WWE Has A Problem Writing Women As Heels

In the midst of WWE’s transition from Women’s Revolution to Women’s Evolution, there is at least one key area of the women’s division that remains largely unchanged from its earlier iterations: the role of the female heel. And while WWE women’s matches are longer, better and more prestigious than they ever have been, the division’s heel characters are yet to ‘evolve’ in any meaningful way.

It’s fair to point out that wrestling’s ‘heel’ and ‘babyface’ archetypes, which form the backbone of characterisation, are largely inflexible by their very nature. Nonetheless, there is room for nuance, and while WWE may be more rigid in its archetypes than some other promotions, we can see from the current men’s roster that there are multiple ways to portray a heel character.

Take Samoa Joe, whose heel nature is channelled into a sadistic desire to hurt and to dominate. Kevin Owens, an antagonistic opportunist who allies himself with whoever he believes will benefit him most. Shinsuke Nakamura is a man of few words, a player of mind-games and puncher of groins. Drew Gulak is a stickler for the rules, while Dolph Ziggler is arrogant, vain and entitled. Their motivations are generally fairly uniform, but there is a degree of variety in their personalities, their behaviours, and the way they go about their goals.

Female heels, on the other hand, fall into one of two narrow categories: Screechy Authority Figure, or Mean Girl. The former category is rarer, inhabited largely by Stephanie McMahon and Vickie Guerrero (and unpleasantly suggestive of a derisive attitude towards women in positions of power – witness the degree and the type of vitriol levelled towards Stephanie McMahon every time she appears on screen, particularly compared to the response to her equally-intrusive brother Shane.)

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The latter type encapsulates every other female heel on the main roster. It’s a very particular expression of female aggression rooted in ‘high school’ behaviour, and although it’s a legitimate interpretation, it becomes problematic when it’s the only way of representing female bad behaviour.

The proliferation of high-school stereotypes among WWE’s female heels is revelatory of a fundamental issue in the writer’s room – the apparent inability to understand the ways in which adult women express aggression and antipathy.

The tendency for otherwise well-considered female characters to regress to teenage behaviours is unfortunate: for one thing, it is inherently infantilising, but it also reduces female aggression to something irritating and nasty, but lacking in serious danger. Women, it suggests, are mean and petty, not genuinely threatening.

An important facet of any ‘women’s revolution’ – that is, the intention to represent men and women as equal, with equal opportunities – lies in understanding and accepting the inherent imperfection of women, just as their male counterparts are imperfect. And feminism sometimes struggles with the notion that women can be aggressors, with all that entails: not just snarky put-downs and cliquey behaviour, but real aggression, nasty and brutish and messy. Women don’t just covet and envy and humiliate: they can hurt, and maim, and dominate.

These are characteristics in short supply among WWE’s women wrestlers. Instead, we have Alexa Bliss fat-shaming Nia Jax, Mickie James making ‘training bra’ jokes (reminiscent of the Bad Old Days – think Piggie James and shudder.)

We have Natalya forming an exclusionary clique intent on freezing out the newcomer. We have the Riott Squad expressing their anarchic tendencies through such wild behaviour as knocking things over backstage! Those crazy kids! The potentially compelling dynamic between Sasha Banks and Bayley has been watered down into noncommittal girl’s-locker-room bickering, complete with a visit to the ‘school guidance counsellor’ – because girls, am I right?

In an era where the characters in wrestling are moving away from brash caricatures and becoming increasingly ‘realistic’, it’s impossible to create heel characters that feel anywhere close to ‘real’ if many of your writers seem to fundamentally lack an insight into the perspective of adult women. (There are not enough women in WWE’s Creative, and boy, does it show.) And while it’s true that lazy writing is not the sole domain of the women’s division, the homogeneity of WWE’s female heels is particularly glaring in the wake of the Mae Young Classic, and subsequent integration of Shayna Baszler into the NXT roster.

Shayna Baszler has more in common with Minoru Suzuki than the ‘Mean Girl’ stereotype. Her primary mode of expression as a heel is physicality, asserting her dominance and superiority through the inflicting of pain. And where ‘superiority’, for other heels, might mean thinner, prettier, younger, more popular, for Shayna it means tougher, stronger. Better at wrestling. It means that, rather than cutting promos designed to belittle and humiliate, Shayna takes a more utilitarian approach, a la Samoa Joe, and makes her point by choking her target out in the centre of the ring.

