Body Image

Before he became the “Maniac” and before he joined Kevin Sullivan’s Army of Darkness,  Mike Davis portrayed the eager, heroic rookie.  Many wrestlers play the Baby-Face while they’re young, cute, and lean, and take on a more ruthless persona as they age.  Most of us started our lives as positive, optimistic, happy-go-lucky, young go-getters, but the years take their toll and we may grow more cynical, bitter, and ruthless…

Here is Davis with wavy blond locks and fire-engine red trunks.  The focus of the action in this match (like many pro wrestling matches) is on his bare torso, lightly dusted in hair and shining in the bright lights. Both his opponent and the Ref feel free to put their hands all over his torso and chest, which implies ownership of his body (we tend to touch what we own, and to keep our hands off things that don’t belong to us…)

The exposed skin, the bare flesh of a man’s torso, is seen as vulnerable — unshielded and unprotected.  Much of the story-telling in pro wrestling is dedicated to studying the vulnerability of the naked Man — his propensity to feel pain if his body is unprotected.

The villain (who is nearly covered from head to toe in black spandex — a sharp contrast to the bare-chested Baby-face) further displays and emphasizes his victim’s exposed body, his near nudity, by stretching him over the ropes and driving Fore-arm smashes to the fleshy part of his chest.

Davis, meanwhile, hooks his floppy arms over the ropes to render himself defenseless.  It’s as if he is saying to the big attacker — and to all of us in the audience — “Here is my body, naked and wide open.   I am exposed and vulnerable.  Do whatever you wish to me and to my flesh.” It is easy to transfer his physical submissiveness into sexual submissiveness in our minds, and thus pro wrestling addiction is born.