Introduction.
The limited literature on women in the world of wrestling paints a bleak picture. Wrestlers have been portrayed as exploited by a hegemonic elite, coded into sexual stereotypes through the ritual drama in order to preserve the status quo. Female audience members have been theorised as ornamental, passive voyeurs.

These issues tie into representations of women in criminal violence and comedy as defined through the absence, or excess, of their femininity. This paper will attempt a reanalysis of women’s participation in wrestling through a lens that takes in both violence and comedy to challenge these theories.

The paper will begin with a discussion of the history of sports that locates women’s exclusion at a non-universal level of aristocratic physical repression. It will then consider the three main points of negotiation- the sexualised binary dichotomy, the Beautiful Spectator and the hegemonic stereotype. Through this exposition it will be necessary to outline the ritual structure and framing process present in modern professional wrestling.

The ethnographical data concerns the “Valets” of a British wrestling league. This section is intended to demonstrate the demolition of the binary set, the notions of passive, pornographic spectatorship and the theory of hegemonic stereotyping. The argument for a redress to theory revolves around the issue of a Carnivalesque liminoid space present in both the FWA and the Carry On films. This paper will conclude with a comparison between the presentation of women in these films and the women of British wrestling.

Women and Sport.
Accounts of women’s participation in sports have a long history, as do both wrestling , and women’s involvement as wrestlers. Plutarch records that the Spartan legislator Lycurgus instigated the practice of female wrestling and track events as part of a eugenics program (Guttman, pg 24). Just as they danced naked, the Spartans also wrestled naked (ibid, pg 25). For the young male and female competitors, these events were a central part of social advertisements for matrimony, connected as they were to the quest for warrior offspring (ibid). By the Roman period, wrestling had been annexed as a masculine activity but there are tales of female gladiators. Nero caused a scandal when he ordered a selection of aristocratic women into the arena and was later forced to substitute Ethiopians (Guttman, pg 39). It seems to have been their nobility, then, rather than their sex that provoked displeasure. While Domitian filled the ring with “novelty” acts such as female gladiators and “bald battalions of dwarfs”, the opening of the Coliseum featured a battle between 80 women fighters and an assortment of wild animals (ibid, pg 40). Juvenal found the trend to be degenerate and repulsive, but the sports fans loved it (ibid).

In the fairgrounds of medieval England, participation among commoners was equal between the sexes in events such as ball games, races and contests of strength (McCrone, pg 2). The rise of the middle classes through industrialisation and urbanisation brought about an increase in the imitation of repressed Jacobean nobility and the containment of this equality (ibid). It was up to working-class pugilists like Elizabeth Stokes to keep the exclusion at bay “fighting and vanquishing the famous boxing women of Billingsgate” (Guttman, pg 2). Although women’s exclusion from sports has not been universal, the sporting establishment has still been a legitimate target of feminist action. Suffragettes attacked golf courses and cricket grounds as symbols of masculine exclusivity (McCrone, pg 277), and of course Emily Davison’s martyrdom was at the hands, or rather hooves, of the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby . Although no longer physically barred from most arenas, sporting women are still approached differently, particularly in the media. A study of photographs in the German press found that women were more often depicted as smiling (suggesting “sports are fun”) while men were shown furrowing their brows in concentrated poses (suggesting “sports are serious”) (Guttman, pg 228).

It has been said that masculine monopoly of sporting institutions is due to a desire to retain these spheres as “socialising agencies that prepare men for leadership in the public domain” (McCrone, pg 280). Whilst the conception of competitive engagement as preparatory experience of politics has validity, it is limited in its application. Constructed from the Victorian pedagogical discourse, it illuminates the rationality behind, say, compulsory sport in public schools, yet fails to account for, or provide meaning to, adult sporting commitment. It is also unfounded in that it lacks specific social examples . In searching for specific vocalised limits (as opposed to genuine but vague notions of institutional sexism in governing bodies) to female engagement, the only solid contemporary example comes from Guttman’s analysis of sociological surveys. These studies have shown that perceptions of sportswomen as unattractive, masculine or as lesbians are much higher among women respondents than men (Guttman, pg 217).

These observations assist in constructing a field in which women’s unequal entrance into sporting culture has been defined along lines of class and race as much as gender. Competitive, combative women have only achieved problematic social status through having been subjected to the dissemination of repressed aristocratic physical codes. In socially aware gendered performances, such as the responses to Guttman’s survey, discriminative closure has further been shown to operate more openly from female perspectives. Whilst obvious biases do still exist, simplistic conceptions of access must be grounded in awareness of the complex contextualising conditions.

Violence.
At the heart of a gender-based analysis of wrestling is the cultural understanding of violence as a masculine behaviour (Herzfeld, pg 70-71). Wrestling is primarily a ritual of violence, whether as a simple “faked” lamination of brutality (Ball, pg 60) or as the aggressive and often truly painful cousin of boxing. Although punches are pulled and do not actually cause the bloodletting, it has to be remembered that the blood can be produced by small fragments of razorblades tucked into the wrestler’s nails that are slashed across one’s own forehead or chest (Ball, pg 46). However, it is clearly “faked” in the sense of being rigged . Ball opines that working-class audiences believe the fights to be genuine because they are “more gullible” (Ball, pg 56, 106). Not only does this statement reveal an offensive hatred based on class, it also reveals Ball’s hatred of the sport. The “reality” of wrestling, to the audience, is only slightly higher than the “reality” of an action film. Through the ritual frame, what is apprehended is an activity of violence that is real in the moment.

