Total Divas – Bitch Flicks

Unlikable Women: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Unlikable Women Theme Week here.

Dolores Jane Umbridge: Page, Screen, and Stage by Jackson Adler

Umbridge works as Undersecretary to Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge. Through her position in the patriarchal wizarding government, Umbridge enables job discrimination, segregation, incarceration and harsh sentencing, and physical violence and genocide against marginalized people. She not only politically supports these efforts, but personally enacts violence against marginalized people and their allies, including children.

Never Fear: Unlikable Black Women on Orange Is the New Black and Luther by Rachel Wortherly

When I searched my mental rolodex for Black female characters in film or television who are unlikable my mind continued to circle. I was lost.

“I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way”: The Exceptionally Beautiful Anti-Heroine by Jessica Carbone

And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies.

Evil-Lyn: Fantasy’s Underrated Icon by Robert Aldrich

A character with few rivals and even fewer scruples, Evil-Lyn was arguably one of the better developed villains in the show. And in the annals of females from sci-fi/fantasy, her name should be spoken of in the same breath as Wonder Woman and Princess Leia.

A Fine Frenzy: With an Outspoken Anti-Heroine and a Feminist Lens, Young Adult Is Excellent by Megan Kearns

In this witty, hilarious and bittersweet dramedy, Theron plays Mavis Gary, an author of young adult books living in Minneapolis. Mavis’ life is a hot mess. She’s divorced, drinks her life away and the book series she writes is coming to an end. She was the popular mean girl in high school who escaped to the big city. Mavis returns to her small hometown in Minnesota full of Taco Bells and KFCs intending to reclaim her old glory days and her ex-boyfriend, who’s happily married with a new baby. As she fucks up, she eventually questions what she wants out of life.

Political Humor and Humanity in HBO’s VEEP by Rachel Redfern

She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

Bad Girls and (Not-So)-Guilty Pleasures in The Bling Ring by Amy Woolsey

Coppola’s refusal to condemn, explain or apologize for her characters makes for a rather opaque experience. To state the obvious, these are not likable individuals. They exhibit no visible remorse for their crimes, seemingly oblivious to the concept of personal boundaries, and think about little besides fashion and D-list celebrities.

Why Maxine from Being John Malkovich Is The Best by Sara Century

Maxine is a perfect character. She stands up for herself, takes no guff off of anyone, and goes for what she wants while issuing remarkable and hilarious ultimatums to those around her. I don’t just like Maxine. I don’t just love Maxine. I am Maxine.

American Mary: In Praise of the Amoral Final Girl by Mychael Blinde

Directed by the Soska sisters, American Mary features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother by Brigit McCone

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

Bad Girls Go to Heaven: Hollywood’s Feminist Rebels by Emanuela Betti

Hollywood has produced some of the most memorable bad girls and wicked women on-screen—from silent era’s infamous vamps to film noir’s femme fatales—but bad women do more than just entertain, particularly if we’re talking about the sweepingly emotional and excessively dramatic world of woman’s melodrama.

Why We Love Janice and Why We Love to Hate Janice by Artemis Linhart

Is Chandler going somewhere, just minding his own business? Chances are that Janice is just around the corner. As Janice once put it, “You seek me out. Something deep in your soul calls out to me like a foghorn. Jaaa-nice. Jaaa-nice.”

Cristina Yang As Feminist by Scarlett Harris

As people, no matter what gender, it is seemingly second nature to want others to like us and to portray our best selves to them. Just look at the ritual of the date or the job interview. That Cristina defied this action (though we have seen her star-struck when meeting surgeons like Tom Evans and Preston Burke) made her not just a feminist character, but a truly human(ist) one.

Triumphing Mad Men’s Peggy Olson by Sarah Smyth

What exactly, then, makes a character “unlikeable”? How can we define this complex term? Broadly, a character is unlikeable when they behave in an amoral or unethical way (which, of course, depends upon our individual morals and ethics), particularly when their motivations are unclear. However, when it comes to female characters, this term seems to diversify and pluralize.

Hate to Love Her: The Lasting Allure of Blair Waldorf by Vanessa Willoughby

In an interview with the New York Times, Gillian Flynn says, “The likability thing, especially in Hollywood, is a constant conversation, and they’re really underrating their audience when they have that conversation. What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations…It’s to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.”

