February 29, 2012 • 28 mins
Olympic women's wrestling started in 2004, and interest in the sport has grown since. Tune in as Caroline and Cristen look at the women of WWE wrestling, as well as the Cholitas, Bolivia's beloved women wrestlers,
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House stepworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. Caroline. You have mentioned that
(00:22):
you have an older stepbrother. Is that correct? All right?
I don't mean to put you on the spot. Actually
I do mean to put you on the spot spot.
Did you ever? Did you ever wrestle with your stepbrother? No,
because he is he's actually not raised with me, like
he's much older. He didn't. We didn't, Russell, is the
(00:43):
answer to your question. That makes sense. So the age gap,
it was a prohibitive age gap. For right, it would
have been weird. I mean, I guess siblings beat each
other up, but I guess it would have been weird
that like an eighteen year old boy was beating up
a five year old girl. Now I get that. My
oldest brother is it's fifteen years older than I am,
and I don't think that we have ever wrestled. But
(01:05):
my my other brother is closer in age to me,
and he's still he's a four or five years older
than I am. And I went through this pretty tomboyish phase,
and I always wanted to wrestle, but it was really
unfair to my brother because inevitably he would win because
he was a lot larger and older than I was.
(01:28):
But I and when he would when he would win,
I would get really upset and then I'd go crying
to Mom and he would get in trouble for beating
up on me. A little jerky word. I was the instigator.
I loved wrestling. Her face is lighting up. Yeah, Um,
but I never I never ever won. I wonder if
I could have a rematch probably anyway. Uh, I'm thinking
(01:53):
about wrestling because we're talking about wrestling today in the podcast.
So I was just curious to know if you if
you would spar No, we hadn't sparred. We we get
along pretty well wrestling or not. Um, So we're talking
about women's wrestling today. We talked in the last podcast
about women's boxing. So we are calling this Pugilism Week
(02:16):
at stuff Mom never told you, because there has been
a lot of progress with both of these sports in
recent years, and not only that in recent weeks. On
February six, two thousand twelve, Megan Black made history. Caroline Yes,
a a little one d and six pound high school jr.
(02:37):
Became the first female to win in Iowa state wrestling
match and actually, well sort of, yes, yes she did.
But last year Cassie Herckelman one um by default when
her wrestling partner, her male wrestling partner, refused to wrestler.
Her potential wrestling partner, who then forfeited was named Joel
(02:59):
north Thrope, and he even issued a statement on his refusal.
These are very official high school wrestling matches that take
place in Iowa. As you will soon learn, Iowa is
just a hotbed of wrestling in the Midwest. But he
explained why he forfeited to Cassie Herckelman last year, and
he said, I have a tremendous amount of respect for
(03:22):
Cassie and Megan and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a
combat sport and it can get violent at times. As
a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not
believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage
a girl in this manner. Clearly, Joel Northrop would have
been uncomfortable at my house when my brother not wrestling. Um.
(03:44):
But yeah, he didn't think it was it was okay
to wrestle a girl, but Megan Black did, in fact
wrestle a guy to the ground and became that that
first female winner of an actual bout, not just a forfeit. Right, Yeah,
good for her, But Northrop isn't the only guy. I
to UM kind of feel uncomfortable with the idea of
wrestling women or girls. Um To researchers from the University
(04:08):
of Iowa in fall sought to understand gender and masculinity
issues among high school athletes, particularly high school wrestlers. And
these were these are their parents, they're wrestling fans, and
they went to observe wrestling and talk to a bunch
of guys, and they took notes basically about um masculinity,
(04:31):
UM how the guys viewed themselves and each other. And
they noted that a performance practice that they found to
support orthodox masculinity included never wrestling a girl. Right. Wrestling
a girl put them in a catch twenty two situation
because if they were to wrestle a girl and when
(04:54):
it wouldn't matter because it's just a girl. But if
they wrestled a girl in law, then they're the guy
who lost to a girl and WHOA, that is not okay, right,
And so these researchers noted that when the opportunity presented
itself for a male wrestler to wrestle a girl or
a young woman, some of them just refused to do
(05:15):
it and would end up forfeitting the match. And they
talked to two boys who refused to wrestle girls on
the team because of that lose lose situation that you're
talking about, and one of the boy's father father's actually
said that girls don't belong on the mat period, and
it actually ended up becoming a rule for that particular
school that no one had to wrestle a girl if
they didn't want to. And I find it ironic that
(05:38):
there is um such a a gender bias against girls
in wrestling, because the same study also pointed out observations
of so called feminine behavior between male wrestlers, such as
two wrestlers spooning in between practice bouts on the mat um,
and they point out that this entails speaking very closely
(05:59):
faced a face, lying close with arms around each other,
and ending up on top or bottom of one another.
It reminds me of have you ever seen the movie
I can't remember what year in the seventies that came out.
But it's Women in Love, which is an adaptation of
a D. H. Lawrence book, And there's this epic male
wrestling scene. It's incredibly homoerotic um and this this study
(06:22):
reminded me of that because two men wrestling is in
such a combination of that kind of close uh feminine
contact that you think of and then this like pugilistic
masculine energy, right, and so there there's got to be
some discomfort. Even if the um young men who are
forfeiting the matches can't put words to it. There there
there must be some sort of discomfort about that conflict
(06:45):
that it's a traditionally male dominated sport. It's it can
be violent, um and intense, but there's also that close contact.
And so maybe it's okay for two guys to be
doing it, but if two girls want to wrestle on
the team, or if a guy and a girl were
to wrestle, then all of a sudden it gets weird, right.