Violence perpetuated by women remains a problematic aberration of hegemonic social codes. Suffragettes are commonly remembered as having centred their activism upon their own bodies in masochistic protests such as the hunger strike, a conception that renders then as “gentle and impotent” (Hamer, pg 73). That the historical fact of their terrorism (arson, bombings, assassination attempts etc) has been misremembered is evidence not so much of a deliberate ideologically driven smear but of the sexual lens through which women’s aggression has been viewed (Wright and Myers pg xi). Through this structuralist rendering, the violent acts of women are either accounted for, or mitigated by, their femininity (ibid). Criminally violent women have been represented as either “Mad” or “Bad” (Balinger, pg 2). The “Mad” are categorically defined as hysterical, suffering an excess of femininity through “mitigating factors” such as PMT (Wright and Myers, pg xiii). The “Bad”, conversely, are categorised as lesbians and bad mothers with unconventional attitudes to domestic responsibility (Balinger, pg 2). They are represented as suffering a lack of femininity (Wright and Myers, pg xiii). While the “Bad”, such as Myra Hindley, receive harsher sentences (in reflection of the extent to which they have violated gender role expectations- Grindstaff and McCaughey), the “Mad” are ascribed a status of victimhood that denies agency (Balinger, pg 2). According to this binary set, Suffragettes were, through state policies, accorded the status of “Mad”- they were drugged with bromide , “raped” through force feeding and sexually assaulted in prison (Hamer, pg 81).

? DC Comics, 1990.

Comedy.
The structural category of Mad/Bad reflects the Blonde/Harridan, or Bimbo/Dragon, stereotypes present in British comedy (Porter, pg 65, Gray, pg 100). In televised situation comedy, theatrical “bedroom farces” and the “Seaside Postcards” of Donald McGill, these stereotypes repeat in an endless array of incarnations and avatars. As with the Mad/Bad dichotomy, these characters are defined by their levels of femininity (Porter, pg 65). In these conservative codings, the woman’s sexuality is passive; their bodies are the butt of the joke, the Other (Porter, pg 69). The comedy is inherent through the “binary narrative coupling” that measures the comic representation against its opposite (Porter, pg 66). While the “dumb blonde” is marked by an excess of sexual difference to the male protagonist, the “moaning harridan” is marked by a direct absence of sexual difference (Porter, pg 70). As shall, hopefully, be shown, the passivity inherent in this binaric opposition is a consequence of context- e.g. the sit-com needs to maintain a consistency of character (Gray, pg 100) while the “saucy postcard” is a static moment (Gray, pg 95). This paper will attempt to demonstrate an ironic subversion of these categories in the arena of wrestling that is more akin to the series of Carry On films than to sit-coms and postcards.

Wrestling.
The reason for considering comedy alongside violence is that both practices are characterised by their transgressive qualities (e.g. Harvey and Gow, pg 2). With a view to Goffmanian frame analysis (see below), no other sport, or violent performance, is more transgressive than wrestling. But why consider sport, or wrestling, at all? Sport, like dance, is an important subject matter for the analysis of “body culture” (Brownell, pg 51). Through an appreciation of the politics of embodiment, wrestling can be viewed as a site of gender performances and negotiations, similar to bullfighting (Pink, 1997). Ritual structures are enacted through culturally resonant performances that can serve as portals to the wider social changes. As aristocratic physical repression culminated in feminine exclusion, so the negotiation of gender discourses in modernity is played out in the sporting arena.

The Beautiful Spectator.
In the renaissance of professional wrestling in the early 30s, promoters often staged “Freakshows” to attract the audience, using dwarves and “exotic” foreign wrestlers (moreoften theatrically disguised locals) in a manner reminiscent of Domitian’s novelty gladiators. In the early days of women’s involvement, “Ladies’ Wrestling” was often billed as a Freakshow and was banned in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania due to its perceived immorality (Ball, pg 46). Yet the presence of women in the ring coincides with the rise of women in the audience (Ball, pg 57). By the early 1940s it had become a family event, with a demographic audience makeup of “40% female and 10% children” (ibid). Disproportionate female audience membership (as compared to other sporting events), particularly among the elderly, has long been a noted feature of professional wrestling. This appears to tie into the ascribed role of the “beautiful spectator” in Spanish bullfighting (Pink, pg 61). Categorised as an ornamental, and therefore passive, observer, women have been depicted as bringing “traditionally feminine” adoration to the triumphant hero in the ring (Pink, pg 62). The archetypal rabid granny of the British wrestling audience, however, is as likely to assault the players as worship them (Ball, pg 59) . And yet, in British wrestling circles, the term “Ring Rat” is used to offensively denote “groupies”. Any female audience member can be supposed to be a potential Ring Rat, as this suggests that their attendance is equated with sexual desire for the wrestler, and women involved with the scene must continually assert, “I am not a Ring Rat” (e.g. OTR, 200 ). However, it remains to be seen whether Ring Rats are a fiction of the (wishful) wrestler’s mind, or merely a euphemism for “slag” that stigmatises promiscuity.

