[RoseValentine]

I. Foundations
My name is Dr. Rose Valentine, though that's not the name I was born with. I introduce myself this way because in the story I'm about to tell, I am both the participant and the analyst of my own life. I wear two hats: one is the naive young wrestler who lived through a gauntlet of defeats and humiliations, and the other is the mature therapist and scholar who later examined those experiences with a critical lens. It’s an unusual position, being your own case study, but in many ways, it’s the only way I can truly convey what happened and what it meant.

I grew up a middle-class white girl in suburban America. My childhood was comfortable in the material sense; we had a nice home, I never worried about meals or school supplies. Yet it was also a regimented upbringing. My parents believed in discipline and self-improvement. I was taught that if you wanted something, you worked tirelessly for it. This ethos, combined with a certain restless energy I always had, shaped me into a teenager constantly pushing my limits. In high school I channeled that into sports: I ran track, played soccer, and by college I was bodybuilding as a hobby. I wasn’t aiming to be Miss Olympia, but I fell in love with the process of sculpting my body, adding a little more weight to the bar each week. It was empowering to discover physical strength, especially for a girl who had been bookish and a little shy. Each time I saw new muscle definition, it felt like proof that I could become something more through sheer will.

That drive for self-improvement might explain why I became a wrestler. I didn’t grow up watching professional wrestling religiously, but I was aware of it in a distant, cultural-osmosis sort of way. It wasn’t until college that I actually tried it. A friend dragged me to a local independent wrestling show at a community center. The moment I saw a female wrestler in the ring, athletic, powerful, commanding the crowd’s attention, I was hooked. Here was a form of performance that combined sport, storytelling, and yes, my love for physicality and muscle. I found out that one of the wrestlers at that show ran a training school for newcomers, and within a week I had signed up for beginner classes. Bodybuilding had given me raw strength, but wrestling training taught me how to use it, how to fall without getting hurt, how to lift opponents safely, how to make a punch look devastating without actually breaking someone’s jaw. It was a steep learning curve physically and mentally, but I thrived in it. For the first time, I had a clear vision of who I wanted to be: a wrestling star.

What I didn’t have was patience. The traditional path for an aspiring wrestler is to pay your dues for years on the independent circuit, wrestling in tiny venues, driving hundreds of miles, honing your craft in obscurity until (if you’re lucky) some big promoter notices you. At 21 years old, fresh out of training, I was hungry for success and restless for adventure. Staying put in the local U.S. indie scene seemed like a slow grind. I wanted a shortcut, a way to fast-track my stardom. In retrospect, this impatience was one of my first mistakes, but at the time it felt like bold ambition.

So when an opportunity arose to wrestle abroad, I leapt at it. One of my coaches mentioned that he knew a Caribbean promoter who occasionally brought in foreign wrestlers for tours. The idea lit up my imagination: wrestling under palm trees in exotic locations, maybe even becoming an international sensation. I got in touch with this promoter (through a series of phone calls and letters) and he fed me exactly what I wanted to hear. He spoke of shows across the Caribbean, in the Dominican Republic, possibly even in Mexico. He promised good money, far more than I could make on local shows. He hinted at championship belts waiting for me (“They love an American champion down here,” he said). He painted a picture of cheering crowds and quick glory. At 21, I was utterly seduced by this vision.

Looking back, the red flags were there. For one, I had very little actual experience, just a few low-level matches in front of maybe 50 people. The idea that I could headline shows abroad was far-fetched. But I was buoyed by optimism and youth. I figured my background (tall, athletic blonde all-American type) was a marketable look, and my training gave me confidence I could perform well. The promoter’s smooth assurances didn’t feel like lies; they felt like my big break. My parents, while supportive of my dreams in a general sense, were skeptical about me running off to foreign countries for wrestling. I remember telling my mother with bright-eyed enthusiasm, “They want me to be a star there. This is my chance!” I was happy just to be going on an adventure, blind to the possibility that it could turn sour.

I now realize I was naïve. Naïve in the way only a very young person can be, trusting strangers’ promises without a second thought. The promoter promised money, championship belts, and instant stardom, and I took him at his word. I didn’t ask hard questions about the working conditions or the track record of his events. I didn’t really negotiate my pay beyond “sounds good!” I thought the universe was handing me my destiny on a silver platter. In one of my journal entries before leaving (I kept a journal habitually back then), I wrote: “Off to conquer the wrestling world! Next stop, Kingston, Jamaica!” The exclamation points in that entry say everything about my mindset.

