FanPost

All Athlete: The Significance of Charlotte Flair's ESPN Magazine Body Issue Shoot

Nick Laham/ESPN

This week, Ashley Fliehr (better known as Charlotte Flair) became the first professional wrestler to appear in the ESPN Body Issue. Hailed by many of her peers (both in WWE and in the indie scene) and supported by the highest echelons of WWE, it is an important moment in the ongoing rise of American women’s wrestling from sideshow to main event, and the legitimisation of professional wrestling itself as an endeavour which is both sports entertainment and athletic display.

The issue itself justifies her inclusion among sports stars, and makes a strong and passionate statement for considering women’s wrestlers as athletes, with an insightful interview with Fliehr and a fantastic article by Allison Glock going in depth to highlight her moving personal story, inspiring attitude, and athletic triumphs. While occasionally citing the text, in this article I examine the images of ESPN’s photo shoot more closely, explaining its significance and providing close readings of the photos themselves to highlight their radical departure from the ways in which women wrestlers were once represented.

A Brief History of Nude Shoots (The Playboy Years)

Fliehr is far from the first woman in WWE to have been photographed nude. Nude shoots once featured as an important part of WWE’s presentation of women’s wrestling, with other stars having appeared in a series of Playboy cover shoots accompanying the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras. These shoots began with Sable’s in April 1999, in an issue so successful it soon inspired a follow-up in October and even a lawsuit. Beyond mentioning Sable as a wrestler, the Playboy issues refrain entirely from showing her as an athlete, the shoots taking place on beds and other traditional pornographic spaces. Symbolically, Playboy shot two covers, one with Sable’s WWF women’s championship belt and one without, before choosing the latter.

Other shoots followed, continuing with Chyna in 2000, and a tandem shoot by Sable and Torrie Wilson in 2004 (its tagline: "No Ring, No Ref, No Clothes!") leading to a series of annual April shoots from 2005 to 2008, carefully tied in to appear alongside the WWE’s biggest pay-per-view of the year, Wrestlemania. Although it is important to stress that not all women of the era appeared in Playboy (Trish Stratus and Lita both refused, while Stacy Keibler reluctantly agreed to feature before changing her mind after a conversation with Eric Bischoff.), these shoots became a central part of the ‘Divas’s division’ as it then stood, an era of crude ‘Diva Search’ segments and matches focused on titillating male viewers with scantily clad women, with Taboo Tuesday ‘Fulfil Your Fantasy’ match of 2004-05 providing a representative example: in a PPV with match stipulations based on fan vote, viewers were given the choice to have the women of the company perform dressed as schoolgirls, in bras and panties, or in lingerie.

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WWE's "Supervixens" on the cover of Playboy, 2004.

The company heavily promoted these spectacles, placing them on the biggest stage of all with a series of Playboy gimmick matches at Wrestlemania, beginning with Wrestlemania 20’s ‘Evening Gown’ tag team match between Torrie/Sable and Stacy/Miss Jackie, itself the culmination of a feud surrounding who deserved to appear in Playboy. The match itself blatantly focuses on erotic appeal, with the women wildly cheered for stripping down before the action, a minimal use of wrestling moves, and lecherous commentary from Michael Cole and Tazz throughout. (One of the more disturbing parts of revisiting the era is realising that Jerry Lawler was far from alone in his heavily sexualised commentary.) Perhaps the most telling moment of the match and its sexually reductive priorities features Torrie climbing the turnbuckle. Cole asks his broadcast partner what move she is about to do, and Tazz responds "I don’t know, but she looks hot doing it!"

The Playboy/WWE crossover ultimately suffered from declining sales and changing standards, with Maria Kenellis’s 2008 shoot (although its cover shows Maria in-ring, it operates for a hackneyed pun on Maria showing "us the ropes (and the rack!)") the last before the company’s broader shift into the PG era. Like those before it, it was co-promoted with Wrestlemania. Wrestlemania 24’s Playboy gimmick was a Lumberjack tag match, conveniently allowing for a ring surrounded by scantily clad women. While the underappreciated Beth Phoenix is able at points to show her athleticism (most impressively allowing Melina to backflip off her shoulders), sex appeal remains the focus throughout. While Maria loses the match, the moment is effectively meaningless. She is comforted by grinding against and making out with Snoop Dogg, who had observed the match on a throne.

The Florida Citrus Bowl that night held a crowd of over 74,000. Among them was Ashley Fliehr, there to see her legendary father’s retirement match with Shawn Michaels.

Charlotte Flair and the Women’s Revolution

Four hard years later, Ashley began her career in professional wrestling. Earning respect by outlasting both male and female peers in stamina-testing 'blow-up' exercises, Ashley soon stood out in the WWE Performance Center through her athleticism. In July 2013, she debuted on NXT as 'Charlotte'. After sporadic TV matches including her first encounters with Sasha Banks and Bayley, her career rose in prominence with a star-making performance at May 2014’s NXT Takeover, winning the vacant NXT Women’s Championship. Although Ashley herself credits the veteran Natalya for leading the match, the bout undoubtedly also highlights her obvious potential. Fought over 15 minutes (an unprecedented length for a WWE women’s match at the time), and focused on a story constructed through technical ringwork, it was seen by observers such as Lance Storm and Dave Meltzer (whose four-star rating was the first he ever gave a WWE women’s match) as a landmark. Viewed in hindsight, it appears as a sign of things to come.

