Love it or hate it, Priscilla Kelly has the right approach to her tampon fame

On the fury stirred up when video of indie wrestler Priscilla Kelly using a prop used tampon in her match at a Suburban Pro Wrestling show from the end of 2018 hit Twitter... put me squarely in the “not my cuppa but not killing the business” and “backlash definitely tinged with sexism and patriarchal neuroses about female biology” camps.

Not that anyone cared, but hey, that’s what the internet is for, right?

Now that everyone knows where I stand on pro wrestling’s controversy of the moment, let’s catch you up on how the wrestler at the center of the maelstrom is reacting. By my estimation, it’s pretty well.

For starters, she’s monetized her minutes of fame with some merch. That’s pretty much a no brainer, but she’s also using said merch to raise money for and awareness of period poverty, via the U.K. non-profit Freedom4Girls which provides education and supplies for women who can’t afford or otherwise don’t have access to safe, sanitary products for use during menstruation. Pre-order yours here.

Then there’s her response to critics such as Jim Cornette - flippantly via social media and in-depth via an interview with the Wrestling With Reality podcast (transcription via WrestleZone):

“Like everyone thinks that I’m kind of like butt-hurt about what people are saying but the truth is I really don’t care what people are saying. The fact of the matter is, Jim Cornette is wishing for me to die in a boiling tub of oil? Okay, that’s great, but all his thousands and thousands of followers? They’re seeing my name, they’re clicking on my profile. Statistically, I’m getting views, so when he tweets about me, good or bad, all those millions of followers that he has are going to click over to my page.

And on top of that, even if we take all this statistics and ego-driven comments out of the way, at the end of the day he doesn’t pay my bills. He doesn’t make me happy. He’s not in my day-to-day life and the moment that he’s in my day-to-day life or paying my bills, that’s when I care about what he has to say because the thing is, today, I’m smiling. I’m having a good day and this is not affecting me at all.

And some of the women who had negative things to say about me, like everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I believe that nobody is entitled to put somebody down publicly, drag them down. Especially women, who I feel like, the whole women supporting women thing, like everyone wants to do that until they find a woman that they don’t want to support. You know what I mean? Like I think if you want to make a comment about me being disgusting or nasty that’s one thing, but I don’t feel that it’s okay to put people down at all. That’s one thing that you’ll see on my social media I don’t ever drag anybody down. Unless I’m facing them in a match and I’m trying to rile them up for the match that we have coming up, you’ll never see me like personally attacking anybody. Because I feel like there’s just no reason for it. It’s just not necessary and when people say ‘oh, there’s no room for people like you in that business,’ no. There’s no room for negativity and B.S. in this business when you can just keep your mouth shut.

You just make sure that your closet is spotless before you go throwing stones at somebody that you know nothing about, because I guarantee you, you might find some nasty things, you might find me putting my hands down my pants, licking, biting, grinding, but you’ll never find me making a homophobic comment, you’ll never find me making a sexist comment or racist comment, tearing someone down talking trash on somebody. You won’t find that in my social media. You won’t find that in me as a person in my day to day life. So the next time anybody wants to throw stones at me unless they know who I am, make sure you are a saint.

In society, women are supposed to hide that they have periods. Nobody knows, be very like cautionary, like be quiet, hold your head down. That’s how society has groomed women to be over the last century. Even growing up. I grew up in a very strict household. I wasn’t allowed to go on dates, I wasn’t allowed to watch – I really wanted to watch Twilight – because they were making out. You know? I had a very strict upbringing. And I was never allowed to be open with my sexuality, ever. And It’s one of those things where you know my little brother or a guy, for example, most men can grow up in a society where they can do whatever they want to for the most part.

Going into the match, everyone has said like ‘oh, she just did this for likes, or she did this for views or shock-value and no I didn’t do it for anything. I only did it because it would be fun. I didn’t think it was even going to be out like that. You do these bar shows and you don’t know if it’s even going to be filmed. You go into these matches with the mindset of ‘I’m just gonna have fun.’ And that’s what I did. I had fun and we tore the house down that night. It was so fun and I didn’t expect anything out of it, good or bad. I was just expected to have a fun match.

The only thing that I’m confused about, is why anybody in their right mind is angry about what I did because I didn’t hurt anybody, physically or verbally. Nobody is in danger. Nothing that I did was cruel. It was a match. A wrestling match and I just really don’t understand why many people are so are filled with hate and anger, that’s what’s really confusing to me. Of course I expected to people to be grossed about because that’s the point of the whole thing. If it didn’t gross people out, I wouldn’t have done it, but I don’t understand why people would be angry about the situation. Because if I look at it from an outside perspective and I saw somebody else do that, I wouldn’t be angry even if I did think it was gross.

My question is for people, why are you so angry? Did it really effect you on that level?

If anybody is telling me to go ‘maybe you should’ve tried telling a story.’ Well if you would have been there at the match, you would have understood that from the moment the match began I was starting with my mind games. I started the match with my hands in my pants and slapping her in the face with my dirty hands.

The story is ‘I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to win the match.’ And if I have to mess with your brain a little before I do then so be it.’ The story with Priscilla Kelly is she doesn’t care what she has to do to win, and I know a lot of people say that, but in my case it always doesn’t have to be a physical move necessarily.”

Love or hate “the tampon spot” - and wrestling fans will continue to weigh in on both sides of that for a little while longer yet - it sounds like Kelly knows what she’s doing.