Mitchell describes the appeal of the “erotic dynamics of violence”, picturing the audience as passive recipients of a sadomasochistic pornography (quoted in Pink, pg 50). Similar theories abound in Ball’s study as an attempt to explain women’s interest in the sport. From the Freudian (transference of sexual frustration) to the functional (wrestling as a catharsis), these notions are unsatisfying (Ball, pg 58). In reaction to disbelief at theories that posit sexual attraction as the main draw (being as wrestler’s tend to have faces that only their mothers could love), Kobler presents the unlikely idea that women are attracted to ugly wrestlers because they are familiar to the men in their lives (Kobler, quoted in Ball, pg 59). These ideas do a disservice to the female audience members, suggesting, as they do, that the only motivation women could possibly have for viewing wrestling is one of phallus-worshiping voyeurism. Female motivation is as complex as male motivation for attendance, and cannot be accounted for through pop-psychology. What is significant is the fact that audience membership is a social practice that operates on an egalitarian basis. Wrestling is not culturally cordoned as an exclusively male preserve. This may be due to factors such as the inherent “play” of wrestling, as opposed to the obsessive seriousness and closure of other sports. What this means socially is that this is signified as a “family activity” where participation is not as regulated as in, say, boxing. It must be remembered that it is not just women, but also children, who feature higher in the demographic. Theories that posit exclusively erotic motivations are not only therefore socially irrelevant but also in slightly bad taste. The stigma of the Ring Rat is thus keyed into the Mad side of the binary that theorises transgressive female behaviour on the basis of an excess of femininity.

Valets.
Despite the sexism often displayed , American professional wrestling has always featured more female wrestlers that its British counterpart. In the UK, female wrestlers are still viewed as uncommercial, and, in order to gain exposure, women often perform instead as “Valets”. In the words of FWA manager Elisar Cabrera- “The Valet is the female who will come to ringside… who will interfere on their behalf or just be like a cheerleader” (OTP, 2000). Valets have been analysed as symbolic possessions of the male wrestlers (Ball, pg 147) and are often referred to as their girlfriends. Ball views them as “supporters of the male’s self image” and asserts that they “draw their identity from his success or failure” (Ball, pg 108). Although moreoften a feature of the American leagues, women also appear as “Managers”- an essentially evil character (Ball, pg 107) who acts in some ways as a parody of the boxing promoter. The interchangeability between the two roles reflects a ritual ambiguity that is demonstrated in the billing arrangements- Managers and Valets are frequently involved in staged fights outside of the ring, sometimes as a central feature of the night’s entertainment, but, due to the presentation of these battles as impromptu, they are never advertised on the bill.

Vikki Glori and her “accountant”. ? Fantagraphic Books 1989.
Wrestling as ritual drama.
Brownell appropriates Turner’s ritual theory to construct a portrait of certain sporting events as liminoid genres (Brownell, pg 44). The designation of “liminoid”, rather than “liminal”, indicates not only the modernity, but also the ongoing nature, of these ritual activities in the sphere of leisure-time (Ball, pg 15). Intrinsic to the Turnerian analysis of ritual dramas is the decoding of hidden symbolic content. However, due to the unique lighting conditions of the wrestling arena or stage, no shadows are produced and, because of its unique format of theatre “in-the-round” (Ball, pg 77), all signs are overcommunicated. With all the action presented without allusion, there can be no symbols (Barthes, pg 26). Barthes approaches wrestling as a solar spectacle in the nature of “Greek drama and bull-fights” (Barthes, pg 15). A spectacle contained entirely in the daylight of moral absolutism, the only real sign of the ritual is that of transgression (Barthes, pg 23) or breaks in the frame (Goffman, pg 439) .

Frames.
The “frame” is the context or setting, the unstated rules or principles within which the action occurs (Goffman, pg xiii). Frames are codes of behaviour that provide a means to interpret and give contextual meaning to activities (Ball, pg 12). In sporting events, the frame is provided by the official rules, which “key” the event as one in which the participants will compete within certain parameters and one in which infractions will be punished. Wrestling is distinctive in that it contains numerous “benign breaks in frame”, obvious infractions of the unwritten rules that are staged in order to heighten the entertainment (Goffman, pg 439). Wrestlers violate temporal brackets by fighting before and after the bell, they violate spatial brackets by fighting outside of the ring, they insult, rather than ignore, the audience and they attack the referee- “A monstrous infraction of framing rules- as though a sentence were to disregard its own punctuation marks” (Goffman, pg 417). The referee, as a symbolic and actual representative of the rules, is inept, deaf, moronic and practically blind (Ball, pg 109). This keys the event as a liminal inversion of the omniscient powers of modern authority and surveillance.

