As E! reality series Total Divas enters its third season, I figured I would give it a try. Starting from the beginning on WWE Network, I watched season one in about two days. It's no surprise that a reality show featuring the dramatic exploits of beautiful women is successful. What is shocking is that when I watched the show, I actually liked it. Sure, it's a typical reality show in many ways, but it helped me identify with characters that I'm already invested in on an even deeper level. In between the vaguely contrived drama and the massively edited storylines, Total Divas manages to highlight several talented female wrestlers such as Natalya Hart, Naoimi and Cameron of the Funkadactyls and The Bella Twins, Nikki and Brie Bella.
As I said, I expected to hate the show. However, the conventions of the reality show formula doesn't bother me when I'm already invested in the people on the show. As a WWE fan and a vocal supporter of women's wrestling, I had this vague notion that the show would be all about photo shoots and portraying women as catty bitches.
While that element is certainly at play, I was pleased to see that much of the drama centers around work and the serious training and physicality that these women's jobs demand. There is this attitude that women wrestlers don't have to choose between being sexy and being talented athletes, a basic truth that often seems hard for people to comprehend.
It's also interesting to look at a supplemental product such as Total Divas and let my mind be bent by all the meta-commentary and breaking of the fourth wall. Think about it. Wrestling is a scripted form of entertainment with predetermined outcomes and storylines and characters. Then you add a reality show, which purports to peek behind the curtain of the WWE. But reality shows in and of themselves have a falseness, or at least a contrived truth through editing and story editing.
So at some point the so-called reality actually becomes part of the fabric of the fictional WWE's storytelling mechanism. There are so many levels of smoke and mirrors that even in the internet age, the smarikiest of fans still has no clue what's going on behind the scenes.
If you haven't yet tried Total Divas, check out Season 1 on WWE Network. Or catch current episodes on E! Channel.
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