Young Adult‘s Mavis Gary Is “Crazy” Unlikable by Diane Shipley

Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.

Ruthless, Pragmatic Feminism in House of Cards by Leigh Kolb

Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.

Top 10 Villainesses Who Deserve Their Own Movies by Amanda Rodriguez

While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley: The Real Power in the Realm by Robert Aldrich

She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with Total Divas darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

Suzanne Stone: Frankenstein of Fame by Rachael Johnson

The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

King Vidor’s Stella Dallas and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace by Rebecca Willoughby

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards by Leigh Kolb

These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing.

Summer: Portrait of a Recognizable Human by Ren Jender

When the family sits down to eat, a platter full of pork chops is placed in the center of the table just as Delphine announces she is a vegetarian. As the others interrogate her (a tedious line of questions familiar to many vegetarians) and one of the men even offers her a plate full of rose petals to feast on, she tries to walk the tightrope many women do–in all sorts of conversations–of not wanting to be seen as a “bother,” but still trying to stick up for her own beliefs.

Anne Boleyn: Queen Bee of The Tudors by Emma Kat Richardson

Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely.

Patterns in Poor Parenting: The Babadook and Mommy by Dierdre Crimmins

This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting.

The Real Hated Housewives of TV by Caroline Madden

Naturally, we are all on these anti-heroes’ sides, despite their bad deeds. And Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White all have an antagonist: their wives. They call their husbands out on their lies, moral failings, and oppose them. Thus, they are seen as the nagging wife that everyone hates.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley: The Real Power in the Realm

She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with ‘Total Divas’ darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

This guest post by Robert Aldrich appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley is the most powerful person in the WWE.

A fourth-generation wrestling promoter, Stephanie McMahon is the current Chief Brand Officer of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and one-half of the power couple (with her husband Triple H) that make up the heart of the Authority, the on-screen powers-that-be which attempt to steer the company down the path that is “best for business.” And while her father, Vince McMahon, may have more family/corporate power, or the rarely mentioned Board of Directors might have more business power, all control in the WWE flows from one of these two places and the person who commands the most of both forms of power is none other than Stephanie.

Not quite following? Don’t feel left out. The world of professional wrestling is confusing, and the monolithic WWE – the world’s largest and most successful wrestling promotion – it’s even more confusing. The story of the WWE is that of a giant, on-going tournament to determine and crown the best performers in the wrestling/sports entertainment business. The reality is that it’s a colorful pageant of athleticism and grandiose drama, of brutality and silliness, of action that is as fake as it is real.

To understand pro-wrestling, you really have to understand the concept of “kayfabe” (rhymes with “hey babe”). Kayfabe is the fictional reality in which the WWE (and all pro-wrestling) takes place. It’s a world where all matters are solved in the squared circle, where a person’s value is determined by the championship belt they wear, and where a contract signed under duress is a perfectly legal and binding affair. It’s a world that utilizes the most cutting-edge of technology (except the instant replay for referee to review), and also settles matters in the most barbaric and ancient manner there is (action).

Everybody knows kayfabe is “fake,” but then, you know the ballet is fake too, right? Live theater and television? They’re fake. Wrestling is just as fake…except for maybe the action, because while the punches may be pulled, the slams may be practiced, and the action is choreographed, there really isn’t any way to fake jumping off a ladder onto another person in front of a live audience of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands. Wrestling may be different from theater and television because we buy into the larger-than-life personas, the over-the-type melodrama a little more fully than other forms of entertainment. Perhaps the best description was writer-poet Gabriel Ricard describing kayfabe as “self-aware suspension of disbelief”; you know it’s fake and yet you knowingly and willingly buy into it for the fun of.

Back to Stephanie McMahon Helmsley. In the 1970s and 1980s, Vince McMahon cobbled together the WWE by systematically buying out rival promoters. Vince’s daughter, Stephanie, got involved in the stories in the late 1990s. Initially, she was a victim of kidnapping by the malevolent forces of evil threatening to take over the WWE, known as the Ministry. After a subsequent rescue, she turned into the object of affection for two rival wrestlers (one of which would become her future husband, Triple H). She got married, then divorced. She competed in the WWE Women’s Division for a brief period (and even held the Women’s Championship) before she turned up again a few years later as a corporate figure and remarried (the WWE has an on-again/off-again relationship with narrative consistency).

