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| Number One! Photo Credit: WWE.com |
The list can be found here in handy slideshow format. If this list makes you angry, then congratulations, you're doing it wrong. Beauty is one of the most subjective things ever to judge. While there is going to be some kind of consensus reached, I'm not sure there could ever be objective criteria in what is beautiful and what's not. If this list makes you say "I disagree, here's what I think," congrats, you're doing it right.
I'm not going to repost the list here verbatim (Give B your page hits, please, he deserves them!). However, I will post my ballot:
- Layla El
- Tammy "Sunny" Sytch
- Stacy Kiebler
- Trish Stratus
- Kaitlyn
- Kimberly Page
- Maryse Ouellet
- Lita
- "Sensational" Sherri Martel
- Maria Kanellis
- Miss Elizabeth
- Cyndi Lauper
- Beth Phoenix
- Rosa Mendes
- Torrie Wilson
- AJ Lee
- Gail Kim
- Molly Holly
- Ivory
- Stacy "Kat" Carter
- Woman
- Baby Doll
- Brooke Adams
- Eve Torres
- Gorgeous George (the male wrestler, not the unfortunate 2nd to the Macho Man in WCW)
The second is that there aren't any men on that list outside of George at #25. In retrospect, I probably should have included Evan Bourne, Kevin Nash, and possibly Justin Gabriel. Then again, I have somewhat of a confession to make. I really don't find very many men in wrestling to be beautiful. Well, I don't find very many men in general to be beautiful, actually. It's not a homophobia thing. Well, maybe how I look at people's attractiveness is rooted in a sense of not wanting to be gay living in a household with a family that harbored not the best environment for being accepting towards that kind of lifestyle.
In the present day, I've become secure enough in my own skin that I can note when a male is beautiful. I have no problems admitting when a guy, whether it be as classic masculine as Jon Hamm, gender-blurring and captivating like Johnny Depp or anyone in between is beautiful. However, I think that for me, personally, it's far rarer that I find a man as beautiful or at least most-beautiful caliber. Then again, I also think it's a lot harder for me to find a guy ugly than a woman. Like Sam Cassell, Matt Schaub and Clint Howard? They're ugly, man. Really ugly.
However, I find most members of my gender just to be plain. Not really stunning, but not really Quasimodo-levels of awful either. It's a lot easier for me to label a woman's looks in more an extreme fashion. Is it horribly sexist? Maybe it is, or maybe it's just natural. I just know that's how I process what I think about how beauty is represented in people.
Still though, if there are men who exist that are beautiful, then wouldn't they exist in wrestling as well? Well, it's possible. I named two - Bourne and Nash - that I thought I gave the short shrift to on second thought. But if you give me a list of male wrestlers who people find to be hot, attractive, beautiful, or whatever, I'll find a reason why I wouldn't rate them above even someone like Baby Doll or Woman, who some would damn with faint praise as being "80s hot" (I personally thought the former was cute and actually aged pretty well over the years and the latter as having a mysterious, pouty hotness).
Dolph Ziggler's face, for example, looks to scrunched for me. John Cena's got a square jaw and actively destroys any remaining beauty by the horrible shit he says. Rick Rude looked sleazy, which is why I never considered putting the female Gorgeous George on this list. Antonio Cesaro looks like they put an old man's head on an Adonis' body. A lot of guys who made it or might have made any potential list ruined their bodies with steroids. Like, you know how sometimes, fake tits can be a turnoff? Yeah, looking like you put a tire-grade air pump to your muscles and went wild looks gross too.
Of course, is someone going to find what I think about most of these male wrestlers objectionable and disagree with me? Obviously they are. Just like I will disagree with anyone who swears that Sable or Angelina Love or Stephanie McMahon-post 2001 are beautiful, everyone has their own precepts of what they find beauty in. It should never really be about setting a standard or calling people names because they don't find x or y attractive (the worst is calling someone "gay" because they don't find a certain person attractive... as if being gay is a bad thing anyway). It should be about discussion, sharing ideas, understanding what makes us unique.
It just so happens that I don't find a good majority of men to be "beautiful" so to speak. I don't know why I felt the need to explain this. Maybe it was seeing so many people on the list having ballots of mixed gender. Maybe I'm just overreacting. Still, it's my ballot, and it's my thought process. I don't need to apologize for it, but I do think I at least should have explained it.
And for the record, I totally would have put Matthew Palmer on the list if we expanded it to ALL wrestling. That dude could be a centerfold if he really wanted.