With my one-way ticket and a duffel bag of wrestling gear, I set off for the Caribbean full of dreams. I was optimistic to a fault. I thought I might come back home in a year as a minor celebrity, with tales of triumph from abroad. After all, some big wrestling names had cut their teeth overseas. One of my inspirations, Amy Dumas (who would later be known as WWE’s Lita), had gone to Mexico early in her career to train and perform. If she could launch herself by going abroad, why not me? I figured I’d wrestle across the islands, maybe learn some new styles, build a fanbase, and return to the U.S. as the girl who made it big internationally. The plan, such as it was, seemed perfectly sound in my youthful imagination.

Nothing could have prepared me for what really happened. My adventurous spirit had led me right into the lion’s den of professional wrestling’s harsh realities. I was about to learn that for every star in the spotlight, there are dozens of others, the so-called “losers” in the ring who make that spotlight possible. I was about to become one of them, the wrestler who always lost, and to live through a trial by fire that would transform me forever.

(At this point in my story, I wish I could step back through time and gently shake that young woman packing her bags. I would warn her: “Be careful who you trust. Not all that glitters is gold, and every promise in wrestling comes with a price.” But of course, there’s no changing the past. The only way out was through.)

II. Becoming "Rose"
My real first name isn’t Rose, but the moment I stepped into this new wrestling world abroad, “Rose” is who I became. The promoter in Kingston met me at the airport with a wide smile and a tighter hug than I expected. He was a charismatic Jamaican man in his 50s, who insisted on being called “Mister Winston.” On the drive from the airport, Winston laid out his vision for my character. “You’re gonna be our All-American baby doll,” he said, patting my shoulder as if congratulating me. “Bright white gear, blonde hair, big smile. The folks here are gonna love it.”

True to his word, he had an entire outfit prepared for me. When I saw it, I had a mix of pride and bashfulness. It was a white two-piece wrestling attire; a sporty bra top with ample cleavage and snug trunks. Across the back of the trunks, in bubblegum-pink letters, was my new ring name: ROSE. The get-up was completed by white knee-high boots polished to shine under the lights. It was clear the design was meant to sexualize my appearance to the maximum. The white fabric was form-fitting and—I would later learn to my embarrassment—prone to turning semi-translucent when soaked in sweat. “Like a virgin bride for the slaughter,” one of the other wrestlers joked when she saw me in that outfit, though I was too naïve to catch the cynical tone at the time.

Standing in front of a mirror in the locker room, I barely recognized myself. I looked like a caricature of the wholesome “do-gooder” heroine. With my toned midriff and athletic legs on full display, the effect was undeniably eye-catching. I told myself this was part of the job, pro wrestling has always walked a line between sport and showgirl spectacle for its female performers. If this was the costume I needed to wear to make a splash, so be it. I pulled my long hair into a high ponytail (a look I thought matched the perky, good-girl persona) and even spritzed on a bit of my favorite rose-scented body spray for a finishing touch. It felt apropos that Rose should smell like roses when she entered. That little detail was my own, it made me feel like I had some agency in crafting the character, though in hindsight even my perfume would be co-opted into the spectacle of my humiliation.

Winston had given me a crash course on how I’d be presented to the audience. “You’re a champion back home,” he said with a wink. “We’re billing you as the American Women’s Champion.” I blinked in surprise, I had no legitimate claim to any championship, of course. But he waved that away. The promotion had even prepared a gaudy championship belt for me to carry, a prop more than anything. It had a red, white, and blue strap and a big gold plate with an eagle on it, like a parody of the WWE titles. “They love a foreign champion here. Makes the match feel big,” Winston insisted. I didn’t argue. Part of me was flattered: I hadn’t earned a real title, but they were treating me as a big deal, at least on the surface.

