You’re in a man cave and you shouldn’t be here.
That’s exactly how I felt as the lights dimmed, punk rock blasted through the speakers and a young girl in stripper shoes and a revealing evening dress walked the length of the ring holding up a Round 1 sign.
Never have I felt so uncomfortable at a sporting event than at a local boxing match.
Don’t get me wrong, I went into the event with a level head. I had done my homework and had some indication of what was in store. I had interviewed one of the boxers on the night and what stood out was how tough and demanding the sport is, not to mention how close to death these men come in the ring. I’d seen a variety of UFC fights, understood the appeal of wrestling thanks to the mass saturation of WWE and met many who compete in all forms of martial arts. I understand the lucrative business of pay-per-view matches, and understood that sometimes these matches attract attention from the wrong places.
But above all, I was coming to appreciate the dedication and the fearless ability of the boxers on the night.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the way women were portrayed.
As I scanned the room, men outnumbered the women 9-1. Not so surprising I thought. Of the women that were there, many were related to the boxers and had come along with family members. None that I saw in my line of sight were there for the fight without a personal connection to the boxers.
I saw whole families there, young children playing in-between rows of seats as their parents looked on.
I saw mothers, I saw sisters and I saw wives.
The uneasy feeling started when I took my seat. On each seat was a poster for an upcoming fight and a ticket to the Men’s Gallery, giving free entry for anyone and promoting “non-stop personal table dancers all night”. They must have been sponsors of the event I thought.
This was a side of boxing I had pushed to the recesses of my mind and chosen to forget. I thought surely in this day and age the sport would have grown up? I thought ‘ring girls’ were a dying breed. I knew that ‘foxy boxing’ still existed and that surely only men that frequented strip bars went to that. Even the WWE had strong female characters.
Oh how wrong I was.
In plain sight of children, two young women entered the ring, wearing black underwear and a crop top with the Men’s Gallery logo emblazoned on it and started to gyrate provocatively in front of the crowd grabbing their breasts.
I looked to my female friends who I had brought along on the night in disbelief. Their eyes were wide and their mouths open in shock.
What had I brought my friends to?
This wasn’t just a one off, these women proceeded to enter the ring after every round, gyrating and getting progressively raunchier.
When the auctions started, the women were used as braindead models to flog blokey memorabilia. The auctioneers denigrated them even more saying things like, “How sexy does she look in that Carlton jumper boys? Aww yeah.”
I thought of every grid girl, every model flogging a car at a motor show and every girl on a game show turning letters around.
Here we have men being idolised and women being demeaned.
The young boys would be looking at the boxers, thrilled at the athleticism and most likely unconsciously normalising such treatment of women.
The girls on the other hand will be looking at their mothers wondering why these women have to do such things at an event like this. Hopefully many in the stands including the men would have the same view by now.