Ashley held the title for nine months (the longest NXT women’s reign before Asuka), helping guide the division through a vital time, and debuted in WWE in July 2015, appearing alongside Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks as part of the ‘Diva’s Evolution’. Winning the Diva’s title in an early babyface run even she admits finding unsatisfactory, Ashley found success on the main roster with a heel turn which allowed both her character work and ringwork to blossom as the villainous ‘Queen’ of WWE. A defining moment occurred at Wrestlemania 32 the next year, with the Diva’s Championship (rightly) retired, and a three-way match for the new WWE Women’s Championship, won by Charlotte in front of a crowd of 100,000. The match was widely acclaimed as a show-stopper, with thrilling action and intricate spots choreographed between its three stars. The most memorable saw Charlotte ascending to the top rope and delivering a picture-perfect moonsault backflip to the outside (rather than praising her looks, the commentary pays glowing tribute to her athleticism), an iconic moment, which as Glock notes, is routinely featured in WWE highlight reels.

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Charlotte Flair moonsaults into Wrestlemania history.

After this match, Ashley’s career continued to accelerate and operate as a symbol of the broader changes taking place in WWE’s representation of women. After featuring as the third choice in the 2016 brand-split draft, her subsequent Raw feud with Sasha Banks made history through consistently strong ringwork and a series of pioneering achievements, from the first women’s PPV main-event at Hell In A Cell, to the first women’s TV main-events in several years, to the WWE’s first 30-minute Iron Woman match. Others followed her April 2017 move to Smackdown Live, becoming the first woman to headline Raw and SDL (and PPV), and by November the only woman in company history to have held the NXT, Diva’s, Raw Women’s and Smackdown Women’s championships.

Although there is still much room to grow (the behind-the-scenes team of WWE remains heavily male) and some fans continue to criticise the company, the WWE of 2018 offers a strikingly different position for women than in its past. Women main-eventing Raw and Smackdown has become routine, and the most prestigious gimmick matches of the year (the Royal Rumble, the Elimination Chamber, the Money in the Bank ladder match) are now accompanied by female iterations which are treated respectfully and as important parts of the show. Women’s segments and matches are now consistently among the highest-rated on TV. This shift has been embodied by Ashley, who as Charlotte has become a face of the division and an inspirational figurehead for its development. Her profile in WWE has grown to the point that she is a key part of WWE promotional advertising, the company’s corporate events (from NBC Upfronts to the Needham & Company Emerging Technology Conference), and appears increasingly likely to be part of the next Wrestlemania main event alongside former UFC women’s champion Ronda Rousey, an unprecedented possibility for women’s wrestling that once seemed utterly remote. Nor would this mark the end of her aspirations,befitting an athlete who refuses to rest on her laurels. In ESPN's interview Ashley articulates her wish of helping consolidate women’s gains and becoming a female John Cena, describing the now popular babyface Charlotte Flair as a timely figure for 2018: an independent and strong character to help inspire women in a male-dominated world.

The Body Issue and its Meaning.

It is important however to avoid considering these changes within a vacuum. The past two decades have been a crucial time for women’s sport in America, with milestones including the 1999 women’s World Cup victory, the inspiring dominance of Serena Williams, and the rise of Ronda Rousey to UFC main-eventer creating a climate in which women have earned more space to be considered as athletes.

The ESPN Body Issue exists against this background as a fitting symbol of these shifts, an artful display of the nude body which stands in contrast to previous avenues such as Playboy or even the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Men and women appear equally, and its photo-shoots are carefully framed to highlight the athletic and diverse physiques of top performers across many sports rather than exploiting their sexual appeal. With an array of top athletes from Williams to Michael Phelps, the Issue has become well-respected, not least by the athletes themselves, with Rousey describing her careful process to get in top shape before her 2012 cover shoot, in which she wears gloves bearing the message 'BUILT TO FIGHT':

The ESPN Body Issue is about celebrating the peak of human potential and the kind of form the human body, when specialised, can really look like. The Swimsuit Issue has a lot more [of a] sexual side to it. I don't think the Body Issue is overtly sexual, whereas Sports Illustrated is--when I posed for ESPN Body, I really tried to be a lot more cut and a lot closer to my prime fighting shape because I was being photographed as a fighter and trying to look more like a fighter." [Cited in Sarah Shephard, Kicking Off: How Women in Sport Are Changing the Game, (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 246.

As such testimony suggests, the Body Issue is considered an honour for those featured, and an important marker for changing representations of female athletes. Accordingly, ESPN choosing Ashley Fliehr as the first professional wrestler to appear within its pages is a very big deal indeed: another career accomplishment and another milestone moment for women’s wrestling.