So there I was, about to debut as “Rose, the All-American Champion.” My character was explicitly a cheerful heroine, the plucky good girl from the USA who had come to take on the local stars. I was instructed to smile wide, give high-fives to any kids in the front row, and generally play the ultra-polite, wholesome American sweetheart. In short, I was cast as the classic All-American Face. I assumed the local crowd would embrace me as a novelty, a foreign do-gooder bringing a bit of American glamour to their show. What I didn’t fully grasp was that I was also being set up as a foil, the outsider. In professional wrestling, context is everything: an All-American good girl in one country can be seen as an arrogant interloper in another. Later I learned that this was a well-worn trope of the business. As wrestling historians note, the patriotic heroine can easily be mocked as an “ugly American” stereotype when performing abroad. I was blissfully unaware that some in the audience might instinctively root against a flag-waving American on their soil.

If I’d paid closer attention, I might have noticed the sly grins on a few of the local wrestlers’ faces when they heard my grand billing. To them, I must have looked like exactly what I was: a naive young foreigner decked out in white, practically a sacrificial lamb. But I took their smiles at face value, thinking everyone was just excited for the show. In the locker room before the match, I exchanged some nervous small talk with my opponent (I’ll introduce her in a moment). My heart was jackhammering with a mix of nerves and excitement. To calm myself, I inhaled the comforting floral scent I’d applied. Perfume and nerves, that was my state of being as I laced up my shiny white boots. By the end of that night, the perfume would be long gone, replaced by the salty smell of sweat and the coppery hint of fear. My once-pristine white gear would be crumpled and stained. But as I headed toward the curtain for my entrance, I could not have imagined that.

I remember the ring announcer’s voice booming over the sound system as I made my first entrance as Rose. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, all the way from the United States of America… the All-American Champion, ROOOOOSE!” The crowd responded with a wave of noise, some cheers, some jeers, mostly just loudness. I walked out under the lights, doing my best to stay in character: back straight, smiling bright, waving enthusiastically. I even did a little skip in my step, a babyface bounce, as I’d practiced. I could see the flash of cameras; 3,000 people were packed in here, far more than I’d ever performed for. My skin prickled with adrenaline. Some of the audience clapped politely, others booed or laughed (I caught one sign that said “ROSE GO HOME!” in big letters, which confused me in the moment). I climbed into the ring, struck a pose holding up the faux championship belt, and took a deep breath. The scent of roses still clung to me for now, a faint cloud of grace under the harsh arena lights.

I was living the persona I’d been assigned: the valiant foreign champion, seemingly there to be a heroine. But in reality, I was about to learn my true role. I wasn’t brought here to triumph at all. I was brought here to lose. Rose, for all her bright-eyed bravado, was about to become the tool of the promoter, a character created only to be knocked down. My journey as “the wrestler who always lost” was about to begin in earnest, starting with a baptism by fire (and humiliation) in Kingston.

(Little did I know, as I smiled out at that sea of unfamiliar faces, that I was essentially being led to slaughter in the name of entertainment. The promoter had cast me as a flower; pure, pretty, and intended to be plucked to pieces for the crowd’s delight.)

III. Baptism in Kingston
I stood in one corner of the ring, bouncing on my toes, trying to quell the adrenaline surging through me. Across the ring stood my opponent, the woman cast as the heroine of Kingston. She was an imposing older wrestler, a dark-skinned Jamaican powerhouse easily ten years my senior and several inches taller. The ring announcer introduced her as “Lady Nova, the pride of Jamaica!” to a thunderous ovation. Lady Nova soaked in the cheers, flexing her arms and playing to the crowd. She had an aura of confidence that made me feel very small. I remember noticing her thigh muscles and thinking, She’s strong. Stronger than me, probably. My mouth went dry.

From the opening bell, the match was a carefully scripted demolition of “Rose, the American Champion.” We had discussed the outline briefly backstage: I’d get a couple of flashy moves in early, and then Lady Nova would take over, dominating me before pinning me decisively. The idea was to make the local heroine (her) look strong and give the crowd a satisfying climax. I thought I was prepared, but I had vastly underestimated how it would feel to actually live through that script in real time.

The first minute or two went roughly as I hoped. We locked up in the center of the ring, and I managed to slip behind her with a quick go-behind and even took her down with a headlock takeover. There were some polite claps from the audience; a few fans seemed surprised that I, the rookie outsider, was momentarily out-wrestling their champion. Riding that tiny wave of approval, I hit the ropes and executed a dropkick that actually staggered Lady Nova backwards. My confidence flared, this was my moment! But it was fleeting. When I went for a second dropkick, Lady Nova swatted me aside like I was nothing. I crashed to the mat and from that point on, the match became a one-sided nightmare.