Ritual storyline.
The narrative of a wrestling bout revolves around a ritual battle between the Heel (the villain in wrestling terminology) and the Face (or Baby Face). It corresponds in structure to Turner’s four ritual phases of breach, crisis, redressive action and reintegration (Ball, pg 123) .

Barthes describes the narrative more succinctly as “Suffering, Defeat and Justice” (Barthes, pg 20). Driven by a “quantitive sequence of compensations” (Barthes, pg 22), the faked, or benign, breaks in the frame build to the point in which the Face is able to openly cheat and yet remain heroic.

Hegemonic stereotypes or tragic masks?
Ball’s basic premise is that wrestling is a liminoid ritual created by dominant elites to hegemonically preserve the status quo through the keying of ritual symbols (Ball, pg 1etc). One of the major points of his arguments circles the use of stereotyped ritual characters. The basic split between Heel and Face can be broken down into numerous sub-types of ritual character including, for example, the “foreign menace”, the “cowboy” etc (Ball, pg 64-67). These can then be analysed as Turnerian “ritual paradigm bearers”, and the match viewed as a symbolic clash between cultures or ideologies (Ball, pg 115). However, many of these characters are as distinct from British wrestlers as Indian village wrestlers (Allter, 1992). The British style is closer to the French, which Barthes describes as being more concerned with ethics than the political/mythological battle between ideologies (Barthes, pg 24). As outlined above, the classic structure of the match is deployed in order to construct the Heel as a bastard (ibid) and the Face as a hero. Allter’s wrestlers are dedicated to the transmission of a rigid moral code (Allter, pg 25) and Ball’s WWF stereotypes are also involved with the construction of a moral order (Ball, pg 84). But in British wrestling the only sacred order is that of the temporal/spatial brackets of the frame, and the indignity of the audience is provoked not by the immorality of its infraction but the inconsistency with which the Heel adheres to them (Barthes, pg 25). For example, the Heel will rely on the ropes and then move beyond them; the Heel will also ignore or assault referees before turning to them for assistance (ibid). It is a “logical” order that is violated, rather than an overtly moral one.

Despite the nationalistic imagery employed by some wrestlers , there is little in the way of paradigm construction. Instead of stereotypes we are presented with British cultural archetypes, an iconographic role-call of tragic masks (Barthes, pg 20-21). Rather than the inculcation of a hegemonic discourse, wrestling is a space where “we are whatever, where whatever can happen, be loved, be destroyed” (Sydnor, pg 226). Here, “whatever” indicates a liminal space that enables the negotiation of meaning, rather than the imposition of meaning, Bhabha’s “Third Space” (ibid). Wrestling is analogous to bullfighting in that female participants can be compared against models of “traditional femininity” (Pink, pg 62). This gender model is used as a cultural resource, a situationally deployed “artistic device”, rather than as the “power base of a hegemonic masculinity” (ibid). Repressive gender discourses may circulate around participants, but this is not an automatic indicator of anything resembling Ball’s hegemonic elite ideologies (Ball, pg 1).

Ethnographic Data.

It’s the late 1970s, probably in the summer holidays, sometime around midday. I’ve just finished watching the Multicoloured Swapshop and I’m waiting for the Dukes of Hazard to come on in the afternoon. There’s every chance I’m wearing flared trousers. The monotony of Saturday sports television is suddenly shattered by an overweight maniac wearing a Union Jack costume, a cape and a top hat covered in sequins chanting “E-asy! E-asy! E-asy!” as he towers over the prostrated body of a defeated foe. He is Big Daddy. He is the British Superman. I’m watching LWT’s “World of Wrestling” and life doesn’t get any better .

Watching the wrestling on Saturdays was a significant part of the national culture for a long time . It was only matched by the real thing- the live show. In the holiday camps and end-of-the-pier seaside specials, wrestling has been an important site of British working-class leisure. However, the rise of the satellite dish and the glamorous WWF (World-Wide Wrestling Federation) marked the end of its televised hey-day and made the whole thing appear slightly shabby in comparison. The same phenomena happened with televised darts, as if the media-nation awoke from a dream, wondering why it had ever taken such an interest in low-rent proletarian pub-games. “World of Wrestling” produced local heroes from the ranks of the common people and is still a fond location for the post-drug nostalgia of the No Logo generation. The connotations of violence and the seaside connect with the Carnivalesque of working-class holiday indulgence and liminal inversion that was also a feature of the Carry On films (Medhurst, quoted in Wagg, pg 83-4), as will be elaborated. The ethnographic data presented was gathered during April 2000 from interviews, participant observation at wrestling matches, the FWA website and the documentary film “On the Ropes.”

The Frontier Wrestling Association (FWA) is one of a host of small leagues that tour the flaky halls and leisure centres of England to little or no media interest. They run regular workshops at their gym in Portsmouth and support a lively on-line community of fans for whom they produce special videos of their latest battles (http://home.btconnect.com/FWA/main.htm). The FWA began when Mark “The Specialist” Stone purchased their ring with his own money out of a fan’s commitment to the sport. As the “controller” of the league, he could hardly be more different to the manipulative elites of Ball’s WWF. The most distinguishing traits of the FWA are the size of the wrestlers (a lot smaller than the popular image of a wrestler would suggest), their new female commissioner and the profile of their female members in general. The most famous women of the FWA (following the broadcast of The Other Side’s documentary “On the Ropes”) are Annie Webb and Nicky “Victoria de Montfort” Thompson (now the FWA’s commissioner).

