GLOW and the fine line between female empow­er­ment and cater­ing to male fantasy

Open­ing to an upbeat ​’80 tune and swirling ani­ma­tions rem­i­nis­cent of neon blink­ing strip-club bill­boards, GLOW hard­ly seems like the type of show one might asso­ciate with the likes of Liz Flahive, Car­ly Men­sch and Jen­ji Kohan – that is, until the cam­era focus­es on an emo­tion­al­ly-charged Ali­son Brie deliv­er­ing a mono­logue of the finest fem­i­nist order. In Netflix’s lat­est ven­ture into a world dom­i­nat­ed by women, Ali­son Brie takes on the role of Ruth Wilder, a devot­ed actress dis­il­lu­sioned by the lack of seri­ous roles for women.

She has been liv­ing off of Cin­na­mon Toast Crunch for break­fast, lunch and din­ner for the past week, and still finds her­self hav­ing to rely on her par­ents to make rent. Pur­pose­ly read­ing the lines of the male char­ac­ter dur­ing her lat­est audi­tion, she hopes to prove her­self to the cast­ing direc­tor Mal­lo­ry (Amy Far­ring­ton). Instead, Mal­lo­ry informs her she is mere­ly the type of girl they call in for audi­tions to show the direc­tors what they don’t want, and advis­es her to try her­self at erot­i­ca for that big break.

Set in Cal­i­for­nia in the late ​’80s, GLOW empha­sis­es just how deep gen­der stereo­types run in the main­stream media. Gen­der equal­i­ty does not form part of the industry’s dia­logue but the path is being paved by women like Ruth, who ​“refuse to be bul­lied into sub­mis­sion” – in oth­er words, she is done play­ing moth­ers, haus­fraus and sec­re­taries. While oth­er women, such as her clos­est friend Deb­bie (Bet­ty Gilpin), throw in the tow­el and revert to being ​“kept” house­wives, too tired to keep on fight­ing for their place in a patri­ar­chal soci­ety, Ruth con­tin­ues to stand her ground.

She’s deter­mined to make it in this male-dom­i­nat­ed indus­try, and although she is forced to put up with the bla­tant sex­ism audi­ble in every audi­tion room, she is adamant to change the male per­cep­tion of women by find­ing depth in the super­fi­cial – even when it is not asked of her. Such is the case when she is called in for an audi­tion seek­ing ​“uncon­ven­tion­al women” for a sup­posed TV show fol­low­ing female wrestlers to be direct­ed by the relent­less, coke-snort­ing Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron), who makes no secret of the fact he does not like her face. Or her ass, for that mat­ter – both fea­tures which will be strong­ly influ­enc­ing his deci­sion as to whether she’ll make the cut.

Based on the true sto­ry of the Gor­geous Ladies of Wrestling, the pre­miere episode of GLOW is both empow­er­ing and infu­ri­at­ing to watch. With no appar­ent char­ac­ter work and no lines to read, Ruth and her fel­low audi­tion­ees are still try­ing to work out whether they have been hired to play wrestlers, or are to actu­al­ly become wrestlers who engage in real-life ​“tit-grab­bing” and ​“cunt-punch­ing” to a sound­track of high-pitched screams, groans and oth­er fer­al sounds.

While they are in fact learn­ing the basics of wrestling, and will be trained as rig­or­ous­ly and unremit­ting­ly as their male rivals, it is not entire­ly clear whether GLOW will be about the actu­al sport or about sex­u­al­is­ing its wrestlers. But if you were a teen in the ​’80s, or are famil­iar with the real-life Gor­geous Ladies of Wrestling, you’ll know that GLOW will ulti­mate­ly see these women come out on top – just not quite in the Hol­ly­wood star­let man­ner they had always imagined.

Brie’s touch­ing­ly hilar­i­ous per­for­mance dri­ves home the con­tra­dict­ing notion of female empow­er­ment: yes, she is stoop­ing to a degrad­ing lev­el of ​“act­ing”, but she is set on own­ing her role by cre­at­ing an actu­al char­ac­ter – much to Sylvia’s annoy­ance. Study­ing the moves of Hulk Hogan, and fling­ing her­self across her apart­ment floor in a home-made cape in an effort to chan­nel her inner bad-ass wrestling chick, she pumps her­self up, ready to charm Sylvia into giv­ing her anoth­er chance.

What ensues is a hys­ter­i­cal scene show­ing Ruth throw­ing her non-exis­tent weight around the ring, com­plete with what are meant to be intim­i­dat­ing growls and hiss­es thrown in between bor­rowed lines from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Her act does lit­tle to impress Sylvia until Deb­bie, hav­ing just found out Ruth has been sleep­ing with her hus­band, storms into the ring and chal­lenges her to a fight. Watch­ing Ruth awk­ward­ly defend her­self, Sylvia can final­ly visu­alise his pilot episode – with Ruth and Debbie’s butts in star­ring roles. What he doesn’t realise is that these ladies are about to change the per­cep­tion of women forever.

Though it pays trib­ute to an impor­tant mile­stone in pop­u­lar cul­ture, GLOW surfs the fine lines between female empow­er­ment and cater­ing to male fan­ta­sy, and it looks as though Net­flix will be dig­ging deep­er into the sex­ism and bla­tant ver­bal abuse these women often had to endure than the 2011 doc­u­men­tary GlOW: The Sto­ry of The Gor­geous Ladies of Wrestling ever did.

The Gor­geous Ladies of Wrestling may have become inter­na­tion­al icons encour­ag­ing young girls and women to step out­side con­fined gen­der roles and to take on what­ev­er pas­sion they were look­ing to pur­sue, but whether their route to this suc­cess real­ly was as empow­er­ing as the doc­u­men­tary implied remains ques­tion­able. For­tu­nate­ly, we have high hopes for Flahive, Kohan and Men­sch deliv­er­ing an unbi­ased depic­tion of the show’s his­to­ry as GLOW evolves.