Unlike men’s wrestling, the women’s wrestling division has been on a never-ending process of revolution, where the performers constantly battle to make themselves a part of the main event. Their situation started to change for the better during the mid-2010s, when the Divas Revolution began. However, the situation for the women’s locker room was quite grave, as they were showcased as attractions to the crowd.
Torrie Wilson, who has been part of the roster, shared her horrifying tenure in the company, where each week it was all about fighting her fears. Looking at the current scene, she is impressed with how things have changed for the better. Wilson, present on the Insight podcast, recalled how things could not have been any worse for the woman and her as they held back their tears.
Torrie Wilson recalls how the Bikini Showdown events always left her teary-eyed
The current era of Paul “Triple H” Levesque’s WWE is more fan-centric and focuses equally on the men’s and women’s divisions, creating a narrative that fans would love to tune in to each week. However, back in the day, long before the PG era, the World Wrestling Entertainment that we know and love was significantly different.
While matches took place, the wrestling promotion brand preferred to include its female talent in raunchy scenes and situations. This included matches in undergarments and bikini showdowns, which flaunted its women’s division to attract the male audience and labeled them as nothing more than a sideshow. One prominent figure of this harrowing scene is Torrie Wilson, who joined the company in WWE after the company acquired WCW in 2001.
The Hall of Famer has been part of numerous matches but was most prominent for being part of bikini showdowns; to everyone’s surprise, she hated being a part of these showdowns. She appeared as a guest on the Insight podcast, where Chris Van Vliet stated how two decades back, the announcers would only refer to the female roster as s*x objects.
The host asked Wilson about the change taking place, and she jokingly answered, “Not when I was there.” This made him respectfully talk about her bikini contest and matches, where she got candid, and how she did her best to push through the fear, and every time she went out there with a big smile, it mortified her. She said,
They were all like, “Mortifying.” People don’t realize, like, yeah, you… I went out there and owned it the best I could and pushed through the fear, but it was mortifying. Like, I, there were times when we… I remember specifically a House show that I was in, this like bikini showdown with like Don Marie and Sable and someone else.
Wilson recalled that during this one contest, she was standing in a corner of the ring when she noticed that one of the participants was killing it with her dance and entertaining the audience.
At the same time, she was “fighting back tears,” as if she could not bring herself to believe the kind of work she was doing to put bread on the table. She said,
I was standing in the corner watching one of the girls dance in the middle and literally fighting back tears, like, ‘I cannot believe I’m doing this right now.’ Like, because it was just like it got to, like, a raunchy point, you know, and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this,’ but that was also my job, like, my job.
Van Vliet supported her, saying that it was a job, and during that time, the stars knew the kind of work they had to do. However, the same scene changed and shifted, transitioning the eye candies to women that young children look up to as their idols and want to become one of them when they grow up.
Perhaps this is one of the causes, where the fans were not too surprised when Vince McMahon received a lawsuit that changed the trajectory of the company and made the female roster better than the men’s.
Torrie Wilson had a “weird” time posing for Playboy
There’s no denying that Torrie Wilson has left a mark in World Wrestling Entertainment, where she still has one of the biggest fan followings in the entertainment industry. Needless to say, she has found herself in the headlines and on covers with her bold photoshoots and radiant beauty that made every guy miss a beat.
These traits landed her not once but twice on the cover page of Playboy magazine. In the same interview, the host asked her if it was “difficult” to turn down the magazine brand. Interestingly enough, the answer was a “no” because Wilson thought it was just “photos” until she thought about how she has to be “n*de” with other people in the room. She said,
To be honest, this is gonna sound real dumb. But I hadn’t really even thought about the fact that I was kind of gonna be n*de because Playboy was so such a popular magazine. I was like, ‘This is gonna be awesome, right?’ Playboy parties and all that. Literally, it wasn’t until I was landing on the plane to go to the shoot that I was like, ‘Oh, sh*t, there’s going to actually be other people in the room. Not just me and the photographer.‘
She remembered that it was a closed set with no more than six people present, and during the break, she wore a robe, but during her shoot, it was “so weird” and an experience that she would not forget.
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