And and women's wrestling, if we think of it in
(07:06):
terms of like the w W E more entertainment professional wrestling,
it's usually parodied. That's what I think of when I
think of women wrestlers as that you know, the the
babes and the valets as well. Talk about a little
bit later on, but women's wrestling as a scholastic sport
that's happening in schools and now in the Olympics has
(07:29):
made some strides, not just at the Iowa State Wrestling Tournament,
which is one of the most elite high school wrestling
championships in the U S, which is why Megan blacks
victory was such a big deal. Um, but wrestling has
not been around for very long for women in the Olympics.
It made its debut in two thousand four, right yeah,
(07:50):
two thousand four at the Athens Summer Games. And back
in two thousand four, only six US colleges offered women's
varsity wrestling and only two states, Texas and Hawaii, sanctioned
girls wrestling at the high school level. Those numbers have
since risen, and according to the National Wrestling Coaches Association,
the number of colleges sponsoring a varsity wrestling team has
(08:11):
risen to thirteen um and just a small gain in
the number of states UH sponsoring high school state championship
that's just written by one state, which is Washington, and
the first US women's team to wrestle at the Olympics
was small. It was Tella O'Donnell, Patricia Miranda who wrestled
on Stanford University's men's team because she had no other option,
(08:34):
um and Takara Montgomery, and then finally Sarah McMahon, who's
football coach in high school, told her mother that it
would be a cold day in hell before Sarah would
wrestle with the boys. And what did she do? She
wrestled with the boys, and then she went on to
the Olympics and took home the silver that year, and
Patricia Miranda took home the bronze. But a lot of
(08:56):
people are saying that women's wrestling has a long way
to go, which it does slee since only thirteen colleges
sponsor a varsity wrestling team. But Terry Steiner, the U
S women's coach, says, we have a great elite level team,
but our development team is below other countries. Women's wrestling
is still not accepted in the high school systems here,
while Canada has it in most high schools in nineteen colleges.
(09:17):
It's a matter of changing attitudes and Steiner also wasn't
initially convinced about women wrestling. Uh. He was a little
conflicted when he was first offered the job of coaching
that first women's team for the Olympics. He says, I
had reservations because I've never been involved with women wrestlers before,
(09:37):
and I'd never paid attention, and I had a lot
of ignorance and stereotypes. But of course, these very athletic
and strong women who had been wrestling boys for years
proved him wrong, and he was very happily surprised. Yeah,
and he really came around because in June he said,
we're going for four medals and were capable of it.
(10:00):
Stakes for Terry Steiner and that first women's wrestling team
in two thousand four were high, not just because they
were the first ones to compete in the Olympics, but
they were really hoping to do something for the sport
for girls, to attract more girls two into the ring
or onto the mat. I guess the ring is in boxing,
(10:21):
the mat is for wrestling. Um. And they often brought
up the US women's soccer team and Mia Ham and
how their victories at the Olympics really put soccer on
the map for women um and perhaps it has had
a positive result. Um. ABC News reports that five thousand
(10:43):
girls are wrestling nationwide now, which is a three hundred
percent increase in the preceding five years. But that I
mean it's totally eclipsed by the number of boys in
high school who are wrestling, which comes to around two
d seventy thousand. And there is not just more boys
competing in high school and college levels, there's going to
(11:04):
be more men obviously competing in the Olympics, and men
get to compete in both the freestyle and greco Roman wrestling,
whereas the women's wrestlers only take part in the freestyle
event and only in four categories. But there is a
downside to all this good news about the Olympics and
more girls getting involved in wrestling. And isn't that grand
Because in July two thousand nine, Olympic medalists Sarah McCann,
(11:28):
Patricia Miranda, and Randy Miller, along with seven other wrestlers
at the Olympic Training Center, filed a grievance with the
USA Wrestling, claiming gender discrimination and abusive behavior by national
team coaches. Right, it's it's pretty ugly and unfortunate. All
the stuff that they're claiming UM and the complaint the
(11:48):
wrestlers said that USA Wrestling violated the Ted Stevens Olympic
and Amateur Sports Act by not providing equitable support and
encouragement for participation by women, and in the three years
leading up to the complaints, fourteen women's wrestlers with a
combined twenty three Olympic and World medals left the Olympic
Training Center over complaints of inflexible training schedules, harsh disciplinary actions,
(12:13):
meager financial incentives compared to men's wrestlers, mediocre coaches, and
quote inappropriate substandard coaching behavior by national team staff, which
is completely unfortunate. I mean, these these girls have had to,
you know, basically fight for their right to wrestle UM
literally and figuratively for years, and once they're finally reaching
(12:36):
through the top tier of the sport, they're encountering the
same kind of discrimination like that you know, Sarah McCanns
football coach who said that hell would freeze over before
she could she could wrestle with the boys. UM. And
when we get down into those different gender biases at
work within UM the sport of wrestling, a lot of
(12:57):
it is reflective of the same kind of stuff came
up when we were talking about women's boxing, right, and
part of that is the quote unquote muscle gap. Um.
In the studied Gender, Sexuality and Sport by Kyla Bremner,
she discusses what Mary Joe Caine refers to as the
muscle gap, which is used to justify the division of
athletic competition along gender lines, basically saying, you know, well,
(13:19):
men have always been thought of as stronger, with more endurance,
and they're naturally better performers, so they can do more
than women can. And I think it's worth noting that
Bremner knows what she's talking about. Uh, she is the
first Australian female wrestler to compete at the Olympics, and
she's also a doctor. Um. But yeah, she She cites
some of her her personal experience, one of those being
(13:41):
that she tried to enter a men's competition in Australia
but was denied on the grounds that she could be
hurt by her male opponents. I mean, couldn't any opponent
be hurt in wrestling that? I mean, it's it's silly
because wrestling is a is a weight class sport, right,
so she wouldn't be fighting against like three hundred pound
(14:01):
giant beefy dude, right, so I would let her wrestle.