Valets and Sexuality.
Webb explains the reason behind her decision to do Valet as “I’m not thick… if you want to be a female wrestler and you just do wrestling, you’re not going to get as much exposure… as you would if you Valet as well.” She suggests, “Valets are there to be looked at, T and A, to get the audience going.” While this appears close to Ball’s understanding of the presentation of women as part of a sexist hegemony, it is actually more complex. Webb is not simply the tool of a monopolising elite- this would deny her agency- but views Valet as part of a career-driven life-cycle that she is definitely in control of. When, at an informal meal, Cabrera makes a joke about featuring Webb and Thompson in a “lesbian angle” on a future show, Webb replies “We should make love in the ring.” There is a pause. Webb adds “…fist each other.” Her explicit play on pun and innuendo causes shock amongst the others present. In a situation in which the league’s manager is attempting to present her in a sexually exploitative play, Webb is able to casually break the frame in a display of her control of her body, and her ability to reveal his intentions as crude. Cabrera can only mutter “The classness of wrestling...” into his pizza. Occasions like these demonstrate the Valet’s ability to ironies their own sexuality. Thompson, who describes her character as “a posh rich bitch” , describes a bout that she orchestrated- “The Bra and Panties Match.” She explains that she wanted to see men in the ring fighting over her underwear, “going at it big style” to show that she was worth something (OTP, 2000). This negotiation of gender in the ritual drama is tied into a power game of value. This is a very different estimate of worth to the symbolic rape and bride theft of Ball’s analysis (Ball, pg 128-130). She retains sexual power in the situation and is signified as being desirable without her body itself being a passive object of desire (Gray, pg 102).

The FWA Valets display a dramaturgical awareness of the wrestling frame. Thompson compares it to that of Shakespearian or contemporary theatre, highlighting the difference between the stage and the ring. Forgetting your lines onstage is a disaster, but in the ring “the crowd doesn’t even notice because they are so up on what’s about to happen” (OTP, 2000). This environment permits improvisation and an inconsistency of character, opening up the space for negotiation and rejection of simplistic bimbo/dragon dichotomies. This inconsistency is also apparent in the wrestler’s ability to switch from Face to Heel as individual matches demand.

? Fantagraphic Books. 1988.

They are also more than aware of their relation to the perception of female fans as ornamental spectators. As Webb explains- “If people asked me when I was younger why I liked wrestling I used to say… two gorgeous guys in shorts… easier to say that than I appreciate the drama in the presentation and the technical skills that wrestlers have.” This statements reveals the reproduction of apparent gender hegemonies as an “artistic device” of conformity (Pink, pg 62). For the sake of social ease, Webb would have adhered to the prevailing codes of the Mad/Bimbo’s pornographic spectatorship. However, through participation in the ritual drama and a redefinition of identity as a person with entitlement to exist within that liminoid space, she is able to explode the binary coupling. This is a renegotiation and relocation of self in defiance of social norms through the empowerment of the enduring “Third Space”.

Characters
Thompson’s character “Victoria de Montfort”, the “posh rich bitch”, operates as a Heel- taunting the audience from the ring and instigating a fight outside of the ropes with another Valet. She carries a hockey stick as a prop that operates both as a weapon and as a sign of her upper-class status. Plugging into an Enid Blyton world of “jolly hockey sticks” and public schools, this completes the presentation of her character as an ambivalence archetype (rather than a simplistic stereotype). Ball provides an extensive list of all of the ritual characters involved in American wrestling and describes how they have changed over the years (Ball, pg 64-67). In naming these characters as stereotypes, they are done a disservice. “Stereotype” denotes an oversimplified shibboleth of a group that is used to ascribe negative traits to its members (Rapport and Overing, pg 343). If this were the case with Victoria de Montfort, then it could be surmised that Thompson is acting primarily to subvert and parody the upper classes. Whilst this certainly does occur in her act, it is not the primary intention. The FWA is not a cultural factory engaged in the production of social cartoons. Class, like other social institutions, can be rendered comedic when brought into collision with the body through performance of bodily functions or, in the case of wrestling, of violence (Gray, pg 98). In order to bring an immediate point of connection, through humour, these institutions are signalled through the character for the purposes of entertainment, rather than subversive critique or hegemonic reinforcement. For Thompson, her character is a theatrical vehicle of empowerment and, as a “control/power freak”, enables dramatic negotiations of feminine worth such as the “Bra and Panties Match.”