Lady Nova yanked me up by my ponytail, drawing a yelp from my lips that echoed over the gasps and cheers. “This ain’t America, baby!” she hissed before driving her knee hard into my midsection. I doubled over, the air rushing out of my lungs. She proceeded to whip me around the ring. I was thrown into turnbuckles, slammed onto the canvas, caught in holds that made my joints and muscles scream. The pain was real, but even more real was the shock of the crowd’s reaction. Far from silent sympathy, they were roaring with approval at each heavy blow I took. Every time Lady Nova imposed her will on me, the audience’s voice rose. I could hear them laughing when I stumbled, jeering when I cried out. A chant started: “No-va! No-va!” Thousands strong, celebrating my opponent’s dominance.

At one point, as I lay dazed on my back, I became aware of the arena’s heat. The tropical air was thick and sweltering, and under the spotlights I was drenched in sweat. My carefully applied rose perfume had vanished; all I smelled was the musk of my own perspiration and the canvas mat. My white outfit was now sticking to my skin, tinged gray with grime from the ring. I felt a trickle of sweat down my temple. Lady Nova hauled me up again and put me in a humiliating hold, twisting my arm and forcing me to my tiptoes. I must have whimpered in pain. She leaned in close and growled for my ears only, “You should have stayed home, little girl.” Then she raised her voice for the crowd, still gripping my wrist to keep me captive. “Is this your American champion?!” she shouted, parading me in a half-circle. The crowd roared in delight as my face burned with embarrassment. I even heard scattered insults from the fans, someone hollered “Beat that white girl!” and the phrase stuck in my mind like a barbed hook. It was a jarring moment: my identity as a white American woman was front and center, and it was being used to rev up the audience’s desire to see me humiliated.

My face was beet-red, a combination of physical exertion and sheer humiliation. Lady Nova wasn’t just defeating me; she was demeaning me. She delivered a stinging open-hand slap to my cheek that made the crowd go “Oooh!” in unison. I could practically feel my skin glowing hot where she struck me, and tears of pain sprung to my eyes. The noise of the audience had become a wall of sound, drums of laughter, shouts, maybe some derision in Jamaican patois that I couldn’t even understand. It was overwhelming. In that chaos, I felt a strange detachment for a split second, as if I were watching myself from outside my body: a young woman in white, caught in a storm of boos and cheers, flailing in the grip of a stronger woman who was feeding off the crowd’s energy. In that split second, I glimpsed a truth that would take me much longer to fully process: there was a kind of power in this humiliation.

Not for me, but for everyone else. The more pitiful and defeated I became, the more ecstatic the audience grew, and the more triumphant my opponent appeared. My humiliation was the fuel for their entertainment, a twisted alchemy of pain into spectacle.

The match stretched on around the 20-minute mark, though it felt like an eternity. Near the end, Lady Nova executed her finisher on me, a spinning powerslam that rattled my bones and I hit the mat hard. Mercifully, I think my body’s adrenaline dulled the pain by then, because I barely felt the impact. I was exhausted and battered. She could have pinned me right there, but she wasn’t done making a statement. In a final act of showmanship, Lady Nova grabbed the waistband of my trunks as I tried weakly to crawl away, and yanked. The rear of my white trunks jerked up painfully, wedging into me and momentarily exposing a glimpse of my backside to the howling spectators. A wave of laughter and hoots erupted; they found it hilarious. I was beyond mortified; my hands instinctively flew back to adjust my trunks, which only made me look more flustered. My opponent then placed her boot on my lower back and posed, flexing her muscles. The referee and crowd both counted loudly: “One…Two…Three!” he was counting me out in a mock pin as I lay face-down under her foot. It wasn’t even a formal pinfall in the usual way; it was a symbolic crushing. The match was effectively over; I had been utterly defeated and humiliated.

The final official pin (for formality’s sake) came a moment later. Lady Nova flipped my limp body over and casually lay across my chest with one hand pinning my shoulder. I was too weak and demoralized to do anything but wince. The referee’s hand hit the mat three times, and the bell rang to signal the end. It was done. She stood up as the victor to a massive ovation, and I remained on my back, staring at the arena lights blurrily with tears welling. My public shaming was complete, 3,000 people had just watched me be dismantled and belittled. As Lady Nova paraded around the ring, a few of her supporters in the front row actually bowed in mock respect to her and sneered at me. One man cackled and yelled in patois something about “Yankee going home in pieces.” I wish I didn’t understand it, but I did.