Sounds like there might be some discomfort yet again with
that close physical contact the issue of sparring with a woman.
But what really takes the cake in Bremner's experience is
when one of her male teammates refused to get in
(14:21):
the ring with her. I could keep calling it the ring,
get on the mat with her unless she shaved her legs. Right.
They didn't like the idea of wrestling with someone who was,
I guess, acting masculine. Do male wrestlers remove body hair
kind of like male bikers? Is that is that a thing?
Because if that's the case, Okay, if everybody's shaving their legs,
(14:44):
if you can't have any win resistance on the map, right,
I would really slow you down wrestling. Well. Also, it
would seem like it would be advantageous for male wrestlers
to at least shave their under arms, because that would
hurt if somebody grabbed a handful of your underarm hair. Yeah,
but I mean, so look at this. She's she's a
woman in a male dominated sport. And while they've led
(15:05):
her in that far. They're like, well, we're not going
to touch you unless you shave your legs. But then
when she shaved her head, they were extremely distrong. They're like,
you shaved the wrong thing. We said, legs, nuthead Bremner.
So yeah. In in her essay, Bremner brings up some
(15:26):
points that perhaps, you know, it could bruise a man's ego,
which sort of came up with those high school students
in that in that study we talked about earlier. And
then she points out, you know, there's the sexual nature
of females in combative sports that brings up that whole
idea of Woo college Jeda wrestling. You know, so there's
a lot of stereotypes that female wrestlers and athletes in
(15:49):
general have to fight well. And I would argue that
this whole sexualization aspect is a lot more pertinent to
female wrestling as opposed to female boxing, because with boxing,
I mean, you're I mean, you're just going for some punches,
whereas with wrestling, there is a lot more groping and
all over contact that's involved, which brings up, you know,
(16:12):
images such as old school where they have the lubricant wrestling, UM,
jello wrestling competitions, things like that, right, And there's also
a side show aspect to women's wrestling if you look
back at the more the cultural history of it. Um
again reminding me of Andy Kaufman, the comedian when he
(16:33):
was doing all that kind of performance art, and one
of his things was was that he would wrestle women,
and it was just a crazy thing to do. But
the thing that we probably don't realize a lot is
that women have been wrestling for quite a long time,
going back to Spartan girls who wrestled, wrestled in Roman
and Byzantine times. This is coming from uh film by
(16:57):
Independent Lens on PBS called Girl Wrestler. Yeah, they talk
about girls in African tribes often wrestling as part of
initiation into womanhood as well, so this wasn't limited to
one area or one time period for certain. And then
moving up into the early twentieth century, American women wrestled
against one another in public demonstrations for entertainment. Like you said,
(17:20):
the whole side show aspect, and according to the right
up about this movie Girl Wrestler, they say these displays
where the predecessors of modern day televised entertainment wrestling such
as Wow Women of Wrestling and Glow Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,
franchises that have given women's wrestling an undeservedly bad reputation
as a circus like spectacle full of mud and jello,
(17:42):
which sounds disgusting. Well, it also seems very very US
centric because when I think of wrestling, I do think
of the w w E, and I think of China
and those twins. I think there's some twins that a
thing going on now. China aviously does not wrestle anymore.
Um and you know, those are the women wrestlers in
(18:07):
our minds, But in that culture they typically would start
out as valets escorting the male wrestlers around the ring
um or their girlfriends or even referred to as host
And today they're known as divas and knockouts. So again
and again and again, it's sexualized, right, making it more
(18:27):
acceptable for women to be on the mat in the
ring depending on where they are, uh, if they're sexy
with with fake boobs and leotards and things. Whereas globally,
female wrestling is not all that uncommon. They're about eighty
countries that sanctioned women's wrestling for international competition. UH. In
the New York Times, there is an article published in
(18:49):
two thousand nine that was reporting on a group of
women in Um, a town south of Baghdad in Iraq,
who formed a wrestling team despite strong pushback from threats
that it's to be banned on the basis of promoting
promiscuity and transgressions against Islam. UM. And even south of
the border, in Bolivia, they have these female wrestlers referred
(19:11):
to as chilidas, and it's um sort of an offshoot
of the luchadors in Mexico. But you know, and while
it's done purely for entertainment, and these are UM wives
and mothers who will wear traditional Bolivian garb and come
out and put on these wrestling shows. And they do
sound pretty, pretty intense and pretty fun to watch, but
(19:33):
it's more of a mockery of the macho culture. UM.
For instance, in an interview with Carmen Rosa, the champion
who is one of Bolivia's chilida's um, she she says
men are useless, they can do nothing, and uh, they
eat because we cook and otherwise they would starve to death.
And here the macho culture is very strong, and it's
(19:56):
something we have to fight with our best punches. So
when we fight, we are representing not only Indigenous women
but also every woman. So there and that kind of
feminist statement is certainly not proclaimed by the divas of
the w w E. Right, you could, certainly you could
look at the chelitas as being exploited. You know, they're
(20:18):
there for entertainment. They're getting leered at by all the
drunk men in the stands, but they are a very
repressed group of people. Oppressed group of people they are.
They have been considered for centuries just lower than the low.
And this is sort of a way. It seems that
the attitude that I got from reading a bunch of
these articles about these fantastic women, this seems to be
(20:39):
a way that they're taking some power back for themselves.
They're still I mean a lot of them are still married,
still have families, but they're taking the extra cash they
get from these tournaments and bringing it home to supplement income.
Absolutely um and it's it stands in such stark contrast
to the entertainment wrestlers north of the border. Although there
(21:01):
are some pretty colorful characters, I mean, we haven't talked
much about women in the w w E, but you
know what about what about Mildred Burke? I love her? Ah.