At the turn of the millennium, Stephanie brokered a deal to usurp her father’s power by buying a rival wrestling company (Extreme Championship Wrestling, or ECW) and having those wrestlers “invade” the WWE, leading to a long series of matches and feuds over control and ownership of the WWE. While Stephanie did not prevail, this established her to be just as cutthroat as her father and perhaps even more resourceful.

Stephanie disappeared from the story’s eye for a little while, only to return as the general manager (a sort of catch-all boss) of the WWE’s late-week Smackdown, and then later for their flagship show, Monday Night Raw. As the boss, she would either be a voice of reason and ambitious sanity, or a draconian witch who would punish any that got in her way. She would continue in this role for a long time, then disappear for a bit, only to return most recently where she confronted fan-favorite Daniel Bryan about his ineligibility to compete for the title. It’s at about this point that the Authority storyline (currently going) would begin, with the Authority overtly taking control of competition. Stephanie, along with her husband Triple H, would try to guide the active roster of wrestlers towards their preferred ideals, by hand-selecting the champions rather than letting the fans decide, or letting the matches play out. She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with Total Divas darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

This is, of course, Stephanie McMahon Helmsley. Stephanie McMahon Levesque is quite a different woman.

Who is Stephanie McMahon Levesque? Well, she’s the real-world woman who plays Stephanie McMahon Helmsley in the WWE. She is the real daughter of Vince McMahon and she is a real fourth-generation wrestling promoter. And she is the real Chief Brand Officer for the WWE, responsible for promoting and growing the WWE’s brand through every avenue, be it reading challenges at local schools to embracing the first-ever content-specific streaming service (the WWE Channel). And she is really is married to Paul Levesque (the wrestler who goes by Triple H, or Hunter Hearst Helmsley)

The difference is that Stephanie McMahon Levesque is a decorated business woman, named four times by Cable magazine “One of the Most Powerful Women in Cable TV.” She is an Eisenhower fellow, chairperson for the Connecticut Special Olympics, and even has her own workout DVD. She also has three daughters with Paul Levesque.

Stephanie McMahon Levesque’s career has been a little more traditional than her on-screen persona. A communications degree from Boston University (along with probably at least a little nepotism) enabled her to work for the WWE as an accounts executive. She would work primarily behind the scenes and in the corporate office, until 2002 when she would make the switch to working on the creative side of the WWE, working as a writer and then head writer to develop the talent and storylines that would play out before audiences and before the cameras.

In 2007, she became the Executive Vice-President of Creative, which allowed her to spearhead multiple initiatives, not the least of which was the WWE app, which helped to pave the way to the WWE Channel. In 2013, she was promoted to Chief Brand Officer, making her more or less the face of the company’s business side.

So, Stephanie McMahon Levesque isn’t quite as dynamic as Stephanie McMahon Helmsley. But then, few actors are ever as dynamic as those they play on TV or on stage. In reality, Stephanie McMahon Levesque is the public face for a multi-million dollar, International Corporation. Within the kayfabe of the story, Stephanie McMahon Helmsley is not only this but also heiress to the entire kingdom, both family-wise and corporately. She is a woman who rules with intelligence and conviction, as well as brutal sincerity. When she speaks, the mightiest of men falls silent, listen, and then do as she says. Or they challenge her at their own peril.

Hail to the queen.

Robert V Aldrich is a novelist and speaker based out of North Carolina. His most recent book, Rhest for the Wicked, is now available, and he publishes a blog and serials at his website, TeachTheSky.com. You can follow him there, or on Twitter @rvaldrich.

Body Image on ‘Total Divas’

As you can see from the image above, there’s nothing wrong with the way either of the women in the sketches look. And as reality shows are wont to do, everything is tied up in a nice little bow by episode’s end, with Eva realizing she has issues that she needs to work on. “I’m a normal girl who has her own insecurities,” she says.

This is a guest post by Scarlett Harris.

Sunday night’s episode of Total Divas centered around Eva Marie’s recovery from breast augmentation after her previous implants started leaking, her subsequent Muscle & Fitness Hers magazine shoot, and her body image issues.