If this had been a movie, perhaps the defeated underdog would receive polite applause for her effort. Not here. My drubbing was the crowd’s delight. There were no consolations for the loser. Head spinning and cheeks wet (I hadn’t realized I’d started crying silently in those final moments), I rolled under the bottom rope. I clutched my arms around my chest, instinctively trying to cover myself, I felt exposed in every sense. Someone tossed a half-empty paper cup at me; liquid splashed my leg. It might have been beer, or just water. I flinched and hobbled away, stumbling up the aisle toward the back, doing my best not to break into a sob until I was out of sight.

That night initiated me into a reality of wrestling I never knew existed. I had heard the term “paying your dues,” but this felt like something else entirely, a ritual of degradation. In sociological terms, it was akin to a degradation ceremony, where a newcomer is publicly humiliated in front of others to mark a change of status. I entered that ring as a hopeful newcomer with a champion’s veneer; I left as a defeated fool, stripped (almost literally) of my dignity. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me even through the haze of pain: America’s so-called heroine had been ritually crushed by a local heroine in front of her new community. A reversal of the classic narrative, here, the outsider “good girl” was sacrificed to validate the pride of the local fans. My humiliation wasn’t an accident or a misstep, it was by design.

Backstage, I collapsed onto a folding chair, shaking from adrenaline comedown and shame. No one came to offer comfort. A couple of the other wrestlers passed by and gave me half-smirks or pats on the back that felt more patronizing than consoling. I bit my lip to stop it from quivering. The physical pain was considerable, my neck and back throbbed, and the wedgie from that trunk pull had left a burning discomfort on my skin. But it was the emotional pain that truly overwhelmed me. I wanted to hide, to disappear into the locker room floor. I kept replaying snippets of the match in my head: the crowd’s laughter, Nova’s foot on my back, that awful moment of being exposed to strangers. A heavy sense of humiliation settled in my chest.

In that very first night, I tasted what it meant to be utterly powerless and laughed at by a crowd. It was a bitter, unfamiliar flavor, humiliation mixed with adrenaline and strangely, it had an addictive quality too, though I couldn’t recognize that yet. What I did understand was that the joy and optimism I’d arrived with were already cracking. My wrestling dream had taken on a nightmarish tint. This was my baptism by fire: I had been baptized in humiliation. Little did I know, it was only the beginning of a long, repetitive cycle of defeat that would come to define my wrestling journey abroad.

IV. The Weekly Cycle of Defeat
One match would have been tough enough, but this was not a one-off humiliation, it became my weekly routine. After Kingston, our tour continued. We traveled through the Caribbean islands and into the Dominican Republic, staging wrestling shows in different towns. Every stop was a repeat performance of the same basic story: I, the visiting “American champion” in white, would face a new local challenger, and I would be beaten soundly in front of their home crowd. Different opponent, different venue, but always the same outcome, Rose loses. Rose gets “her ass kicked,” as the boys in the back put it. In wrestling jargon, I had become a pure jobber, one of those perpetual losers whose entire job is to make the real stars look good. My role was to be the foreign foil, the punching bag that traveling promoters could use to elevate their local talent.

I quickly learned that my victories were never part of the plan. Week after week, I took my place on the card, usually in a prominent match (sometimes even the semi-main event, ironically, because an “American title match” was treated as a special attraction). And week after week, I was pummeled, pinned, and paraded as the defeated outsider. It was as if each community we visited needed to enact the same ritual: the proud local heroine vanquishes the invading foreigner. I wasn’t just losing; I was losing in a manner designed to entertain the crowd as much as possible. My defeats were like a form of communal catharsis for the audience. They cheered their hometown wrestlers whooping the arrogant “yankee girl” and seemed to relish every second of it. In hindsight, I realize my drubbings served a cultural narrative. There was an implicit subtext of race and nationality in many of these bouts: a strong Black or brown local woman triumphing over a white American woman. Whether it was explicit or not, it added a layer of satisfaction for spectators who, perhaps, enjoyed seeing a symbol of American (and white) privilege get knocked down a peg.