This is from Professional the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Burke was born in nineteen fifteen in Kansas, and after
seeing her first match, she convinced future husband Billy Wolf
(21:22):
to train her. Wolf was the Missouri state wrestling champion
in the Kansas City y m C, a wrestling coordinator,
and she actually started wrestling on the carnival circuit in
y four and offered twenty five bucks to any man
within a fairweight range who could pin her in ten minutes,
and supposedly it never happened. She got that bucks every
single time, and even when Billy Wolf at first when
(21:46):
she asked her him to coach her, he wanted to
teach her a lesson because he assumed that since she
was a woman, should be a terrible wrestler, and so
he recruited some guy in the gym to body slam her.
Burke didn't care. She body slam him right back, Grandma,
and then they got married. They did, and after an
incredible streak of championships, broke off the belt in nineteen
(22:09):
fifty four in Atlanta, and that same year it's kind
of a rough streak. That same year, after her divorce,
she created the World Women's Wrestling Association before retiring two
years later. And other wrestling aficionados out there might also
have heard of Lilian Ellison, better known as the Fabulous Mula,
(22:31):
who started wrestling in the early nineteen fifties, but a
promoter suggested that she changed her name because Lilian is
not the most fearsome name, and so she told the
promoter that she wanted to do it for the Mulah,
and hence her new nickname was born right. But she
actually started as one of those ballets that you're talking about,
basically just being arm candy to the main attraction, the
(22:54):
male wrestlers, and so her name when she started out
was not the Fabulous Mulaw. That's until later she started
out as slave Girl Mula, which is less awesome, But
she soon was wrestling in her own right, and that's
when she became known as the Fabulous Mula. And I
just like to point out that she had nothing to
do with Iowa. She got her inspiration from watching wrestling
(23:16):
in Columbia, South Carolina, and the person who would go
on to defeat the Fabulous Mullah many years later was
Wendy Rickter, who may befriended Cindy Lauper in nineteen eighty four,
which forged a relationship between MTV and w w E
(23:36):
random cultural note there, Yeah, and that led to MTVS
I I don't remember this. Maybe someone does and they
can tell us how it went. But it led to
MTV's Brawl to End at All, which is where Wendy
defeated f M Fabulous Mula, Fabulous Mula. But that kind
of wrestling is so much different than the wrestling on
(23:56):
that tiny matt where you know, these these athletes are
going to the Olympics pretty soon. There is definitely um
a shift in perspective between the actual athletes. Not okay,
well not that WWE wrestling women aren't athletes, but but
you know, between the women who are working to get
(24:17):
to the Olympics and the women who were armed Candy
on TV. I mean, and wrestling will I think will
always be more of a niche sport, that it's not
that big compared to things like football, soccer, other more
mainstream sports. But I think it's great that girls like
Megan Black who was a hundred and six pounds is
(24:39):
taking on guys in the matin and body slamming them.
I guess you don't really body slam and actual she
could wrestling, She could probably body I was about to
say she could probably take me down, and lord knows,
I'm a far sight away from a hundred and six pounds.
Um So, anyway, I hope that this little history lesson
(24:59):
on women's wrestle, thus closing Pugilism week stuff Mom never
told you was interesting. I hope that we have some
female wrestlers out there, or women who wanted to wrestle
in high school and we're told, no, what's happening? Yeah,
let us know your stories, mom. Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send them. Oh and one
(25:21):
one final note. Uh. In April, the Olympic Trials for
wrestling will be happening, and you guess it, it's gonna
go down in Iowa. People in Iowa is wrestling? What
what happens all of the time? It's corn and and wrestling. Yeah,
it is wrestling. Iowa's football. I don't I don't know,
(25:42):
it seems like it. Let us know. Okay, This is
an email from Gino. I am a male preschool teacher
and childcare provider in California. After listening to your Lego podcast,
I asked two of my female students seven and eight
which legos they would prefer playing with. One girl picks
Star Wars, saying that she enjoys the movies and want
(26:03):
to build and wants to build the stuff she saw
keep in mind this girl who's dressed as Bad Girl
and Wonder Woman for past Halloween. The other girl, who
is more on the girly side, picked the Friends Legos,
saying only that it's because they are her favorite colors
and couldn't think of another reason for it. Both girls
play with the legos we have in the classroom and
have never wondered about pink and purple legos. Sure, my
sample sizes is beyond mall, but I think that if
(26:25):
I added pink and purple legos to our tub that
both boys and girls would use them. Thanks Gino. I've
got an email here from Kristen and she is writing
in response to our episode on foster care because she
was in foster care from ages six to nine while
I was too young to really understand what was happening.
It's hard to believe now that I came out as
relatively unscathed as I did. The children's services in my
(26:49):
county had disturbing had disturbingly few resources, including enough foster homes,
so they weren't as selective about homes as they should
have been. I was bounced from place to place, witching
schools multiple times a year between first and third grade.
I don't think anything during those times was constant, and
I lost all sense of permanence family or home. Eventually,
(27:09):
my state of point of psychologistic a shine to me
and adopted me when I was almost ten. Later I
found out that, had my adopted parents not intervened, I
was going to be sent to a group home for
disturbed children, probably until I was eighteen. As I get older,
ITT weighs on me how unlikely my outcome was. I
wonder if I ever would have been adopted if I
(27:30):
were special needs, a minority, or lgbt Q, all of
whom fair particularly poorly in the foster system. I know
that when I'm older and more financially secure, I want
a foster or adopted, particularly those children who are often ignored.
So thank you, Kristen, and thanks to everyone who has
written into Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com and also
(27:51):
thanks to all of our friends on the Facebook and
followers on Twitter. At Mom's Stuff podcast, you can join
the conversation to All you have to do is go
to those places and click like and click followed, and
that's all you gotta do. You can read about wrestling
as well, How Pro Wrestling Works can be found at
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(28:15):
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
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(28:36):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House stepworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. Caroline. You have mentioned that
(00:22):
you have an older stepbrother. Is that correct? All right?
