Elective Affinities

Once I have been making deep philosophical conjectures – since six posts ago – on mature women wrestlers and body imperfections, like cellulite, it is time to cook all these ingredients into a delicious casserole in the form of comics.

The author is worthy to be better known, albeit it is supposed that most of the female wrestling fans have already enjoyed at least some samples of his work. His name is Konstantin, it is all I know about him.

After I have beat Miss Universe and became interested in catfight and female wrestling, more than ten years ago, I came across some of Konstantin’s panels in one of those then active Yahoo groups (most of them, nowadays, deceased, moribund or in advanced stage of degradation). It was a case of love at first sight.

Some months ago, my ex-boyfriend (and a close friend of mine nowadays), as mad as me about fighting, found Konstantin’s email in a You Tube video with some of his panels. He sent an email to the artist, who, in return, presented to his fan a file containing an entire comics story.

Konstantin is a master in the art of drawing and plot writing. His drawing style is close related to the one of the Mexican “historietas” and of the Brazilian master Carlos Zéfiro. Is the story structure, however, that has allured me, since I grasped its key elements after enjoying several times the aforementioned samples in that Yahoo group.

With touches and pinches of a kind of Freudian approach, Konstantin builds an improbable, fanciful, perverse and enigmatically comical comics. It is ironical that all these elements together make up an acute psychological painting of the real concrete life. It is the perversity, probably, the key responsible for this appalling homology between fiction and concrete reality.

Let me, so, post some panels of the story of Marta, a retired model who decided, in her thirties, to come into the female wrestling world. The main reason for her decision was her relative physical decadence, in which cellulite pontificated. It was supposed that the ring, unlike the catwalk, was the adequate place where her beauty could remain attractive – and she was right!

Marta enters into a kind of traditional female wrestling league, based upon principles of fair play or something like that. Marta learnt how to lose and win, under honourable rules, in a kind of symbolic life, full of moral values. She acquires wisdom to become, already in her forties, the league champion. The first part of the comics is, therefore, a kind of apologue, albeit its distorted beginning – with the right to concerns of cellulite – is quite ironical. The pinch of irony is a clue of a more complex and elaborate tale.

It happens that Marta is going to retire from wrestling world, to satisfy the yearnings of her daughter. In order to demonstrate her values, nonetheless, she wants, before retiring, to face the champion of another league, based upon playing dirty and, we intuit it, sex exploitation. As a golden key to her her wrestling career, the heroine wants to defeat the villainess, named Linda Bloom, who – we learn through the words of Marta’s daughter - is really “nasty”, once “she strips and humiliates her opponents”.

Marta’s daughter seems to be a fundamental piece in the structure of the comics. In fact, we grasp that the daughter is the real reason of Marta’s life. For her, she “have a duty”: to give a “lesson” to the wicked woman, who taints morality… To sum up: Marta is the beacon of experience and elaborate wisdom that illuminates the daughter’s way. The young girl, notwithstanding her legitimate fear of seeing her mother stripped and humiliated, is her mother's faithful squire and apprentice, as you understand when she accompanies Marta in the match against Linda.

Marta's fans attitude towards the imminent match is one of the highest points of the narrative. The focus is on two supporters – one female and one male – who have no doubts in looking forward to see their idol’s complete humiliation. They kill the goddess and adheres to real wife and to the she-devil, incarnated in Linda Bloom. “Wrestling isn´t for ladies. It’s for women”, sentenced the female supporter.

When she enters the ring, Marta, in fact, notices the lack of the traditional support for her. Having put in highlight – what is really amazing – two different supporters of Marta’s, a female and a male one, the author in fact reveals the wide and spread expectation for the complete annihilation of a dull heroine and, as a consequence of it, the perpetuity of the inspiring wickedness of the villainess.

Linda Bloom, unlike Marta, is really perverse, sarcastic and bold. Albeit some relative good exchanged holds and moves in the beginning, the match is a total massacre. Linda manages to put Marta in compromising and vulnerable positions.

An especial humiliating move is Marta’s toplessing, followed by the cheering of the crowd. The heroine attempts to flee, in order to avoid being stripped. However, the villainess catches her in the fleeing and compels her to come back to the ring in order to endure more humiliation.

The crowd, including Marta’s fans, go crazy and demands: “Strip, strip, strip”. And Linda makes the will of the audience.

The symbolic act of stripping a begging Marta is accompanied by a comment of the heroine’s female support (certainly ratified by the male support – and probably for all of those readers who decided to go until this point of the story): “I was waiting 15 years to see that”. Fifteen years, it must be said, is the gap of time of the moral and legal Marta’s career in her previous league. Having been the heroine affective public for years, Marta’s supporters finally reveal their deep desire, which represents their idol's public disgrace.

In the end, a completely naked heroine ends up screaming her submission after a shameful and exposing ceiling hold. 

This is the final humiliation of the fight, it must be said, once we have to point others. Firstly, a stark naked Marta having to stand at the side of the referee to wait for the winner announcement. Afterwards, the remarks of the two supporters towards Marta, who leaves the scene trying to cover her nakedness, remaining, however, bottomless. The male supporter says: “I like you better now”; and the female one: “You are full with cellulite, honey”. Is it necessary to say more regarding the obscure desires of mankind, exemplified in these two remarks?

Regarding the nakedness issue, it is interesting to point out that Linda Bloom has no problems concerning this, and other related themes. She toplessed herself and even had some oral sex with one of the ring assistants during the interval between the rounds. She makes question, at any rate, to submit Marta to a forced stripping.

If we have in mind the social history of nakedness and the repression of sexual desire(s), it would not much to inquire ourselves about who the hell is the real villainess in this comics!

In the end, Marta's daughter, whose key role we have intuited, reappears. She feels sorry with her mother’s humiliation, nonetheless, both she and Marta look serene enough to continue playing the game. It is a kind of inversion of the prior apologue. We intuit that Marta and her daughter were introduced to real life and the permanent looking for a dangerous and desirable place on the horizon.

I would like to take the opportunity to express to Konstantin my gratitude for his kindness in sharing his work. I admire him very much and I expect that he could offer me others of his works (one of them is in fact already offered, many thanks!) so that I could post them sometimes here. Have a great 2015, Konstantin!