The makeover of WWE into a more modern and enlightened corporate force stumbled significantly this weekend.
Stephanie McMahon Levesque’s Instagram post of her and her husband, Paul Levesque (aka Triple H), at the presidential inauguration last Friday was obviously very deliberately crafted, and presented essentially a non-partisan message: “Regardless your politics, it was an honor to witness the peaceful transition of power as our 45th President was inaugurated. #ProudToBeAmerican” Pretty safe and inoffensive—what you’d expect from a Chief Brand Officer of a major business.
It's days like this that make me love this country so very much. #WomensMarch country wide sending a strong message with peaceful protest.
— John Cena (@JohnCena) January 21, 2017
One day later, in the largest collective protest in U.S. history, millions of women and men all the way from Miami, Florida to Anchorage, Alaska demanded their voices be heard—for very good reason. The new administration is headed by a man who, among countless other problems, is accused of sexually assaulting at least a dozen women—which he openly bragged about on camera:
… I've got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
The budget cuts being mooted by the new administration, not coincidentally, would gut the Department of Justice’s efforts to stop violence against women.
Many WWE talents celebrated the march, all of whom did so in a respectful, thoughtful manner. Some of them are threaded throughout this piece, but there were additional statements or tweets from Nikki Bella, Mick Foley, Seth Rollins, Summer Rae, Sami Zayn, Dolph Ziggler, Lana, and Aiden English (and likely more—this is not an exhaustive list).
Neither Stephanie nor Paul Levesque made any public comment on the Women’s March.
Not. One. Word.
Celebrating the inauguration of such a man, even in the most neutral tone possible, while making literally zero public endorsement of an assembly of several million Americans fighting for gender equality is damning. The right to assembly and petition public officials is so central to American values that it is included in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, right alongside freedom of speech, press, and religion. The exercise of that right is just as important and just as meaningful to the future of America as peaceful transitions of power. The silence is even more damning when you’ve spent the last 18 months claiming you were advancing a “Revolution” and then “Evolution” in the treatment of women in your company.
Indeed, this dichotomy makes a mockery of any claims of “evolution.” It’s certainly not helped by the noted discrepancy in pay between male and female talents, or the continued veneration of a person like The Fabulous Moolah as a female icon, or only last week airing a celebratory videotape on the career of a man who is very widely believed to have beat his girlfriend to death in 1983.
This is not to suggest that there hasn’t been massive, legitimate improvement in WWE’s treatment of its female talent. There are no longer any seemingly mandatory Playboy spreads or degrading bra-and-pantie matches. And WWE has definitely gone out of its way to highlight its burnishing progressive credentials on this front, both in kayfabe and real life. (Though it is slightly odd that a company believed it should be congratulated in 2016 for calling women, “women,” instead of divas.)
Women banding together in support of one another is a beautiful thing. Let us all do this, with all peoples, all the time. #WomensMarch
— Becky Lynch (@BeckyLynchWWE) January 22, 2017
In NXT especially, Mr. Levesque pushed women’s wrestling long, long before it was the trendy thing to do, and all accounts suggest that he has done the exact same for the main roster division. That he openly teared up when his overtly feminist, zealot protege fulfilled her lifelong dream of becoming a “women’s champion” (and having that mean something), suggests his heart is in the right place.
One of WWE’s hallmarks during the latter half of 2016 was a feud between Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks over the Women’s Championship (later christened the “Raw Women’s Championship following the brand split). Virtually the entirety of the feud was based on the fact that Flair and Banks were continuously breaking down gender barriers in WWE, with the character of Banks’ in particular being downright messianic on the topic. This avowedly feminist narrative was consistently celebrated during WWE programming and in media outlets.
Additionally, the company put out a very impressive WWE 24 on this “Evolution,” which acknowledged some of WWE’s prior shortcomings on gender relations—and has the hallmarks of being a endeavor spearheaded by Ms. Levesque.
But all of these efforts are undercut when something so obviously the right thing on gender relations, and is guaranteed to give positive PR, is tellingly left unsaid.
Are Ms. and Mr. Levesque stuck between a rock and a hard place? More than a bit. Ms. Levesque’s mother, Linda, has been nominated by the new president to be head of the Small Business Administration. (We’ll leave the irony of that nomination aside for now.) That places WWE’s power couple in a dicey scenario, especially given the new president is thin-skinned to the point of lying about crowd sizes—not someone prone to accept perceived criticism of any sort very well.
But that’s what CBOs are paid for. And make no mistake, Ms. Levesque is a damn good CBO. WWE’s corporate image has massively improved in recent years, and she deserves just about all of the praise for that accomplishment. She’s very, very good at her job—which makes her and Mr. Levesque’s silence all the more disappointing. If anyone can walk this line successfully, surely it’s Stephanie McMahon Levesque.
Top WWE officials acknowledged the pressure of the #GiveDivasAChance movement in early 2015, clearly demonstrating that some power brokers in the company are well aware of its reputation and are seeking to correct that long history. The progress made since then is encouraging, but not remotely sufficient.
WWE is still far, far removed from the mantle of “history maker” they so readily claim on their programming—and ignoring a massed gathering of millions of Americans on a subject they avow to cherish while only one day earlier celebrating an event that mocks their espousals of progressiveness proves just that.
Ironically the #womensmarch has landed on the same day as #NationalHuggingDay.
— Bayley (@itsBayleyWWE) January 21, 2017
I think we can all use one.