I don't mean to put you on the spot. Actually
I do mean to put you on the spot spot.
Did you ever? Did you ever wrestle with your stepbrother? No,
because he is he's actually not raised with me, like
he's much older. He didn't. We didn't, Russell, is the
(00:43):
answer to your question. That makes sense. So the age gap,
it was a prohibitive age gap. For right, it would
have been weird. I mean, I guess siblings beat each
other up, but I guess it would have been weird
that like an eighteen year old boy was beating up
a five year old girl. Now I get that. My
oldest brother is it's fifteen years older than I am,
and I don't think that we have ever wrestled. But
(01:05):
my my other brother is closer in age to me,
and he's still he's a four or five years older
than I am. And I went through this pretty tomboyish phase,
and I always wanted to wrestle, but it was really
unfair to my brother because inevitably he would win because
he was a lot larger and older than I was.
(01:28):
But I and when he would when he would win,
I would get really upset and then I'd go crying
to Mom and he would get in trouble for beating
up on me. A little jerky word. I was the instigator.
I loved wrestling. Her face is lighting up. Yeah, Um,
but I never I never ever won. I wonder if
I could have a rematch probably anyway. Uh, I'm thinking
(01:53):
about wrestling because we're talking about wrestling today in the podcast.
So I was just curious to know if you if
you would spar No, we hadn't sparred. We we get
along pretty well wrestling or not. Um, So we're talking
about women's wrestling today. We talked in the last podcast
about women's boxing. So we are calling this Pugilism Week
(02:16):
at stuff Mom never told you, because there has been
a lot of progress with both of these sports in
recent years, and not only that in recent weeks. On
February six, two thousand twelve, Megan Black made history. Caroline Yes,
a a little one d and six pound high school jr.
(02:37):
Became the first female to win in Iowa state wrestling
match and actually, well sort of, yes, yes she did.
But last year Cassie Herckelman one um by default when
her wrestling partner, her male wrestling partner, refused to wrestler.
Her potential wrestling partner, who then forfeited was named Joel
(02:59):
north Thrope, and he even issued a statement on his refusal.
These are very official high school wrestling matches that take
place in Iowa. As you will soon learn, Iowa is
just a hotbed of wrestling in the Midwest. But he
explained why he forfeited to Cassie Herckelman last year, and
he said, I have a tremendous amount of respect for
(03:22):
Cassie and Megan and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a
combat sport and it can get violent at times. As
a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not
believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage
a girl in this manner. Clearly, Joel Northrop would have
been uncomfortable at my house when my brother not wrestling. Um.
(03:44):
But yeah, he didn't think it was it was okay
to wrestle a girl, but Megan Black did, in fact
wrestle a guy to the ground and became that that
first female winner of an actual bout, not just a forfeit. Right, Yeah,
good for her, But Northrop isn't the only guy. I
to UM kind of feel uncomfortable with the idea of
wrestling women or girls. Um To researchers from the University
(04:08):
of Iowa in fall sought to understand gender and masculinity
issues among high school athletes, particularly high school wrestlers. And
these were these are their parents, they're wrestling fans, and
they went to observe wrestling and talk to a bunch
of guys, and they took notes basically about um masculinity,
(04:31):
UM how the guys viewed themselves and each other. And
they noted that a performance practice that they found to
support orthodox masculinity included never wrestling a girl. Right. Wrestling
a girl put them in a catch twenty two situation
because if they were to wrestle a girl and when
(04:54):
it wouldn't matter because it's just a girl. But if
they wrestled a girl in law, then they're the guy
who lost to a girl and WHOA, that is not okay, right,
And so these researchers noted that when the opportunity presented
itself for a male wrestler to wrestle a girl or
a young woman, some of them just refused to do
(05:15):
it and would end up forfeitting the match. And they
talked to two boys who refused to wrestle girls on
the team because of that lose lose situation that you're
talking about, and one of the boy's father father's actually
said that girls don't belong on the mat period, and
it actually ended up becoming a rule for that particular
school that no one had to wrestle a girl if
they didn't want to. And I find it ironic that
(05:38):
there is um such a a gender bias against girls
in wrestling, because the same study also pointed out observations
of so called feminine behavior between male wrestlers, such as
two wrestlers spooning in between practice bouts on the mat um,
and they point out that this entails speaking very closely
(05:59):
faced a face, lying close with arms around each other,
and ending up on top or bottom of one another.
It reminds me of have you ever seen the movie
I can't remember what year in the seventies that came out.
But it's Women in Love, which is an adaptation of
a D. H. Lawrence book, And there's this epic male
wrestling scene. It's incredibly homoerotic um and this this study
(06:22):
reminded me of that because two men wrestling is in
such a combination of that kind of close uh feminine
contact that you think of and then this like pugilistic
masculine energy, right, and so there there's got to be
some discomfort. Even if the um young men who are
forfeiting the matches can't put words to it. There there
there must be some sort of discomfort about that conflict
(06:45):
that it's a traditionally male dominated sport. It's it can
be violent, um and intense, but there's also that close contact.
And so maybe it's okay for two guys to be
doing it, but if two girls want to wrestle on
the team, or if a guy and a girl were
to wrestle, then all of a sudden it gets weird, right.
And and women's wrestling, if we think of it in
(07:06):
terms of like the w W E more entertainment professional wrestling,
it's usually parodied. That's what I think of when I
think of women wrestlers as that you know, the the
babes and the valets as well. Talk about a little
bit later on, but women's wrestling as a scholastic sport
that's happening in schools and now in the Olympics has
(07:29):
made some strides, not just at the Iowa State Wrestling Tournament,
which is one of the most elite high school wrestling
championships in the U S, which is why Megan blacks
victory was such a big deal. Um, but wrestling has
not been around for very long for women in the Olympics.
