Hi all, and a happy 2007 to each and every one of you! Apologies for the lack of a column the last few weeks, I’m sure you can appreciate how busy the Christmas and New Year period can be, but the break was useful anyway and so I’m feeling good. So good in fact that I want to kick off the brand new year with my favourite subject. Oh yes, the title wasn’t just to grab your attention, I deliver on what I promise!
Aren’t boobs brilliant? Call them what you will, tits, jugs, knockers, baps, racks, breasts, milk duds, Bristol’s, thru’ penny bits, udders, hoo hoos, the Twins, the Girls or just plain boobies, they are without a doubt one of nature’s finest creations. Whether you are 13 and discovering their mesmeric qualities for the first time, turning 22 like me and still mesmerised or middle aged and wondering just how much longer your wife’s can continue to defy gravity (if they haven’t given up already) and whether you will still be mesmerised for many years to come, the fascination people have with them never seems to die. Even women are obsessed with their boobs and making them bigger, smaller or even differently shaped, viewing them with pride or disdain as appropriate. It has quite an impact commercially speaking as well. Take any product known to man, throw in a couple of well endowed young women wearing very little, focus on their cleavage and all of a sudden sales rocket! It’s a fantastic formula. Sure it’s cheap, smutty, outrageous and oftentimes borderline obscene, but if it works, why do anything else?
Money is as always a big driver in business, so if boobs bring in cash, why wouldn’t you utilise it to its fullest? I seem to even recall that in previous years, the infamous Diva Search has provided the highest rated segments of a weekly show! In the last few years, the number of female talents, or Divas, on WWE rosters has increased dramatically, presumably to follow that logical pattern. Of course this has meant a change in emphasis within the WWE product, namely that women’s wrestling has taken somewhat of a backseat. When asked about this on a special edition of Byte This a couple of months ago, Vince McMahon cringed when he heard his female talents described as having gone from “female wrestlers to Divas who strip”. His eventual response was that times were changing and he was changing the product to meet a new demand. Ultimately if more people are willing to part with their cash for female boobs (as opposed to man boobs like Trevor Murdoch) than female wrestling, then can you blame him?
As much as it damages equality in professional wrestling, as fans we should not bemoan the change perhaps as much as we do. Let me put it another way…
Last January during my final year at University, I got to go on a fantastic weekend trip to Paris to play poker at a top casino, the Aviation Club de Paris. About 35 of us went, having hired a private bus to take us from the campus in Central England to our hotel door. On the way there, we played DVDs some willing volunteers had brought along. Eventually, the vote was won by “Sexy Holdem”, a DVD of a strip poker show made in Las Vegas featuring 8 very pretty young female models looking for some quick cash. About half an hour into the show however as the women were starting to get down to just the bare essentials, I heard some friends nearby comment on the quality of the poker being played:
“How could she fold that hand! She had a straight!”
“Why is she calling? That’s an awful play!”
I felt obliged to pull them up on their focus.
“Hey, guys? Who cares? If we wanted to watch good poker, we would have put on a World Poker Tour DVD or something, this is fit girls getting their kit off!”
They had no response. To you and me, the whole point of strip poker is just that, it’s about girls getting naked after you’ve rigged the deck, but why is it that when it comes to wrestling we react differently? These guys are just as passionate about poker as we are about wrestling, but neither complaint is more or less worthy than the other, both miss the point! Besides, is it me or did Chyna, one of the more successful women wrestlers, become more popular than ever once she got her boobs done? I’m telling you, they have more power than you think, people!
To be honest, of all the people I feel most sorry for over all of this, it’s not the fans that would rather see more pure wrestling, nor is it the previous women wrestlers who chose to leave for one reason or another, it is instead the new Divas that have chosen a career path with the WWE under this new direction. Let’s face it, these women are given short-term contracts, thrown in at the deep end, often with no training and a hellish travel schedule. Some get offered (or maybe cajoled) into doing Playboy, but what happens to them afterwards? Chyna did Playboy and was gone not long later, the same goes for Christy Hemme and Candice hasn’t had quite the same push since she appeared last year. My money would be on exactly the same thing happening to Ashley once she has done the same, rumoured to be going ahead next April. What’s more is that those who don’t really make much of an impact are then simply cast off. Some, such as Maria, Ashley and Candice have been able to carve out niches for themselves within the WWE rosters, but there are only so many spots to be had and you have to wonder whether they are simply employing the tactic of throwing a whole host of women out there and seeing which get backed and which get buried by the crowd.
At the end of the day, wrestling is wrestling and boobs are boobs. Let’s enjoy them whilst they are there! Most of these girls don’t stay very long, so let’s give them the adoration they crave before they’re done. After all, aren’t boobs great?
Just a thought…
Any comments or opinions about this week’s column? E-mail me at stuart_black@hotmail.com, your thoughts are always welcome and I promise to do my best to get back to you!
In addition, many thanks to all of you who voted Big Brother Is A Kayfabe Fan Column of the Month in November! I am extremely grateful for your support!
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