Shayna represents a very different type of female aggression. She is pure wrath. Her drive, her willingness to go it alone, her propensity towards violence as a statement – she is markedly less palatable than her peers, and in this she finds herself occupying ‘true heel’ territory. You don’t want Shayna to win.

She is more deliberately unpleasant than any of her peers, and that’s where Shayna may fall down on the main roster, which seems to demand a degree of palatability from its female talent that is not equally expected of the men. Let’s be real here: Alexa gets to cut promos about gender equality because she’s pretty and blonde and unthreatening. The same words from Shayna’s gloss-free mouth would be received with infinitely greater ire from the crowd.

Samoa Joe is not just permitted to choke, stomp and threaten the families of his opponents, it’s an integral element of his character. In NXT, Shayna has the freedom to bully Dakota Kai, and not in the stereotypical high school sense of the word: the bullying Shayna enacts is imbued with the threat of broken bones and PTSD – attributes not typically associated with girl-on-girl bullying, despite the reality of physical violence between girls.

On the main roster, with its bizarre notions of what is and is not family-friendly, it seems unlikely that a woman might be allowed to display such stark hostility. Calling Dana Brooke ‘Miss Piggy’, though? Sure! Body-shaming isn’t ‘real’ aggression, after all. It’s one of those crazy ‘girl’ things!

Another element that differentiates Shayna Baszler from her peers is her appearance. For the most part, Shayna eschews the performative femininity expected of, and displayed by the rest of WWE’s women’s division, including NXT. Shayna’s ring gear emphasises practicality over form-enhancement. Her scraped-back hair and black mouthguard and untidy smear of kohl around her eyes are not a concession to traditional femininity, nor to conventional attractiveness.

The overall impression is of someone who does not care if you think she’s pretty, or sexy, because those things don’t matter. Like Samoa Joe, or Drew Gulak, her appearance is all about utility: she’s too busy kicking butt and winning titles. And she does those things well.

It shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is. Shayna is unapologetically unfeminine, verging on the butch, and what’s more, her appearance has never been used against her, even when everything else has. That a character should be permitted, in WWE, to refuse to perform femininity and not be punished in response feels almost revolutionary.

And while there may be legitimate questions surrounding the fact that the only visibly non-feminine character in WWE is also a violent, unlikeable heel, it’s enough – for now – to celebrate the fact that she exists at all. To be clear: there’s nothing wrong with conventionally attractive, conventionally feminine women wrestlers, just as there’s nothing wrong with the Mean Girl archetype. The problem lies in the orthodoxy of these things, and the complete lack of any alternative: when ‘presentably pretty’ and ‘unthreatening’ are allowed to proliferate to the point of exclusivity.

The next step in the women’s roster ‘Evolution’ is to take cues from Baszler and her success as a truly monstrous heel, and to inject some diversity into the heels on the main roster. It’s not yet clear how Becky Lynch’s heel turn will manifest in terms of character, but it’s not unlikely that the same old themes will rear their tired heads: jealousy, pettiness, backstabbing. When Kevin Owens turns on Sami Zayn, it’s because he’s a ruthless opportunist in pursuit of a clear goal. When a woman turns on another women, she is frequently given no deeper motivation than plain old envy. Male heels can be ‘just business’. With female heels, it’s always personal.

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When Shayna makes it up to the main roster, it will be interesting to observe which of her established traits she’ll be allowed to retain, and which – as we’ve seen with Asuka – will be watered down to better sell her to an audience used to a particular kind of storytelling. With the underrepresentation of a women’s perspective in the writer’s room, it may be too soon to hope that WWE’s female heels might start acting like grown women, with grown women’s traits and drives and behaviours, instead of high school girls intent on hurting one another’s feelings.

This article has been updated. We originally stated that there are currently no women in WWE’s Creative team, but former WWE writer Tom Casiello informed us that this is not true. There is one woman on the staff, and another woman will be joining her, which is an important step towards better storylines for women in WWE. We apologize for the error.

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