It made its debut in two thousand four, right yeah,
(07:50):
two thousand four at the Athens Summer Games. And back
in two thousand four, only six US colleges offered women's
varsity wrestling and only two states, Texas and Hawaii, sanctioned
girls wrestling at the high school level. Those numbers have
since risen, and according to the National Wrestling Coaches Association,
the number of colleges sponsoring a varsity wrestling team has
(08:11):
risen to thirteen um and just a small gain in
the number of states UH sponsoring high school state championship
that's just written by one state, which is Washington, and
the first US women's team to wrestle at the Olympics
was small. It was Tella O'Donnell, Patricia Miranda who wrestled
on Stanford University's men's team because she had no other option,
(08:34):
um and Takara Montgomery, and then finally Sarah McMahon, who's
football coach in high school, told her mother that it
would be a cold day in hell before Sarah would
wrestle with the boys. And what did she do? She
wrestled with the boys, and then she went on to
the Olympics and took home the silver that year, and
Patricia Miranda took home the bronze. But a lot of
(08:56):
people are saying that women's wrestling has a long way
to go, which it does slee since only thirteen colleges
sponsor a varsity wrestling team. But Terry Steiner, the U
S women's coach, says, we have a great elite level team,
but our development team is below other countries. Women's wrestling
is still not accepted in the high school systems here,
while Canada has it in most high schools in nineteen colleges.
(09:17):
It's a matter of changing attitudes and Steiner also wasn't
initially convinced about women wrestling. Uh. He was a little
conflicted when he was first offered the job of coaching
that first women's team for the Olympics. He says, I
had reservations because I've never been involved with women wrestlers before,
(09:37):
and I'd never paid attention, and I had a lot
of ignorance and stereotypes. But of course, these very athletic
and strong women who had been wrestling boys for years
proved him wrong, and he was very happily surprised. Yeah,
and he really came around because in June he said,
we're going for four medals and were capable of it.
(10:00):
Stakes for Terry Steiner and that first women's wrestling team
in two thousand four were high, not just because they
were the first ones to compete in the Olympics, but
they were really hoping to do something for the sport
for girls, to attract more girls two into the ring
or onto the mat. I guess the ring is in boxing,
(10:21):
the mat is for wrestling. Um. And they often brought
up the US women's soccer team and Mia Ham and
how their victories at the Olympics really put soccer on
the map for women um and perhaps it has had
a positive result. Um. ABC News reports that five thousand
(10:43):
girls are wrestling nationwide now, which is a three hundred
percent increase in the preceding five years. But that I
mean it's totally eclipsed by the number of boys in
high school who are wrestling, which comes to around two
d seventy thousand. And there is not just more boys
competing in high school and college levels, there's going to
(11:04):
be more men obviously competing in the Olympics, and men
get to compete in both the freestyle and greco Roman wrestling,
whereas the women's wrestlers only take part in the freestyle
event and only in four categories. But there is a
downside to all this good news about the Olympics and
more girls getting involved in wrestling. And isn't that grand
Because in July two thousand nine, Olympic medalists Sarah McCann,
(11:28):
Patricia Miranda, and Randy Miller, along with seven other wrestlers
at the Olympic Training Center, filed a grievance with the
USA Wrestling, claiming gender discrimination and abusive behavior by national
team coaches. Right, it's it's pretty ugly and unfortunate. All
the stuff that they're claiming UM and the complaint the
(11:48):
wrestlers said that USA Wrestling violated the Ted Stevens Olympic
and Amateur Sports Act by not providing equitable support and
encouragement for participation by women, and in the three years
leading up to the complaints, fourteen women's wrestlers with a
combined twenty three Olympic and World medals left the Olympic
Training Center over complaints of inflexible training schedules, harsh disciplinary actions,
(12:13):
meager financial incentives compared to men's wrestlers, mediocre coaches, and
quote inappropriate substandard coaching behavior by national team staff, which
is completely unfortunate. I mean, these these girls have had to,
you know, basically fight for their right to wrestle UM
literally and figuratively for years, and once they're finally reaching
(12:36):
through the top tier of the sport, they're encountering the
same kind of discrimination like that you know, Sarah McCanns
football coach who said that hell would freeze over before
she could she could wrestle with the boys. UM. And
when we get down into those different gender biases at
work within UM the sport of wrestling, a lot of
(12:57):
it is reflective of the same kind of stuff came
up when we were talking about women's boxing, right, and
part of that is the quote unquote muscle gap. Um.
In the studied Gender, Sexuality and Sport by Kyla Bremner,
she discusses what Mary Joe Caine refers to as the
muscle gap, which is used to justify the division of
athletic competition along gender lines, basically saying, you know, well,
(13:19):
men have always been thought of as stronger, with more endurance,
and they're naturally better performers, so they can do more
than women can. And I think it's worth noting that
Bremner knows what she's talking about. Uh, she is the
first Australian female wrestler to compete at the Olympics, and
she's also a doctor. Um. But yeah, she She cites
some of her her personal experience, one of those being
(13:41):
that she tried to enter a men's competition in Australia
but was denied on the grounds that she could be
hurt by her male opponents. I mean, couldn't any opponent
be hurt in wrestling that? I mean, it's it's silly
because wrestling is a is a weight class sport, right,
so she wouldn't be fighting against like three hundred pound
(14:01):
giant beefy dude, right, so I would let her wrestle.
Sounds like there might be some discomfort yet again with
that close physical contact the issue of sparring with a woman.
