AN ANALYSIS OF THE PORTRAYAL OF WWE FEMALE PERFORMERSIN TELEVISION AND SOCIAL MEDIA A thesis submitted to the faculty of /?$ San Francisco State University In partial ftdfíllment of 5 6 • The Requirements for K iM g -r The Degree Master of Science In Kinesiology: Social Scientifíc Perspective By Marc Llamas Patricio San Francisco, California December2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROYAL I certify that I have read An Analysis o f the Portrayal ofWWE Female Performers in Televisión and Social Media by Marc Llamas Patricio, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Science in Kinesiology: Social Scientifíc Perspective at San Francisco State University. D ..... Associate Professor Dr. Nicole Bolter Assistant Professor AN ANALYSIS OF MEDIA PORTRAYAL OF WWE FEMALE PERFORMERS THROUGH TELEVISION AND SOCIAL MEDIA Marc Llamas Patricio San Francisco, California 2018 Although World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has a strong tradition of women’s wrestling, it is only recently that it has been promoting their matches/wrestlers to the same extent it promotes men’s wrestling. The WWE continúes to change the perception of what a female wrestler and athlete is. Media coverage of female athletes is relatively small and when they are covered they are usually trivialized, sexualized, and gender marked (Bruce, 2016; Cooky et al, 2013; Kim & Sagas, 2014). I provide a brief histoTy of women’s wrestling in the WWE and cons.der the media representation of female wrestlers. Instagram is one of the most popular social media sites, but very ittle research has been focusing on it (Hu et al, 2014). The purpose of this study is to analyze how WWE portrays women wrestlers through broadcast commentary and social media. I transcribed broadcast commentary of six significant matches and collected screenshots of WWE posts involving women two weeks pnor and two weeks oost each match under review from its offícial Instagram account. Thematic analysis of the broadcast commentary revealed three major themes (athleticism, history, and hype) and two minor themes (ethnic marking and triv mzation). Thematic analysis of Instagram posts revealed six major themes (sexualized athleticism, active athleticism, passive athleticism, sexualization, intimidation/bad-assery, and camaraderie) Findings suggests that WWE focuses more on the athletic portrayal of their female wrestlers through its broadcast commentary and Instagram account. Its Instagram account has signifícantly shown more posts of athletic portrayal, but there is still evidence of sexualization despite the number of athletic images. The findings suggest that WWE’s representation of women wrestlers is redefíning what a female athlete is and why people should be watching women’s wrestling. I certify that the abstract is a correct representation of the contení of this thesis. Date TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.................................................................................................................. 1 Professional wrestling.......................................................................................1 Women’s wrestling...................................................................... ....................2 Broadcast commentary...................................................................................... 4 Social media......................................................................................................5 Literatura review .................................................................................................6 Media representation of female athletes............................................................ 6 Gender marking................................................................................... ..7 Physical characteristics.........................................................................8 Trivialization.........................................................................................9 Sexualization........................................................................................ 10 Professional wrestling........................................................................................11 History of women’s wrestling .................................................................. 12 Fabulous Moolah era............................................................................ 12 Attitude era........................................................................................... 14 Divasera............................................................. ..................................15 Social media: Instagram 16 Method..........................................................................................................................17 Content analy sis.............................................................................. 17 Thematic analysis............................................................................................... 18 Procedure............................................................................................................ 18 Selected matches with rationale...................................................................................... 19 Findings.......................................................................................... ...............................23 Discussion........................................................................................................................ 37 Broadcast commentary......................................................................................... 37 Instagram.............................................................................................................. 40 Comparison between commentary and Instagram...............................................41 Conclusión........................................................................................................................42 Future research 43 References 1 Introduction í have been a fan of professional wrestling since I was a child. I idolized all of the top male wrestlers and stayed up late to watch WWE’s shows on televisión. As I got older, I leamed a lot about what goes on behind the scenes through dirt sheet websites and many documentarles that have made me appreciate what these wrestlers do for a living. Watching the WWE for almost my whole life, I have noticed the recent shift in the portrayal of female wrestlers. On the surface, the female wrestlers went from being afterthoughts to being portrayed as serious athletes and performers in wrestling. Women’s wrestling is now presented as Just as entertaining and exciting as men’s wrestling. I have become a fan of women’s wrestling in the last few years because of the performance in the ring and the meaningful storylines that they get to tell on screen about winning the championship or fighting through adversity. It is refreshing to know that the women could be put into prominent roles and be treated equal to the men. As a fan, I was interested in examining what was behind this shift and wondered if this really was an evolution that was happening right in front of me or if this was a phase that would last a few months. Professional Wrestling Professional wrestling in the United States has been around since the 1800s when it first started out in camivals and country fairs with a small group of men (Maguire, 2005). The sport reached widespread popularity in the 1980s when the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), owned by Vince McMahon Jr, decided to appeal to mainstream audiences by putting the product on cable televisión so people could view it all over the United States (Maguire, 2005). This increased exposure causec a significant shift in how 2 people viewed professional wrestling: ;t became a combination of sports and entertainment with live action in the ring and the storylines that add signifícance to the matches. Professional wrestling started as a sporting event and made the transition into what Vince McMahon Jr. has called “Sports entertaimnent”, which centers around soap opera stoiylines intended to be exciting, interesting, and politically incorrect (Maguire, 2005). The World Wrestling Federation (WWF) offícially became World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2002 because of conflict with another organization called the World Wild Life Fund fór Nature that also used the acronym WWF. The World Wild Life Fund for Nature took me World Wrestling Federation to court and won the rights to the acronym. That ruling caused WWF to be changed to WWE (Abuwa, 2016). Since the beginning, even though men commonly performed wrestling, women managed to particípate in professional wrestling as well, but were presented as a sideshow attraction and not considered as legitímate compared to the male wrestlers. Women’s Wrestling During the 1980’ s, after Vince McMahon Jr. made the World Wrestling Federation national, he decided to put women wrestlers in prominent roles, but that did not last long (Laprade & Murphy. 2017). In the 1990’s, the World Wrestling Federation started to shift to an edgier product and influenced the way women were being presented during those years (Laprade & Murphy, 2017). The commentary during the match did not help the women gain credibility because commentators would objectify the women and comment on how sexy they looked and not focus on their athletic abilities in the ring. Putting women as headliners to an event or placing them as the main event of any show