Each match had its unique humiliations, and I could probably write a small book just cataloguing them. In one town in the Dominican Republic, I wrestled a powerhouse Latina veteran who called herself La Diabla. She was short but extremely muscular, built like a fire hydrant, and she absolutely manhandled me. She delighted the crowd by trapping me in a pretzel-like submission hold, a modified Boston crab combined with a choke that had me tapping out frantically. I’ll never forget tapping the mat, signaling my surrender, while she wouldn’t release me until the referee pretended to “struggle” to pry her off. The audience laughed at how desperately I was slapping the mat. When it was over, I was left writhing and clutching my neck. La Diabla didn’t just pin me; she made me beg. My submission, in halting Spanish no less (“¡Me rindo!” I cried, I surrender!), drew a huge pop from the crowd. They had effectively heard the proud American girl admit defeat in their language.

In another event, I was booked in a tag team match in a small arena outside San Juan, Puerto Rico. I teamed with a local male wrestler (a rookie like me, as it turned out) against two popular Puerto Rican veterans, one male, one female. The script there was that my partner would get incapacitated and I would be left alone with the two opponents. What followed was a choreographed two-on-one drubbing. I was thrown back and forth like a rag doll. At one point the male wrestler hoisted me onto his shoulders in a torture rack position while the female veteran mockingly patted my cheek and then slapped me. They finished me off with a double-team move: he held me up and she delivered a dropkick that sent me sprawling. I remember lying there as she placed her foot on my chest for the pin; she didn’t even bother to hook a leg. I stared at the ceiling, barely conscious, as the ref counted three. After the bell, just to drive home the indignity, the two opponents carried me out together, literally picking up my limp body, one holding my arms and the other my legs, and carting me up the aisle a few steps before dumping me on the ground. The crowd was howling with laughter at this spectacle of ultimate helplessness. I felt like nothing more than disposable baggage.

And yes, the trunks. The damned trunk-yanking became a signature humiliation in almost every match. Word must have gotten around among the regional wrestlers that “Rose wears these cute little white trunks that are easy to grab.” It became a running gag: whoever wrestled me would find an opportunity to grab the seat or waistband of my trunks and give a yank, eliciting a yelp from me and huge laughs from the audience. Sometimes it was just to drag me back from trying to crawl away, other times it was during a pin so that I’d struggle with my bottoms while getting pinned. It was mortifying every single time. I’d come backstage picking my wedgied outfit out of unmentionable places, while wrestlers cackled, “Nice underwear, Rose,” or “They almost saw what you had for breakfast, girl!” I started wearing additional opaque tights underneath after a while, just for a modicum of modesty, but the fans could still tell when my trunks were pulled into embarrassing positions. The visual of the pretty blonde’s bottoms being tugged became a highlight, to the point that I suspect some people came to shows expecting that spot specifically.

Looking back on it now with the eye of an analyst, I see that I was part of a longstanding pattern in wrestling. Many times in wrestling history, promoters have imported American wrestlers as villains or foils to be defeated by the local heroes. For example, in Japan’s early women’s wrestling boom, American women were regularly brought in only to lose to Japanese stars. I unwittingly had slotted into that same role, the foreign scapegoat who is built up just enough to be knocked down. Understanding this offers some intellectual comfort; it means what happened to me was bigger than me, a sort of cultural script being played out over and over. But at the time, living it week-to-week, it was hard to find any comfort. I felt like a fool caught in a loop of defeat.

My life became a cycle of anticipation and dread. Each week, I would arrive at a new venue, a sports hall, a fairground, a basketball court converted into a wrestling arena  and I’d see the local posters with my name on them: “Rose vs [Local Heroine] – Special Attraction!” They touted me as some kind of champion, but everyone in the locker room knew the truth. The locker room culture was merciless to an outsider like me. Some of the local wrestlers (particularly the women whose status I was there to enhance) were coldly professional, they didn’t go out of their way to bully me, but they weren’t exactly friendly. Others actively joined in a kind of hazing ritual that extended beyond the ring. They mocked my cheerful demeanor and the wholesome gimmick I portrayed. “Hey, America’s Sweetheart!” one guy would call out in a sing-song voice whenever I walked by, to snickers from others. They teased me about the rose perfume too; one night I couldn’t find my bottle of body spray, only to discover later that someone had emptied it out onto my street clothes. I came back to the locker room to the overwhelming scent of roses emanating from my bag and the sound of giggles around the corner. “Smell that? Rose was here,” I heard one of the girls joke.

