Can we escape objectification in wrestling?

June 10th, 2025

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There's been something on my mind since midway through 2024, when Mina Shirakawa came to disrupt the relationship between Mariah May and Toni Storm. Spaces like Tumblr and... One side of Twitter were receptive to the potential that a sapphic storyline like this had. Many women and queer people trusted AEW to deliver an instance of legitimate and respectful representation, something that's been barely seen in mainstream wrestling. On the other side, places like Facebook, Instagram and... The other side of Twitter were celebrating for much different reasons. The mere image of Mina kissing Mariah was enough for words like "porn" and "hot lesbian action" to come out. They did not care about the story Mariah had with Mina in STARDOM, nor the implications it could have upon Mariah's dynamic with Toni, nor that Toni and Mariah had come out as bisexuals in recent years. Do you remember bisexuality? While some celebrated with lustful eyes, others scored AEW off for "trying to exploit lesbianism to raise rating numbers". Because a woman kissing a man is a totally fine story, but a woman kissing another woman is no more than a fetish or the butt of a joke (See Lana x Liv Morgan).

But one can perfectly understand that feeling of distrust, since pro-wrestling -historically and at surface level- has not been the go-to place to find queer representation or elaborate stories. On the contrary. And even at the start it seemed like AEW refused to acknowledge its own storyline as what it was. While Toni and Mariah kissed each other, Tony Schiavone insisted on keeping the angle that their relationship was mother and daughter-like. They eventually had to give in. There were even some other women and queer people who didn't approve of the story, who also scored it off as more counterproductive fetishization. They didn't stop to think whether there was substance in this story or not, or if it was the wrestler's own choice to tell it; the mere sight of "women + women + women" was enough to discredit it as shallow and exploitative. As if AEW had forced these talented competitors to show this side of themselves. And so it didn't matter how many heartfelt pieces of fanart were drawn, how many emotional fanfics were written, how many articles and detailed analysis on the thinnest psychological threads on these characters were posted, nor how many extensive video essays were edited. It didn't even matter the depth of narrative Mina, Mariah and Toni themselves would intertwine the sexuality of their story with. The minds of the general population were trained to see attractive women kissing as nothing more than that, what you see at face value. "Gooning" material like the kids say. "I watch it for the plot, teehee."

A dear friend from Twitter vented at the time that she hated that men even got to perceive this storyline. And how not to feel this way? The peak of comedy for many of them is to superimpose a Brazzers logo on a screenshot, or in modern times, generate a rancid AI edited image. Hi, Stephanie Vaquer.

I'm not friends with Stephanie, I'm not a psychologist, I don't know her, I'm not inside her mind. We don't have public, exact confirmation of how she feels internally about the hype that surrounds her Devil's Kiss. But we can see that she has no problem in doing it, nor catering to Booker T's obsessive and sometimes nauseating celebration. We know Stephanie happily shows off her body on Instagram, and that when "likes" were public on Twitter she had no issue with leaving some on pornographic gifs. Boo! Women like sex. Some others don't, but many of them do. For some, it's one of the most important things in their lives. And the range in which each one is willing to show that, and how they do it, is up to each individual woman. It's their choices and it should be respected. However, the perception of these things can effect how someone sees women's wrestling itself. Many are going to reduce Vaquer to her physique. Many will fetishize her. Many will ignore the human being and the wrestler and only pay attention to the body. And as they do that with Stephanie, they will learn to do it with other wrestlers too. And the counterreaction to this can be seen in characters like Zoey Stark's, comments like Mickie James' on WWE LFG, and the opinions of many fans around the world. A section of fans sees the oversexualization and exploitation of women in wrestling across history, and will go on to reject even the smallest hint of sexuality moving forward. And the problem is that upon following that path they usually end up blaming the wrestlers for this. An effect like this doesn't only happen in pro-wrestling, and we have years of discourse about Generation Z becoming puritan, and the endless debate between liberal feminists and radical feminists about the sex work system, and the general sexualization of women in media (See Sabrina Carpenter or Sydney Sweeney) to understand what's happening here.

Women must be able to decide what to do with their own bodies. But it's also undeniable that there's a system benefitting itself when women openly explore their sexuality. Women should feel empowered, but I can't shake this odd feeling when an independent wrestler who doesn't have the means to keep a stable income has to resort to OnlyFans to move forward with her dream (Or, moreso in the old days, "custom matches".) When Elayna Black lashes out at perverts that simultaneously attack and fetishize her, but also feels commended to open up an OnlyFans and foster parasocial relationships with said creeps. When a wrestler who made her debut at 16 years old in the independent Chilean wrestling scene is just about to turn 18 but has already been sexualized to death, with her tag team partner -an adult female- encouraging her to shake her ass during her entrance. None of this is the aforementioned wrestlers' fault, but rather that system's. They're obviously going to exploit what they have in their favor to earn more income, popularity, relevance and success in their careers. But how many of these wrestlers with paid exclusive content services are doing this out of personal desire and not out of need? How many of these wrestlers would've created an account in such platforms if they had enough money to sustain themselves in the first place? It's great that many women now have this avenue of income that can be created from the safety of their homes, that they can feel empowered in doing so, but I still think these last two questions should be asked.

My desire is not for women wrestlers to supress their sexuality, nor to forbid them from creating paid content accounts, and much less to limit the creativity that brought characters like Timeless Toni Storm to this world, and the comedic wits that allow Harley Cameron and Anna Jay to shine. My desire is for the world of independent professional wrestling to have fair living conditions. That big companies can attract fans that see the wrestlers as more than just how hot they are, and that said companies don't incentivize that reductiveness. That sexuality can be shown and discussed with enough maturity and enough picaresque grace and enough transgression, that someone can express how attractive a wrestler is without having to reach the rock bottom state of saying "I would eat the corn out of her shit", or on the flipside, that a wrestler using her sexuality can go on without being met with a "whore" or "she's only good for making people horny" comment.

But it's easy to just express desires. All of this would take years of generational changes, a legitimate commitment from companies and a monumental economical reform. A shift in paradigm so big it's unthinkable of right now. So companies will still take advantage of women, many fans will still reduce them, many women will still see themselves in the need to expose themselves to parasocial relationships and harrassment, and many other people will still blame them through misogyny and slutshaming. But I still have faith in that change. As long as we keep raising these concerns, as long as fans keep making art and overanalyzing minucious details in a storyline, as long as wrestlers keep proposing new ideas, as long as we keep not asking, but imposing new visions that make an incel cry about how woke pro-wrestling and its community have become, we're on a good track to escape this predicament.