The irony here is that Muscle & Fitness Hers is a magazine that I assume is promoting the “strong not skinny” ideal that permeates the health and fitness industry. As we saw on Sunday, Eva Marie’s mindset is anything but. After her surgery, she’d been unable to exercise so when she found out the magazine wanted her to shoot for them, the pressure was on to get back into shape. Throughout the show, Eva has made stray comments about her body, saying she’s too fat or looks ugly, and in this episode, she sees her visage on the side of a WWE trailer and says the same. This all comes to a head when Eva and Ariane are shopping and Eva nearly collapses in the change room because she hasn’t eaten for a day.

Ariane is concerned for her friend and worried about the message Eva’s poor body image is sending to their fans. “We’re WWE Divas. That means we’re empowering women who are role models and WWE wouldn’t even think about putting her on, like, three trailers if she wasn’t TheBomb.com [one of Ariane’s myriad catchphrases],” she says.

Putting aside Ariane’s correlation between being hot = being empowered, she takes Eva to a sketch artist similar to the one used by Dove in their infamous viral campaign featuring women describing how ugly they are vs. how beautiful strangers think they are. Because all that matters is how other people think you look, right?

The sketch artist’s assistant’s description of Eva results in a more accurate drawing whereas the way she describes herself produces a sketch of a more “normal”-looking woman. As you can see from the image above, there’s nothing wrong with the way either of the women in the sketches look. And as reality shows are wont to do, everything is tied up in a nice little bow by episode’s end, with Eva realizing she has issues that she needs to work on. “I’m a normal girl who has her own insecurities,” she says.

The thing is, the Divas aren’t normal women. Like models, they work in an industry that trades primarily on how they look. Sure, they need their bodies to be strong but if they don’t look good while taking a bulldog or delivering a dropkick, fuhgedaboutit.

And as Nattie says on the episode, “It’s part of our job to look great and feel great.”

Total Divas’ other main storyline this week was that of Rosa’s infatuation with Paige, resulting in an awkward kiss. We’ve seen Rosa struggle with her own insecurities throughout the season and she continuously says she just wants the other Divas to like her. Rosa is recovering from a bad breakup, a stint in rehab for alcoholism and, upon her return to the WWE and her Total Divas debut, she underwent breast augmentation herself. On Sunday night she also revealed that she uses injectables such as Botox in her face.

I don’t want to perpetuate the harmful stereotype that those with body image issues turn to surgery, or that surgery perpetuates those issues, because there are plenty of people who love and hate themselves and their bodies who have and haven’t turned to surgery as a remedy. But it is telling that both Eva and Rosa struggle with their self worth and the way they look, have both had substance abuse problems and have both had cosmetic surgery.

On the other hand, many of the Total Divas (and WWE Divas who aren’t involved with the show) have also had surgery but seem to have pretty healthy self-esteem. (Or, more accurately, any body image woes they do have aren’t aired on E! to further the show’s storylines.) To reiterate Nattie’s sentiment, there’s a certain ideal Divas have to subscribe to. I also work sporadically in television, so I can relate. However I don’t think the correlation the Total Divas make between being role models and looking hot is the healthiest mindset to have. Eva touches on this somewhat in the trademark reality TV voiceover:

“I think it’s the pressure of being a role model and having so much on your shoulders. I think there’s a massive amount of pressure on any woman. All of us are striving for some type of perfection.”

Until being a Total Diva—nay, a women’s wrestler—is more about what they can do in the ring that what they look like, that perfection is going to remain outward rather than turning inward.

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she writes about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter.

The Choice to Be a Total Diva

So while Nikki is a successful wrestler (she’s the current Divas Champion in real time), actress (she’s been in outwardly scripted productions as well as “scripted reality” TV), real estate agent and businesswoman in general, she apparently can’t be trusted to make choices that are best for her personal life at the age of 31.

This is a guest post by Scarlett Harris.

For those unfamiliar with the E! reality show Total Divas, it follows the lives of eight female professional wrestlers—or Divas as they are better known—under the employ of World Wrestling Entertainment as they navigate through their personal lives, work, travel and health.

The first season delved into the machinations of the daily lives of twins Nikki and Brie Bella, veteran and wrestling family royalty Nattie, tag team partners Trinity and Ariane, and rookies Eva Marie and JoJo. By season end JoJo had decided to leave the show (but still ring announces on the WWE Network’s developmental program, NXT) for reasons that are unclear, but her absence was felt long before.