What stands out at first glance is that despite being the first Body Issue shoot of a professional wrestler, it feels perfectly in place in an issue which also features members of the US women’s national soccer team, WNBA stars and champion hockey players among others. Considering the risqué tradition of nude wrestling photography and the low light in which wrestling was once viewed, this is a larger achievement than it may appear. The photo shoot itself, taken by Nick Laham on April 13, highlights how well Ashley physically fits in elite athletic company, with her 5"10/160lb frame (ESPN is to be commended for using the weight Ashley herself has stated rather than the unrealistically slender 140lb listing occasionally given by WWE) serving as another example of the strong and statuesque women that appear throughout.

The nudity of the photos is central to their display of Ashley as athlete. Her accompanying interview describes her goal to be seen by audiences young and old as "the athlete I am, not just a tall blonde that’s a WWE Superstar", an aim the shoot's aesthetic fulfills. Rather than seeking to titillate, the photography strongly focuses on Fliehr's athleticism, with minimal makeup and shots lingering on her musculature and frame.

These differences can also be read in terms of setting. Unlike the vaguely situated nude shoots of past women’s wrestlers, Ashley’s takes place in the clearly defined setting of Orlando’s WWE Performance Center, with shots taken in and around the ring. Even the most abstracted photo, with a stark white background against which Ashley stands in nothing but her wrestling robe, features the outline of the ring stairs in the corner. This well-defined setting places consistent emphasis on her status as wrestler and athlete.

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Charlotte Flair's one-armed Figure 8 bridge at Wrestlemania 34.

This theme is further emphasised by references to Charlotte Flair’s career highlights. The aforementioned robe is her peacock gown from April 2017’s Wrestlemania 33, seen in an entrance shot backed by fireworks which has become among the most iconic images of modern WWE. (Fittingly, it leads Glock’s ESPN article.) Ashley’s pose delivering a Figure 8 bridge on one arm and at full stretch not only shows her great flexibility but also alludes to her stand-out match with Asuka at Wrestlemania 34, mirroring the match’s dramatic ending. Close examination of the minimal clothing that is used also highlights its authentic and lived-in nature, with one of Ashley’s ‘CF’ boots showing the signs of heavy use in a split visible along its sole.

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A split sole. [Detail from http://a.espncdn.com/prod/styles/pagetype/otl/20180625_body10/images/athletes/charlotte_flair/comp/2000/72/flair_001.jpg]

Read against the tradition of nude photography of women wrestlers, even her poses appear unconventional. Rather than appearing sexually beckoning and submissive, they are open and strong. This can be seen for instance in two photos taken against the backdrop of ring ropes. Rather than covering her chest, her arms are spread boldly wide, a gesture familiar from her matches. Even seemingly more conventional photos such as her standing on the turnbuckle reveal their true athletic intent, with the espn.com’s digital presentation transitioning seamlessly from still photograph into looped footage of Ashley delivering a flawless moonsault, her nakedness highlighting her strong physique and impeccable form as she soars through the air.

Facial expressions become another lens through which to view these differences. Rather than appearing seductive or passively welcoming a male gaze as the women of Playboy shoots and their ilk once had, Fliehr’s facial expressions throughout are confident and determined, commanding the ring in a fashion befitting her ‘Queen’ character without its artifice. We see her firmly placing her foot on a step and looking ahead with purpose. Another image shows her as if in pre-match lockup, with a striking pugilistic pose which features the muscular Fliehr staring straight across the ring, laser focused.

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Fliehr staring across the ring, with a visible black eye. [Nick Laham/ESPN]

Similarly brave is the photo shoot’s conscious decision to highlight Ashley’s person as well as her Charlotte persona. Some shots highlight details such as her tattoos, one citing Proverbs 4:23 and another honouring her brother Reid. Other photos foreground the real physical injuries which occur even in the pre-determined world of sports entertainment. In fact, the shoot was taken in the early stages of a two-month period Fliehr spent working injured. Images of Ashley in the ring draw attention to her black eye and bruises, proudly described as the "battle scars" which all women wrestlers carry after their performances. (She has added to this theme in social media posts taking pride in her body while advocating a feminist message of body positivity for all women.) Such bold decisions reflect a thoughtful photo shoot in which the naked body is empowering before being erotic, and sexiness is found in strength.

The ESPN Body Issue’s ‘Charlotte Flair’ shoot deserves celebration beyond being another historic first. With sensitive and artistic photography accompanying well-crafted and reflective prose, it perfectly introduces professional wrestling to the august company of the ESPN Body Issue, giving an unvarnished and candid examination of one of its most talented and athletic performers. Even for an athlete who has carried on a family legacy and created her own, Ashley Fliehr's ESPN Body Issue photo-shoot is a landmark moment. Its success (and the very existence of the shoot itself) reminds us not only of the increasing respect rightly accorded to modern women’s wrestling, but also serves as another highlight in a career which before our eyes is redefining what a woman wrestler can achieve.

Thanks to Janet for her support, comments, and keen eye.

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