GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

GLOW is wrestling as a double-sided picture: a local project from the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas that even enjoyed success in Japan; a low-budget laughing stock (with characters such as ‘Little Egypt’, “Palestina” and ‘Mountain Fiji’) that attracted serious, high-profile imitators; a sexist exploitation spectacle (and direct inspiration for the ‘Divas Era’) that also gave women's wrestling a boost that continues to this day. From a historical distance, GLOW seems like the female camp sibling of today's WWE: often athletically inept, but overly ambitious in terms of entertainment, always exploitative of its human material and full of country, gender and every other conceivable role stereotype on steroids. A step backwards and a leap forwards in one. GLOW is also more variety show than wrestling, which paradoxically makes it more wrestling than pure wrestling could ever be.

GLOW is also the template for the Netflix series of the same name starring Alison Brie, which unfortunately fell victim to Covid after three seasons (the show, not the actress) — and thus, depending on the incarnation, is both low-fi and high-end TV. Either way, if you want to understand GLOW, you have to experience it. The best way to do that is through the eyes and anecdotes of its protagonists, who trace the visualisation of an entire gender and culture war in this documentary.