Bad girl Summer Rae replaced her in season two, also taking the title of the show’s villainess from Eva Marie who became perceived by the other Divas as one of them. And by season three, Rosa Mendes had joined the ranks, fresh from a bad breakup, cosmetic surgery and a stay in rehab for alcoholism.

Last Sunday marked the mid-season return of Total Divas and with it the departure of Summer Rae and Trinity, who was barely getting airtime before it was announced last year that newbie Diva Paige and Alicia Fox would be coming on board. Again, just because these Divas aren’t on Total Divas doesn’t mean they’re not continuing on with the WWE: Trinity (known in WWE as Naomi) is in a storyline with her husband, Jimmy Uso, while Summer Rae is now hosting the Total Divas aftershow on WWE.com.

Plenty of Divas make their mark on WWE programming without being involved in the reality show. For example, Paige won the Divas Championship on her very first day on the “main roster,” which was long before she signed on to the show, and the Slammy award (kind of like a Grammy but for wrestling) for Diva of the Year 2014 went to AJ Lee, the longest reigning Divas champion who, to the best of my knowledge, has never appeared in even a backstage shot on Total Divas.

It’s great that Total Divas is promoting women as athletes in a male dominated sport (or sports entertainment, rather), a portrayal that is rarely seen on reality television, but the women on the show are hardly the be all and end all of women in wrestling.

A.J. Lee has said that she “could” be on Total Divas, “but I wouldn’t do it. I’m just happy being who I am on TV two days a week and on live events and then going into my private life, and into my little hole in the middle of nowhere and having no one talk to me about my private life.”

The choice to be a Total Diva is vastly different from being a regular Diva.

The mid-season return of Total Divas saw the fallout between Nikki Bella and her partner, WWE Superstar John Cena, and their trial separation, the wheels of which were put in motion by her sister Brie and the rest of her family at the October finale.

Here’s the gist of the drama: before meeting John, Nikki was sure she was going to be a wife and mother. John’s been married before and doesn’t want to go down that road again. He also doesn’t want children. Nikki sacrificed her dreams to be with the man of them and she seemed happy (as happy as can be gleaned from a reality show, anyway) which her family can’t understand. Brie and the rest of Nikki’s family butted in and sat John down with an ultimatum: if he’s not going to give their sister what they believe she wants, let her go.

And so he did.

The thing that bugged me about this storyline—sorry, development in Nikki’s life—is that Nikki is a grown woman: if she decides to be with a man who won’t give her marriage and children, then that’s her choice. No one else is in the position to decide what makes her happy now, and what she’ll regret later. I get the same crap when I tell people I don’t want kids: but what if you regret it later? So what? That’s my regret to have.

Nikki pretty much echoed these sentiments when she found out that John “letting her go” was actually the doing of her family.

“You told my boyfriend what I want without me being there? You had no right to tell anyone how I feel. Who the hell do you think you are to make my decisions for me?”

Speaking of marriage and kids, fellow Total Diva Eva Marie is facing the repercussions of having lied to her husband about wanting children. Eva has been plagued by reproductive health issues which saw her coming to terms with the possibility of not being able to conceive. In the second episode of the mid-season return, Eva is told that a medical procedure could cure her infertility but she’s scared of pregnancy and is okay with it just being her and her husband Jonathan for the rest of their lives. Jonathan has always been clear about his intention to have a lot of children, so he’s pissed that Eva hid this potentially life-changing choice from him. As the episode draws to a close the couples’ dilemma is tied up in a nice little bow as reality show storylines are wont to do: Jonathan tells Eva that when she eventually decides to have children she’ll make the best mother, and they agree not to discuss children again for the time being while they focus on their careers. Because all women want to be mothers eventually: they just don’t know it yet. And all women who are apprehensive about motherhood will love their children and make great moms once they inevitably make that choice.

Despite his insistence that Eva will one day want children, Jonathan brings up a good point: in not telling him that she didn’t want kids before they got married, Eva took away his choice not to marry her because of this. He says would have married her regardless because he’s madly in love with her, but he would have liked to have had that choice. Presumably Eva would also like the choice whether or not to have kids.

So whether it’s having the independence from your family and your partner to make the choices that are best for you or being confident enough in your athletic abilities to opt out of a reality show many of your peers are involved in a the potential detriment to your career, being a Total Diva—and, indeed, a regular Diva—is all about choice. Isn’t that why women, be they wrestlers or no, are called divas in the first place?

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she writes about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter.