Passing Judgment on Passing Gas

Photo Credit: WWE.com

I like fart humor, I really do. Farts are funny. I can't explain why, but they tickle my funny bone. Given that wrestling often times has comedic elements or has its serious elements grounded in humor, I can enjoy a good fart joke or even running gag on a wrestling show. That all being said, I find WWE's choice of conveyance for fart humor to be a little odd at least and offensive at worst. Nattie Neidhart has gone from being one half of the Divas of Doom to squash fodder for Tamina, and if that isn't enough, in the last two episodes of Smackdown, she's been portrayed as having a loose cannon affixed to her rectum. Something doesn't set well with me there.

It's not that I have a problem with her looking "weak". It all ties back into the WWE's shameful portrayal of women's wrestling, the short matches, the inexperienced models being featured to the detriment of the women who can actually wrestle on the basis of looks, the inherent misogyny. The fact that one of only three women right now on the roster who are good at wrestling is now a running fart joke. That's unacceptable.

It wouldn't be a problem if Nattie were a member of a viable, vibrant women's roster and this was just a throwaway comic relief gimmick for the time being. However, when serious storylines are the exceptions and bullshit throwaway stuff is the main, then this ends up standing out more as how much of a joke the women are. Believe me, I'd love to live in a world where I didn't need to be pissed over this, but there's a lot of work that needs to happen before that normalcy can exist.

When everyone in the Divas division can wrestle and are as fully-formed as characters as the men (because let's face it, in WWE, there aren't a whole lot of fully-formed male characters either, but at least they can wrestle and aren't all jokes), then yeah, let Nattie, or whomever, rip farts all they want. That day isn't today though.