But what really takes the cake in Bremner's experience is
when one of her male teammates refused to get in
(14:21):
the ring with her. I could keep calling it the ring,
get on the mat with her unless she shaved her legs. Right.
They didn't like the idea of wrestling with someone who was,
I guess, acting masculine. Do male wrestlers remove body hair
kind of like male bikers? Is that is that a thing?
Because if that's the case, Okay, if everybody's shaving their legs,
(14:44):
if you can't have any win resistance on the map, right,
I would really slow you down wrestling. Well. Also, it
would seem like it would be advantageous for male wrestlers
to at least shave their under arms, because that would
hurt if somebody grabbed a handful of your underarm hair. Yeah,
but I mean, so look at this. She's she's a
woman in a male dominated sport. And while they've led
(15:05):
her in that far. They're like, well, we're not going
to touch you unless you shave your legs. But then
when she shaved her head, they were extremely distrong. They're like,
you shaved the wrong thing. We said, legs, nuthead Bremner.
So yeah. In in her essay, Bremner brings up some
(15:26):
points that perhaps, you know, it could bruise a man's ego,
which sort of came up with those high school students
in that in that study we talked about earlier. And
then she points out, you know, there's the sexual nature
of females in combative sports that brings up that whole
idea of Woo college Jeda wrestling. You know, so there's
a lot of stereotypes that female wrestlers and athletes in
(15:49):
general have to fight well. And I would argue that
this whole sexualization aspect is a lot more pertinent to
female wrestling as opposed to female boxing, because with boxing,
I mean, you're I mean, you're just going for some punches,
whereas with wrestling, there is a lot more groping and
all over contact that's involved, which brings up, you know,
(16:12):
images such as old school where they have the lubricant wrestling, UM,
jello wrestling competitions, things like that, right, And there's also
a side show aspect to women's wrestling if you look
back at the more the cultural history of it. Um
again reminding me of Andy Kaufman, the comedian when he
(16:33):
was doing all that kind of performance art, and one
of his things was was that he would wrestle women,
and it was just a crazy thing to do. But
the thing that we probably don't realize a lot is
that women have been wrestling for quite a long time,
going back to Spartan girls who wrestled, wrestled in Roman
and Byzantine times. This is coming from uh film by
(16:57):
Independent Lens on PBS called Girl Wrestler. Yeah, they talk
about girls in African tribes often wrestling as part of
initiation into womanhood as well, so this wasn't limited to
one area or one time period for certain. And then
moving up into the early twentieth century, American women wrestled
against one another in public demonstrations for entertainment. Like you said,
(17:20):
the whole side show aspect, and according to the right
up about this movie Girl Wrestler, they say these displays
where the predecessors of modern day televised entertainment wrestling such
as Wow Women of Wrestling and Glow Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,
franchises that have given women's wrestling an undeservedly bad reputation
as a circus like spectacle full of mud and jello,
(17:42):
which sounds disgusting. Well, it also seems very very US
centric because when I think of wrestling, I do think
of the w w E, and I think of China
and those twins. I think there's some twins that a
thing going on now. China aviously does not wrestle anymore.
Um and you know, those are the women wrestlers in
(18:07):
our minds, But in that culture they typically would start
out as valets escorting the male wrestlers around the ring
um or their girlfriends or even referred to as host
And today they're known as divas and knockouts. So again
and again and again, it's sexualized, right, making it more
(18:27):
acceptable for women to be on the mat in the
ring depending on where they are, uh, if they're sexy
with with fake boobs and leotards and things. Whereas globally,
female wrestling is not all that uncommon. They're about eighty
countries that sanctioned women's wrestling for international competition. UH. In
the New York Times, there is an article published in
(18:49):
two thousand nine that was reporting on a group of
women in Um, a town south of Baghdad in Iraq,
who formed a wrestling team despite strong pushback from threats
that it's to be banned on the basis of promoting
promiscuity and transgressions against Islam. UM. And even south of
the border, in Bolivia, they have these female wrestlers referred
(19:11):
to as chilidas, and it's um sort of an offshoot
of the luchadors in Mexico. But you know, and while
it's done purely for entertainment, and these are UM wives
and mothers who will wear traditional Bolivian garb and come
out and put on these wrestling shows. And they do
sound pretty, pretty intense and pretty fun to watch, but
(19:33):
it's more of a mockery of the macho culture. UM.
For instance, in an interview with Carmen Rosa, the champion
who is one of Bolivia's chilida's um, she she says
men are useless, they can do nothing, and uh, they
eat because we cook and otherwise they would starve to death.
And here the macho culture is very strong, and it's
(19:56):
something we have to fight with our best punches. So
when we fight, we are representing not only Indigenous women
but also every woman. So there and that kind of
feminist statement is certainly not proclaimed by the divas of
the w w E. Right, you could, certainly you could
look at the chelitas as being exploited. You know, they're
(20:18):
there for entertainment. They're getting leered at by all the
drunk men in the stands, but they are a very
repressed group of people. Oppressed group of people they are.
They have been considered for centuries just lower than the low.
And this is sort of a way. It seems that
the attitude that I got from reading a bunch of
these articles about these fantastic women, this seems to be
(20:39):
a way that they're taking some power back for themselves.
They're still I mean a lot of them are still married,
still have families, but they're taking the extra cash they
get from these tournaments and bringing it home to supplement income.
Absolutely um and it's it stands in such stark contrast
to the entertainment wrestlers north of the border. Although there
(21:01):
are some pretty colorful characters, I mean, we haven't talked
much about women in the w w E, but you
know what about what about Mildred Burke? I love her? Ah.