Carry On Girls.
The Carry On films share the same qualities of improvisation and potential inconsistency of character as wrestling (Gray, pg 101). This is perhaps a consequence of the mutual inheritance of the anarchic Music Hall tradition. They also share positive images of women that have been consistently dismissed as sexist. To illustrate, the characters played by Barbara Windsor tend to be analysed as classic examples of the blonde bimbo (defined by her excess of sexual difference and femininity), an analysis that obscures the Principal Boy elements of her performance (Gray, pg 102). The "Principal Boy" is the heroic male lead in traditional pantomime. Whereas the Pantomime Dame is played by a man, the Principal Boy is always played by a woman. The interchangability of gender in theatre dates back at least to the 16th century, and may well be as old as theatre itself. Approaching wrestling as comparatively subject to the dictates of performance enables an appreciation of the liminally carnivalesque negotiation of the Mad/Bad, Bimbo/Harridan binary as more abundant than a simple inversion of sexist gender hegemony. While Pink rejects Pitt-Rivers’ dramaturgical analysis of bull fighting on the grounds that the torero is not an actor (Pink, pg 54), there are no such dilemmas with the wrestler, who is first and foremost a thespian.

As the “incarnation of sexual energy”, the female stars of the Carry Ons were able to exert sexual control over their co-stars (Gray, pg 9). Voyeuristic attempts to render them the passive subjects of an erotic gaze resulted in slapstick disasters for the actors and subsequent disruption for the audience through the “spectacle of male discomfort” (Gray, pg 102). In the politically dated, yet sincere, film, “Rita, Sue and Bob Too” , the philandering Bob finally succumbs to a female sexuality that involves the sacrifice of his masculine power. The final shot of the film freeze-frames as he dives into the bed containing both Rita and Sue, with his trousers caught up around his ankles and his Union Jack pants exposed for the world to see. This is the perfect cousin of the final scene of Carry On Cleo in which Sid James (as Anthony) dives into Cleo’s bath fully clothed in Roman armour (Gray, pg 98). The physical indignities meted out to these characters serves to deflate them in the same way as Thompson’s Bra and Panties Match. This is a negotiation (rather than simply a ritual inversion) of machismo- shifting the site of conquest to a risible location of ultimate self-defeat (Ortner, pg 187).

Conclusion.
In the “Third Space” of these ongoing liminalities, binary relations are negotiated, interrogated, and frequently dissolved (Bhabha, quoted in Sydnor, pg 226). The fact that wrestling is “fake” should be a clue- the participants are tricksters. The Valets of the FWA define themselves, not in terms of being Mad/Bad, or Blondes/Harridans, but as sexually powerful transgressors. They are able to ironise their sexuality through the breaking of frames and the disruption of the ritual narrative through new storylines.

Rather than presenting ritualised combat between ideologies in order to promote hegemony, the women of the FWA approach the ring as an arena of redefinition. As opposed to the communitas of ritual theory, wrestlers and audience experience an ongoing liminoid space that is more a site of negotiation than simple inversion. The distinction between the temporarilty of the liminal and the endurance of the liminoid is central to possibilities of negotiation. Stylised violence and comedic personifications in an ongoing frame permit the rejection of former binary sets that are linked either to static moments (the seaside postcard or the “Moors Murders”) or character consistency (as in situation comedy or the performance of innocent victimhood). The semi-permanent inhabitancy of a world of transgressed frames promotes the ability to challenge definitions of gender based on static/consistent representations.

Through the vehicles of British working-class preoccupations, ambivalent archetypes are ironically embodied to permit empowered seizures of sexual power. Consequently, received notions of female audience participation as ornamental and passive are dismissed as the “artistic devices” that they are. In order to avoid appearing to posit these negotiations as evidence of a new Utopian egality, it should be noted that these dismissals occur within a discourse that incorporates Ring Rats, and other erotic voyeurs, as possibilities.

Changing social institutions and their varying repressions of physicality have influenced women’s involvement in sports. Davison’s death, and her blood under the King’s hooves, shares a cultural link with the rise of women refusing to ride side saddle. The significance of this paper’s ethnographical subject matter is that wrestling is a site in which shifting gender relations can be seen to redefine roles and positions through participation in a ritual drama.

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Wagg, S. “Because I Tell a Joke or Two.” Routledge. 1998.

Appendix I.
http://www.hullp.demon.co.uk/SacredHeart/thought/January498bigdaddy.htm

SACRED HEART PARISH
Waterlooville
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK Commencing 4th January 1998
Most priests have various unholy interests and a few of mine will be known to parishioners or have become apparent. There are still further skeletons in the cupboard, though. One thing I have to admit to (which is no longer current for there is no longer the opportunity) is that I used to be an addict of TV wrestling on Saturday afternoons ["Father, must we have these revelations? This is the parish Newsletter!"]. From the comfort of my armchair I was on a par with those shrieking ringside harridans with lead - weighted handbags who were just waiting to cosh any wrestler who fell or got thrown out of the ring.
So it was a great deal of nostalgia that I read of the death shortly before Christmas of the famous Shirley Crabtree, alias Big Daddy (aged 67). Funny name, Shirley Crabtree. It sounds like a female role in "Coronation Street". Apparently he first learnt his trade defending his name against jeering school-chums in his native Halifax. His speciality was to drop on his opponents with the full weight of his somewhat over-endowed stomach which must have been like a flattening with a piledriver. He spiced up his ‘act’ in the 1970’s with his new stagename and a new leotard (made by his wife from a chintz sofa cover) and was a favourite – apparently – of Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles When TV wrestling went out before the American revival) he was reduced to appearing in a pier show in Southport and walking sad and alone along Blackpool front.
How easy it is to see God as "Big Daddy". Huge in form, alarming in name, surrounded by a supporting cast of terrifying admirers, and with the ritual of worship as his colourful ‘act’. The only thing lacking in this image is the sad ending, for it is imagined that God will come with great wrath. Yet as we ponder the Christmas Jesus ("smaller than the smallest of his people") we need to remember that he did experience sadness that people were not drawn to his love. "How often have I longed to gather you as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Luke 13:34J
As we come to a new year and reflect on the inevitable disappointments of the old, let us be encouraged by Jesus ’holy disappointment’, a sadness which – unlike an out-of-date act – is turned by the Resurrection into purest joy. DS

