Every day, google sends me an email alert with a list of news
stories that include the word midget.
Most of the results are news stories about football or hockey teams that
are a part of leagues that still use the word midget to identify a specific age
group. It may take a while, but most of
these leagues will probably follow the lead of USA Hockey.
At least once every several weeks, the google report pulls
up stories about “Midget Wrestling.” There are three or four groups of
entertainers that consist of little people wrestlers and that market themselves
are “Midget Wrestling.” The groups
travel around the country, performing at bars and festivals.
It’s a challenge to build a case against the word midget
when there are scores of little people wrestlers who embrace the word and for
whom the word is connected to their livelihood and identity. What business does
an outsider have interfering with an individual who made the personal choice to
be a midget wrestler? Yet, Midget Wrestling is not defined by wrestlers who
happen to be little people. Midget
Wrestling is defined by marketing little people as an entertainment spectacle,
just as little people were put on display based upon their physical differences
during the days of the traditional sideshow and Freak Show. The entertainment is driven by traditional
stereotypes of an entire community. When
a little person decides to join a Midget Wrestling Group, they are impacting
how the audience perceives the wrestlers, and they are impacting how the
audience perceives the entire community of little people.
In early 2016, Champs
Sports Grill in State College, Pennsylvania hosted a Midget Wrestling
Event. Soon after the event, a website
called “Onward State,” a student run Penn State blog, published a post called, “Overheard
at Ultimate Midget Wrestling.” With
quotes such as “Oh My God! I WANT ONE SO BAD!,” “My Snapchat story is fucking
lit with midgets,” and “WE WANT MIDGETS!” the post makes the case that the
entertainment at Champs Sports Grill wasn’t wrestling. The entertainment was
little people.
Though I believed the post from “Onward State,” without
intending to do so, made the case for what is wrong with midget wrestling and
why it harms the dwarfism community, the Happy Valley Community didn’t buy it.
Not only did the wrestling group return to Champs Sports Grill late in January
of 2017, in a promo
published on January 30, “Onward State” referenced the “Overheard . . .”
post, implying the content of the 2016 blog makes the case for why a Penn State
student should attend the event. The Daily Collegian, a site produced by Penn
State Students, also
promoted the event.
Most of the dwarfism community is against what we
refer to as the “mword,” but I understand that it will take time to eliminate the
word completely, especially when the word appears to be used in a benign way,
as the case may be with football leagues and food products. Similarly, it will take time to eliminate
midget wrestling. Nevertheless, it’s
disappointing that the Penn State campus has, according to Onward State, hosted
midget wrestling three times. The disappointment is compounded by the
“Overheard” post, which makes it clear that the entertainment is based not on
wrestling, but on the physical differences between typical statured people, and
people of short stature. A year after the post was published, Penn State
embraced the event again.
My hope is that Midget Wrestling has come to Champs Sport
Grill for the last time. Because just as
midget wrestling affects all little people, not just the little people who
choose to participate, when institutions at Penn State celebrate the
objectification of people based on their physical difference, it’s going to
affect the entire Penn State community. If wrestling were to come back to Penn
State, and if I were a prospective student, faculty, or employee, I’d want
nothing to do with the school.