Physical pranks happened as well. More than once, as I was changing after a match, a veteran female wrestler would snap my bra strap or smack my backside with a towel, saying, “Just helping you remember the hits you took out there, darling.” It was the kind of locker room bullying that I was in no position to oppose. I’d force a smile or a little laugh, trying to pretend I was in on the joke, but inside I was humiliated all over again. I learned to change in a corner facing the wall when possible, to avoid giving anyone an easy target.

Perhaps the worst were the condescending “pep talks.” After yet another loss in Haiti (where the local crowd had a vulgar chant that I later learned translated to something like “U.S. lose!” in Creole), I was nursing a bruised knee backstage. A group of wrestlers, including the guy who had wrestled in the match before mine were chatting near me. One of them, a burly middle-aged wrestler who’d been around forever, looked at me and chuckled. “You know your role now, right?” he said loudly, making sure everyone could hear. I gave him a puzzled look. He repeated, slower: “Know your role.” I half-nodded, not sure what to say. He continued, voice dripping with a mix of sarcasm and advice, “Your role is to come here and make us look good. Period. Don’t go thinking you’re a real champion or something.” I felt my face flush and mumbled something like, “Yes sir.” A couple of others snickered. That phrase stuck with me bitterly: know your role. It was clear that in their eyes, my role was the loser, the joke. Any remaining illusions I had about being the heroine of this story were thoroughly shattered.

As the weeks went on, a numbing predictability set in. I would enter each match with a faint glimmer of hope, maybe this time I won’t be utterly embarrassed, maybe I’ll be allowed a little dignity. But every time, that hope was swiftly extinguished. The trauma of each defeat didn’t just evaporate; it accumulated. I started having trouble sleeping, replaying each painful bump and each mocking laugh in my dreams. Before each show, I’d get a cramp of anxiety in my stomach, knowing what was coming. Humiliation became a routine, my body almost expected the pain and embarrassment as a matter of course.

Yet, strangely, I kept going. Part of it was contractual or financial. I needed the little money I was getting to justify staying out there (and the promoter always dangled the promise of “big payoff next time, trust me”). Part of it was pride; I didn’t want to run home defeated, as if proving all those bullies right. But part of it, I must confess, was something else: something like a morbid curiosity or even a twisted compulsion. There was an atmosphere to these rituals of defeat that, while excruciating, also made me feel strangely vital to the show. The crowds were coming to see me (albeit to see me beaten). In a perverse way, I was important. At the bottom of the wrestling hierarchy, I was still a key component of the performance. This realization was not fully conscious at the time, back then I mostly felt miserable, but looking back I can see the faint threads of understanding forming. I was being broken down, yes, but I was also being conditioned, bit by bit, to find meaning in that breakdown.

For the moment, however, what dominated my world was the pain, the shame, and the loneliness. Every week I’d limp back to the locker room, peel off my sweaty, stained white gear, and fight the urge to cry in the shower. Then I’d get up and do it all over again in the next town. I was living the same story on a loop: The wrestler who always lost, the American rose trampled for everyone’s enjoyment. It was as if Rose had become a walking punchline, and I was trapped inside her, unsure how to escape.

V. Backstage Realities
While the fans only saw the public spectacle of my defeats, there was another layer of humiliation unfolding backstage and inside me. I lived in a state of constant displacement. I was a stranger in every locker room, the only American in a troupe of locals who had their own bonds, their own rhythms. We would travel to a new city, set up for the show, perform this cruel pageant where I’m thrashed and embarrassed, then pack up and move on. I never stayed long enough in one place to form any real connections outside the wrestling crew, and within the crew I was never truly welcome. I was a tool—useful, perhaps, but not one of “them.”