This is from Professional the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Burke was born in nineteen fifteen in Kansas, and after
seeing her first match, she convinced future husband Billy Wolf
(21:22):
to train her. Wolf was the Missouri state wrestling champion
in the Kansas City y m C, a wrestling coordinator,
and she actually started wrestling on the carnival circuit in
y four and offered twenty five bucks to any man
within a fairweight range who could pin her in ten minutes,
and supposedly it never happened. She got that bucks every
single time, and even when Billy Wolf at first when
(21:46):
she asked her him to coach her, he wanted to
teach her a lesson because he assumed that since she
was a woman, should be a terrible wrestler, and so
he recruited some guy in the gym to body slam her.
Burke didn't care. She body slam him right back, Grandma,
and then they got married. They did, and after an
incredible streak of championships, broke off the belt in nineteen
(22:09):
fifty four in Atlanta, and that same year it's kind
of a rough streak. That same year, after her divorce,
she created the World Women's Wrestling Association before retiring two
years later. And other wrestling aficionados out there might also
have heard of Lilian Ellison, better known as the Fabulous Mula,
(22:31):
who started wrestling in the early nineteen fifties, but a
promoter suggested that she changed her name because Lilian is
not the most fearsome name, and so she told the
promoter that she wanted to do it for the Mulah,
and hence her new nickname was born right. But she
actually started as one of those ballets that you're talking about,
basically just being arm candy to the main attraction, the
(22:54):
male wrestlers, and so her name when she started out
was not the Fabulous Mulaw. That's until later she started
out as slave Girl Mula, which is less awesome, But
she soon was wrestling in her own right, and that's
when she became known as the Fabulous Mula. And I
just like to point out that she had nothing to
do with Iowa. She got her inspiration from watching wrestling
(23:16):
in Columbia, South Carolina, and the person who would go
on to defeat the Fabulous Mullah many years later was
Wendy Rickter, who may befriended Cindy Lauper in nineteen eighty four,
which forged a relationship between MTV and w w E
(23:36):
random cultural note there, Yeah, and that led to MTVS
I I don't remember this. Maybe someone does and they
can tell us how it went. But it led to
MTV's Brawl to End at All, which is where Wendy
defeated f M Fabulous Mula, Fabulous Mula. But that kind
of wrestling is so much different than the wrestling on
(23:56):
that tiny matt where you know, these these athletes are
going to the Olympics pretty soon. There is definitely um
a shift in perspective between the actual athletes. Not okay,
well not that WWE wrestling women aren't athletes, but but
you know, between the women who are working to get
(24:17):
to the Olympics and the women who were armed Candy
on TV. I mean, and wrestling will I think will
always be more of a niche sport, that it's not
that big compared to things like football, soccer, other more
mainstream sports. But I think it's great that girls like
Megan Black who was a hundred and six pounds is
(24:39):
taking on guys in the matin and body slamming them.
I guess you don't really body slam and actual she
could wrestling, She could probably body I was about to
say she could probably take me down, and lord knows,
I'm a far sight away from a hundred and six pounds.
Um So, anyway, I hope that this little history lesson
(24:59):
on women's wrestle, thus closing Pugilism week stuff Mom never
told you was interesting. I hope that we have some
female wrestlers out there, or women who wanted to wrestle
in high school and we're told, no, what's happening? Yeah,
let us know your stories, mom. Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send them. Oh and one
(25:21):
one final note. Uh. In April, the Olympic Trials for
wrestling will be happening, and you guess it, it's gonna
go down in Iowa. People in Iowa is wrestling? What
what happens all of the time? It's corn and and wrestling. Yeah,
it is wrestling. Iowa's football. I don't I don't know,
(25:42):
it seems like it. Let us know. Okay, This is
an email from Gino. I am a male preschool teacher
and childcare provider in California. After listening to your Lego podcast,
I asked two of my female students seven and eight
which legos they would prefer playing with. One girl picks
Star Wars, saying that she enjoys the movies and want
(26:03):
to build and wants to build the stuff she saw
keep in mind this girl who's dressed as Bad Girl
and Wonder Woman for past Halloween. The other girl, who
is more on the girly side, picked the Friends Legos,
saying only that it's because they are her favorite colors
and couldn't think of another reason for it. Both girls
play with the legos we have in the classroom and
have never wondered about pink and purple legos. Sure, my
sample sizes is beyond mall, but I think that if
(26:25):
I added pink and purple legos to our tub that
both boys and girls would use them. Thanks Gino. I've
got an email here from Kristen and she is writing
in response to our episode on foster care because she
was in foster care from ages six to nine while
I was too young to really understand what was happening.
It's hard to believe now that I came out as
relatively unscathed as I did. The children's services in my
(26:49):
county had disturbing had disturbingly few resources, including enough foster homes,
so they weren't as selective about homes as they should
have been. I was bounced from place to place, witching
schools multiple times a year between first and third grade.
I don't think anything during those times was constant, and
I lost all sense of permanence family or home. Eventually,
(27:09):
my state of point of psychologistic a shine to me
and adopted me when I was almost ten. Later I
found out that, had my adopted parents not intervened, I
was going to be sent to a group home for
disturbed children, probably until I was eighteen. As I get older,
ITT weighs on me how unlikely my outcome was. I
wonder if I ever would have been adopted if I
(27:30):
were special needs, a minority, or lgbt Q, all of
whom fair particularly poorly in the foster system. I know
that when I'm older and more financially secure, I want
a foster or adopted, particularly those children who are often ignored.
So thank you, Kristen, and thanks to everyone who has
written into Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com and also
(27:51):
thanks to all of our friends on the Facebook and
followers on Twitter. At Mom's Stuff podcast, you can join
the conversation to All you have to do is go
to those places and click like and click followed, and
that's all you gotta do. You can read about wrestling
as well, How Pro Wrestling Works can be found at
how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
(28:15):
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
stuf Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The how Stuff Works I Find
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to
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(28:36):
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