Appendix II.

http://www.neowrestling.com/bios/daddy.shtml

Big Daddy
"Big Daddy" Shirley Crabtree
Time Period: late 1950s to late 1980s
Real name: Shirley Crabtree
Titles: British Wrestling Federation British Heavyweight Title (4-10-60, defeats Ed Bright in Leicester, England) ; British Wrestling Federation European Heavyweight Title (1960, defeats Yvar Martinson in Leicester; 1961, defeats Milo Popocopolis) ; Joint Promotions Mythical Champion of all Mankind (late 70s through late 80s)
Summary:
As the most popular wrestler in British history, the lessons learned by his story, which see one man go from the heights of the world to the lowest depths, are lessons that men like Eric Bischoff, Kevin Nash, and Hulk Hogan would be wise to learn.
"Big Daddy" was born Shirley Crabtree on November 14, 1937. It was said that his mother wanted a girl so bad, that she was going to name the child Shirley no matter what. His father was likewise named Shirley. Legend has it that Crabtree learned how to defend himself at a young age due to what other children put him through due to the name.
He became a lifeguard as a teenager and became interested in bodybuilding. The legendary George Hackenschmidt (first ever pro-wrestling world champion in 1905) became an influence on him in terms of both body building and wrestling. He and his brothers Brian and Max began wrestling at age 16; their father had been a sporadic pro-wrestler in the decades prior. The three brothers all wrestled different styles; Shirley was the muscle-type while Brian did acrobatic moves. Adrian Street called Max "the only one I admired", as he was the only one that was any good as a worker. As luck would have it, Shirley would be the only one that'd stick to straight wrestling. Brian became a referee, and Max eventually became the most powerful promoter in British history.
Shirley became a big hit in the late 50s and early 60s with heel gimmicks, called "The Blonde Adonis" or "Mr. Universe". He won two titles in the British Wrestling Federation (BWF) before he soured on the business and quit for what he thought would be forever. Money wasn't so good for him in BWF (Joint Promotions (JP), the British NWA, had a virtual monopoly on wrestling) plus he had to suffer the ridicule of Bert Assirati, famous, legit, tough-guy champion in Britain who was always on the outs with every promoter since he could double cross anyone in the ring. On one BWF card Shirley was announced as British champion while in the ring. According to legend, Assirati stood up in the crowd and mocked Crabtree's ability, causing Shirley to hustle out of the ring and away from Assirati's barrage.
For roughly fifteen years, from the early 60s to mid 70s, Shirley was on the "dole", so to speak. In the mean time, Max usurped more power within Joint Promotions and Brian became one of the more well known referees in the federation. When Max pulled a "Jim Crockett" and grabbed most of the power base of JP, he asked Shirley to come back. He'd seen the play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and believed the "Big Daddy" character would be a huge hit in pro-wrestling. He thought his brother could play it to the point; so in 1976, Shirley Crabtree made his comeback. Not as the tanned, muscled heel he played 15 years prior, but as an obese, pasty white baby face.
True enough, Big Daddy, with his top hat and vintage tights, became the biggest hit in Britain. Max immediately put his brother over all the established heels. Longtime legendary heels like Mick McManus met their match with Daddy. Daddy's biggest rival was the even larder Giant Haystacks. Haystacks was probably a legit 475 pounds or so, and dwarfed the legit 350 pound Daddy. Even though their matches have been called contenders for worst of all time in any country, the match up allegedly drew up to 18 million fans at its peak. Considering that Britain’s population was not yet even 60 million at the time, that represents almost 33 percent of the population tuning in on a Saturday afternoon to watch. Compare that to the largest pro-wrestling audience of all time in America (Andre vs Hogan on NBC in 1988 at somewhere around 35 million viewers in a country with around 260 million at the time), and it appears even more impressive. At its height, Joint Promotions and Big Daddy routinely brought in audiences of 10 million plus each Saturday.
The standard Big Daddy match was the tag match. There was a snidely heel (i.e. McManus) and a monster heel (ie. Giant Haystacks) vs some young runt and Big Daddy. Various wrestlers played runt over the years, including young Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith, and Steven Regal. The heels would demolish the runt for the majority of the match before Daddy would get tagged in, do a few belly bumps (not even feigning clotheslines or anything, mind you, this was the extent of his working ability), and the big splash for the win. The formulaic, disrespectful style was a big hit for a while, but its easy to see why it began turning away fans at some point. Maybe Kevin Nash should know about this?
