Divas Division: A tale of two eras

The diva division has certainly seen the best of times and the worst of it too.

The best of times are certainly way behind us, back when Lita and Trish were in awesome mode and one actually waited with bated breath for their matches.

I actually remember waiting for Trish and Lita’s match on RAW in 2004 for the ‘Women’s Championship’, which was actually gold and they were literally fighting for that gold instead of a purple butterfly.

No offence to any existing purple butterflies, but there’s no lineage or great history attached to it like that golden championship title.

So back to where I began. I actually remember waiting for Trish to defend her title and I waited so long that I did not realize that I had watched the entire show leading up to the main event.

It is when Lita performed that mind-blowing moonsault and J.R signed off, saying, “Goodnight from Charlotte, North Carolina”, that I actually realized that they made us wait that long for their match and made it look like a legit main event.

And now one fine night, AJ is on commentary saying some really entertaining stuff and then she suddenly says that she’s main evented RAW thrice. That was a bummer in an otherwise good performance.

You see, women were, and are never considered equal to the men in the WWE. The Attitude Era was an era based on hypersexualisation of its female performers who were present to cater to the male audience with in bra and panties matches, night gown matches, bikini matches etc.

How does one explain Sable winning the title from Jacqueline? Women have never had equal representation as men. WWE is a corporation based on making money out of populist themes.

Their campaign ‘B A STAR’ is pretty populist. And what is populist is the ingrained patriarchal norms in society and so, when Rock says that he’ll kick John Cena’s ‘Lady Parts’ or when uncountable babyface superstars tell their evil bosses that they wear ‘skirts’ or when they ask them to take their ‘ba*** out of their purse’ or make fun of Vickie for not being the average photoshopped size of a woman, they are not doing anything for women as far as individuality is concerned. Stereotypes galore.

Not that Trish and Lita escaped stereotypes, but they actually got a chance to show the audience that they were athletic whereas the divas today are not given the chance.

The show going PG has affected this division far more than any other. Being PG is okay, but the decline of the division in the WWE since turning PG only shows that it does not seem to see its women employees any non-stereotypical roles. Eve has to be a ‘hoeski’ to finally have a character, and AJ has to be a lovelorn diva.

So even if AJ main evented three times, they were not momentous. I can hardly recall what happened in those main event matches. But when Trish and Lita main evented RAW, that’s the definition of momentous.