa Bliss, who plays a mean girl bitch character and is a great heel. Meaning that whenever she gets what's coming to her, it's highly enjoyable. She plays the unlikable popular girl from high school to perfection, and is a very talented actress, as well as an entertaining wrestler.

I have no doubt that she'd make the perfect fit for a female hero in a modern movie, but in the WWE, she's the villain, because why would a mean bitch be the hero?

And she has a lot of great female protagonists to play off of. None of which are anything like the protagonists in today's television shows.

Even if you're not a fan of wrestling, you have to find irony in the fact that a pro wrestling company has found a way to showcase both men and women "equally" without bringing down the other gender. Something that a lot of "intellectuals" in the modern world seem to be struggling with. Strong female characters seem to always necessitate bringing down the entire male gender.

The fact that the WWE has note taken part in this movement of political correctness, yet has still managed to showcase a positive, strong female message, is something that makes me proud of the company, and proud to say that I'd rather my kid watched wrestling than most Hollywood films.

It's stupid most of the time, but there are things like this to appreciate.