Mickie James is 38 years old. In another era she’d be considered past her prime. But James is defying those expectations, both through actions and words, particularly in her current feud with Alexa Bliss.
One week from now, James will fight Bliss for the Raw women’s championship at the TLC: Tables, Ladders, and Chairs pay-per-view. If she wins (and there’s a fair chance that she will), James will be a 6-time WWE women’s champion. Regardless of the outcome, it’s a celebration of her longevity and endurance that she has a title shot in the first place.
The build to this fight has been nasty. Alexa Bliss is getting under James’ skin by insulting her age, with a potent combination of one-liners and pre-produced sketches. Rather than treating James’s age and veteran status as non-factors, the company is acknowledging them head-on. But many fans don’t trust WWE to handle this well. The company’s social issue storylines usually turn out horribly; they humiliate and diminish the babyface rather than garner sympathy. Should WWE pull this off successfully, it’ll be a rare victory; for a company with an anti-bullying initiative, they have thus far failed to address the issue with anything approaching subtlety.
Take, for example, the infamous “Piggie James” angle from 2010, when Layla and Michelle McCool began bullying Mickie James for gaining weight. This took many different forms, but it got increasingly degrading as the weeks went on. Among other acts, they forced food down James’ throat, shoved a cake into her face, photoshopped her head onto a pig, pretended to eat out of a trough, and dressed up as pigs to taunt her at ringside.
The storyline failed on multiple levels. Heel tactics or not, it was derided as wildly insensitive to female fans, who get enough negative reinforcement about their weight from media and don’t need additional body shaming from WWE. And the attacks were largely one-sided. Too many segments would end with James staring blankly into the distance, crying her eyes out, or running away from the problem instead of confronting it. It was intended to build sympathy, but in practice, it felt relentless and needlessly cruel.
Perhaps because of the flack surrounding that dumpster fire, WWE is taking a more balanced approach this time. Every time that Alexa Bliss picks on James, James has a proportionate, deliberate reaction. She doesn’t ball up and cry. She doesn’t try to endure, lip quivering, against the bullying. She actively addresses her treatment by dishing insults and punches out as well as she takes them. And usually, Alexa ends up either embarrassed or unconscious at each night’s end.
Last week, James delivered a heartfelt promo (one of the best ones of her entire career) where she eviscerated Bliss and proclaimed that she wouldn’t be made a victim. And even though Bliss got in another dig with a “newsreel” parody, James still managed to stand tall in the center of the ring at the end of the segment. Bliss, meanwhile, was sent scurrying to the locker rooms.
Thus far, the storyline has been distasteful–compelling, but distasteful. But it’s still palatable, albeit barely, because the company is on the side of the victim rather than the bully. WWE is on the right track giving James these little revenge payoffs each week instead of taking her treatment lying down for weeks at a time.
Back when James debuted and the Piggie James storyline was in full swing, women’s wrestling was far different from what it is today. Generally speaking, there were two types of women wrestlers: those, like James, who took the business seriously, and those who saw a wrestling career as a means to an end–as something that could be parlayed into an acting or modeling career.
The women’s storylines were disposable fluff, sandwiched between the more “serious” men’s matches. Crying and in-ring tantrums were common. But times have changed. Nearly every female wrestler in WWE wants to make this her career. Women’s matches are the highlights of many weekly shows. And the storylines need to match this new, elevated stature. The time for petty “mean girl” antics, weeping, pounding on the mat like a baby, and dressing up in pig costumes is coming to a close.
No doubt, this latest storyline will end with James gaining a moral victory. WWE’s storylines, no matter how they twist and turn, always have an ethical center. The heels eventually lose. The faces eventually win. But when dealing with hot button issues, the company needs to affirm, more explicitly, publicly, and frequently, where its sympathies lie.
