Story lines in Wrestling

Being in Louisville, I keep up with Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW). They've got a decent sized women's division and a friend of mine works for it. I thought it was alright - until this past week, when they decided to go with a pregnancy story line.

I fucking hate pregnancy story lines in wrestling. Fucking. Hate. Them. There are a few things/issues I believe shouldn't be made into angles in wrestling, and here's the list:

1) Pregnancy
2) Rape
3) Death

Short list, right? You're probably wondering why I still watch WWE since they've done all 3. Trust me, I wasn't thrilled when they did and largely tuned them out until it was over, which is probably what I'll do with OVW considering I'm still irritated at how short Izzabelle Smothers' title run was.

There's a line that wrestling walks, trying to be as real as possible while still being fixed. And that's fine, sometimes that line is walked just right, but I believe there's a ton of other issues to have story lines around, and its scraping the bottom of the barrel to resort to one of those three.

Pregnancy - unless the woman is actually pregnant, she'll end up having a miscarriage or aborting the child. Because how else are you going to do this? Have her walk around with a fake stomach for 9 months then produce a child that isn't hers to parade around in front of television cameras? What mother is going to go for that, allowing their kid to be made out to be someone else's and put on tv?

Having a miscarriage can be a very tramatic event for a woman. You may say there's no difference between having it be in a storyline and having it be in a movie/tv show. I say wrestling, due to it's trying to be as real as possible, shouldn't go in that direction. Yes I realise we're not talking about a high class thing here, but miscarriages and abortion are subjects that, in my opinion, don't do anything to further breaking the stereotypes of women in wrestling. Pregnancy overall doesn't have a place in wrestling.

Rape - The only one I can think of is when Lita "slept" with Kane to protect Matt, and since it wasn't her choice, this constitutes rape in my view.

Rape is one of the worst things that can happen to a woman. The effects stay with her for the rest of her life, no matter how well she seems to work through it. It's a devastating event and putting it in a wrestling story line just trivializes it. It's trivialised enough in real life, but making it an angle is sleezy and wrong. Nothing positive can come out of it. Absolutely nothing.

Death - Eddie Guerrero's death and the resulting storyline. Do I need to say anything else? I doubt it. Death isn't something to be trivialised either.

I'm more ranting than anything but I think there are some things that shouldn't be brought down to the level of a wrestling story line. No matter how 'real' wrestling feels, it's still a scripted event. Maybe I'm being silly by wanting standards in professional wrestling, but hey, it's not like I have any influence. I'm just a fan. So whatever I don't agree with, I won't support. Which means no OVW for a while.