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Men in tights | page 1, 2
Penn State's Abrahantes calls this a calculated move by professional wrestling franchises to appeal to the lucrative 18-to-49-year-old male demographic. A key part of the "maturing" of pro wrestling has been abandoning the pretense that wrestling is real. "By letting people recognize that it's entertainment and not a legitimate sport," says Abrahantes, pro wrestling can attract people who feel more comfortable if they aren't asked to believe that men with names like Hulk Hogan actually solve their problems by hitting each other with chairs on pay-per-view. "The era of insulting the fans is over," says Abrahantes. College-age admirers say they are interested in the difficulty and intricacy of wrestling moves. "You have to work with another person to create a work of art," explains Abrahantes. "It's like ballet," adds the WWC's Travis Dale. (Slightly embarrassed by the sound of that, he makes a joke of it: "Plié? Powerbomb. Plié? Powerbomb.") Why not watch ballet, then? Or follow "Star Trek," if you want a male-oriented soap opera? Benni Pierce, who wrestles with the WWC as Elvis, cites Hampshire's status as a bastion of p.c. behavior. "On a campus such as Hampshire, where you sort of lose your sexual identity, the WWC serves to reassert manhood," he says. "Where else could you 'punch' somebody? I want to believe that when I fight in the WWC I'm actually being manly." He sounds more agitated as he continues. "If you're overly masculine, the feminists attack you. If you're too effeminate, you're not attractive." Duran Goodyear, aka the American Poster Boy, agrees. "It's a little testosterone on a highly estrogen campus," he says. The WWC has proven to be relatively estrogen-repellent. Women attend events, but otherwise the WWC is the closest thing Hampshire has to an all-male organization. Despite the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and other female wrestling phenomena, no woman has taken on a WWC wrestler for a full match. Ringside announcer Bren Tamilio worries that women who want to participate feel pressured to conform to the scantily-clad standard that pro wrestling sets forth. He doesn't want T&A to become part of the WWC. "That's the Hampshire in me," he says. The WWC does have a gay character. Clive Cockburn is played by a straight man and milked for all the limp-wristed bending-over-in-the-shower jokes he's worth. The lack of comment from Hampshire's gay and lesbian organization has been surprising. Truthfully, though, the WWC flies below the radar of many folks at Hampshire. Most people think the organization is too idiotic to warrant any attention. Some students did protest the WWC's funding. "I felt that we weren't funding things like a series of courses taught by students," says Kyra Minihane, who participated in the allocation decisions. "And we were giving $1,500 to this Spandex Collective. This was during all the school violence [in Littleton, Colo.]. I thought it was inappropriate." Minihane worries that Hampshire is setting a bad example by approving funding for the WWC. "It shows children that this is an appropriate way of dealing with problems," Minihane says, although events are attended almost exclusively by college students. Above all, she worries that "in popular culture, watching people get beat up is fun, rather than watching some 'Saturday Night Live' sketch." Minihane would rather see more funding go to Hampshire's improv troupe, which she calls "good clean fun." The belief that violence is an inextricable part of masculinity is unpopular at feminist, pacifist Hampshire. Still, a few WWC wrestlers defend the idea. "Men are men," says WCC member Goodyear. "We happen to be predatory by nature. At Hampshire, a lot of physicality is repressed." The issue at stake is not unique to Hampshire. It's a question of who decides which beliefs and ideas are funded by the university, in the form of student organizations. Some defend the WWC as a vital free-speech outlet. "At Hampshire, norms of political correctness are pushed to such an extreme that Hampshire students sometimes feel the need to break out of them," asserts WWC participant Gareth Edel. Not that they always use their soapbox to make a clear point. The ironic enthusiasm with which the American Poster Boy proclaimed, "Let's tell Germany what America's all about!" before the audience dog-piled on Little Hitler was humorous, but what exactly did it mean when his opponent screamed, "Ein Volk! Ein reich! Ein Deutschland!" throughout the match? But then, his is an exercise in nostalgia for boys who spent their childhoods cheering Hulk Hogan. They'd rather you sat back and forgot about meaning for a while. "So much stuff goes on at Hampshire that's highbrow and political and intellectual," complains Hank Newcastle. "This is the one thing on campus that's wacky fun."
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