ITV (a major network in Britain) even crafted several television shows to showcase Daddy, in addition to the Queen of England being publicly linked to being a fan of Daddy's. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was another fan. It has been argued that Big Daddy may have been the most over pro-wrestler ever within one's country although I would say both Rikidozan and El Santo dwarf his popularity within Japan and Mexico, respectively. Never the less, no wrestler in American history... not Hulk Hogan, not Gorgeous George, Ed Lewis, or Frank Gotch, has ever achieved the sustained and peak popularity within their own country that Big Daddy did in England.
Despite his huge stardom in the United Kingdom, a frequent knock on Daddy was that he never attained any success internationally. Many historians today like to cite Assirati, Billy Robinson, and even Haystacks (Loch Ness in WCW) as bigger British stars simply because they made names for themselves elsewhere in the world. While it's true Big Daddy was never a draw outside of his country, he did have influence elsewhere. While scouting for talent in Britian for Stampede, Bruce Hart witnessed Big Daddy's gimmick first hand. Although he had no intention of bringing the giant Englishman back to Canada (he was more interested in Dynamite Kid), he decided to give the future Junkyard Dog the same gimmick back home, "Big Daddy" Ritter.
Alas, the 80s brought to an end the Crabtree era of wrestling in England, just as it had begun only a decade before. Brian Dixon's "All Star Promotions" began seriously challenging Max Crabtree's Joint Promotions for superiority in England. In 1985, Tony Banger Walsh of "The Sun" newspaper vehemently criticized Big Daddy and pro-wrestling in general for being fixed and grotesque. In August, 1987 Mal "King Kong" Kirk died after receiving a splash by Big Daddy. The incident was said to have completely demolished Daddy. The coroner ruled that Kirk had a serious heart condition which was worsened by the splash. Perhaps regulation of pro-wrestling could have saved Kirk's life? As this was all happening, WWF was gaining steam, with their tanned steroid bodies that made all the top stars in Britain look like idiots. There was Big Daddy, Mal Kirk, and Giant Haystacks, these utterly obese fellows. Then there was Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, and others that were cryptically old. The stereotyped pro-wrestling fan, interestingly enough, became the "old grandma", and old people in general.
Greg Dyke took over ITV in 1988 whilst it was in the midst of getting hammered by the BBC in terms of overall viewership, including the vaunted teenage and young-adult demographic. Dyke decided to take all wrestling off ITV, which for all intents and purposes, signaled the end of strong, home-grown pro-wrestling in the UK. No British-bred pro-wrestling aired on network TV for over a decade. WWF, and to a lesser extent WCW, came to dominate the UK just as much as they did the US.
In 1989, Max and Shirley made a last ditch effort to get their product on Sky Television, since WWF was a big hit on that channel. The head of programming was Australian and wasn't familiar with Big Daddy, plus the networks in general felt sour about Daddy's demographic, so nothing came of it. For better or for worse, the Crabtrees' domination of British Professional Wrestling had come to an end.
Max continued promoting smaller indy shows into the 90s, while Shirley retired into relative obscurity. He suffered a stroke in 1993, and died on December 2nd, 1997. Crabtree received a full scale obit in the London Times, a feat few pro-wrestlers, if any at all, had ever achieved. He was married twice, had four daughters, and two sons. To this day in England, if you ask an adult who Big Daddy is, chances are they know. The mistakes Max and Shirley made in the 80s are especially interesting when you look at WCW's situation. You can almost pluck out Hulk Hogan, and insert Big Daddy. You can almost see Max Crabtree in Eric Bischoff's place. Big Daddy was once one of the more respected, loved, and popular guys in England. Now he's a laughingstock amongst pro-wrestling fans, and almost solely blamed for British wrestling's downfall. Heavy stuff.
Sources: http://www.times-archive.co.uk ; The Wrestling by Simon Garfield ; Pure Dynamite by Tom Billington ; Wrestling Title Histories 4th Edition by Gary Will and Royal Duncan ; Gareth Thomas

Appendix III.

Ritual structure of the wrestling bout.

Firstly, “Breach”- some violation of temporal/spatial brackets, excessive violence or failure to observe sportsmanlike conduct on behalf of the Heel (ibid). This creates an initial rupture with the preliminal pseudo-anticipation of a fair fight. Secondly, the “Crisis”, the referee is unable to resolve the breach and the Heel gains a strategic advantage (ibid). The Heel “slaps the hero and steps on him in imperial acts of contempt that radically reframe fighting moves into purely ritual ones” (Goffman, pg 418). Thirdly, the “Redressive Action” involves a justified infraction of the rules by the Face, in order to avoid defeat (Ball, pg 123). This break is permitted by the audience as justified through “righteous indignation” (Goffman, pg 418). Fourthly, “Reintegration” concludes the ritual with the punishment, through defeat and humiliation, of the rule-breaker (Ball, pg 123).

Copyright 2005 Steve Cake