The promoters, especially Winston who had recruited me, treated me with a polite indifference. As long as I did my job (losing spectacularly) and didn’t complain too loudly, they were content. In their eyes, I was a means to an end: a body to be thrown around, a pretty face to put on the poster, and a scapegoat for the hometown favorites. After one particularly rough night (where I’d been left with a bruised rib from a mistimed kick), I sought out Winston. I mustered the courage to ask if I could maybe get a win sometime soon, or at least not be made to look so foolish every show. Winston gave me a patronizing smile and threw an arm over my shoulder. “Sweetheart, you’re doing great,” he said in a tone one might use for a child. “They love seeing you out there. This is what I brought you for!” I pressed, saying it was getting hard on me, and he chuckled as if I had made a joke. “Hard? C’mon, you’re a star! Don’t you hear the crowd? They’re eating it up. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Then a gentle pat on my cheek and he was off to talk to someone else. That was the extent of the promoter’s concern for my well-being. In that moment, I felt utterly foolish for having trusted his promises in the first place. He didn’t see me as an up-and-comer or even as a human being struggling; he saw me as an investment that was paying off just fine.

Every night coming back through the curtain after my match, I’d see the eyes of the other wrestlers on me. Some were amused, some indifferent. To them, I was the naïve American girl getting what she deserved for thinking she could waltz in here. My own psychology took a beating right alongside my body. I started to believe the things they said about me. That I was a foreigner who had no business holding an imaginary “championship.” That I was a fool for smiling through the pain and saying “thank you” after matches. Indeed, I clung to my polite upbringing perhaps too rigidly at first, I’d shake my opponent’s hand backstage and thank them for the match, no matter how cruelly they’d treated me in the ring. This only made me look more pathetic. A few of them would laugh in my face. “You thanking me for whooping your ass?” one woman guffawed, not even bothering to shake the hand I had extended. After a while, I stopped trying to thank anyone. I’d just duck my head and quickly find a corner to change out of my gear.

The hazing in the locker room became a backdrop hum of my life. It wasn’t constant physical bullying, but it was a relentless psychological grind. The veteran wrestlers would tell jokes about me within earshot. In Spanish or patois, I’d catch phrases like “dumb blonde” or “la tonta” (the fool) thrown around, followed by snickers. If I approached a group mid-conversation, they’d often fall silent or disperse, making it clear I wasn’t welcome. I was isolated by the simple fact that I had no allies there. Even the few younger wrestlers who weren’t unkind kept their distance; associating with the bottom of the pecking order could hurt their own standing.

Worse, I was becoming a punchline even when I wasn’t around. I found this out one day when I overheard two local wrestlers at catering (the table with food backstage). They hadn’t noticed me around the corner. One said in Spanish, “Who’s she getting destroyed by tonight?” The other answered with the name of my opponent and added, laughing, “Poor Rose will be picking her wedgie again.” The first responded, “At least we get a good view, eh?” They both laughed, a crude little laugh. I remember slinking away, my face hot. They were casually discussing me like I was not a colleague but rather a recurring gag on a TV show.

That particular comment drove home how the trunk-yanking and exposure had become a running joke. I felt like any shred of dignity I tried to hold onto was yanked away along with those white trunks each week. It’s hard to overstate how that repeated act — as minor as a wedgie might sound — eroded my sense of self. In the ring, when an opponent would grab my trunks, it was a literal violation of my personal space and modesty. The crowd would roar and I’d blush deeply, skin crawling with embarrassment. Backstage, the wrestlers turned it into a game, sometimes grabbing at my waistband in mock mimicry as I walked by, or calling out “Oops, don’t slip!” if I bent over to tie my boot laces, hinting they could see down my top. Every instance of this made me feel less like a trained athlete and more like a prop, a scantily clad prop whose body was available for ridicule. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me even then: stripping down my ring attire was their way of stripping away my personhood, reducing “Rose the Champion” into just a butt of jokes. Each yank of my trunks in front of all those people was like tearing off a piece of the identity I had tried to build.

Through all of this, I felt powerless. I had zero leverage to change my situation. I was in foreign countries, under sketchy short-term contracts (more like handshake deals) with promoters who could abandon me on a whim. If I protested too much or refused to do a match, I had no doubt I’d be kicked off the tour and left stranded with no airfare home. So I complied with every booking, every script, no matter how degrading. My optimism, which had been so abundant at the start, was now something of a joke itself. I became hesitant to show any enthusiasm because whenever I did, someone would make a snide remark. If I said, “Maybe tonight I can put on a great show,” someone would snicker, “Yeah, a great show of you getting your ass handed to you.” If I tried to psyche myself up with positive talk, a veteran might overhear and roll his eyes, “Listen to Miss America here, thinking she’s gonna win.” Eventually I just stayed quiet, keeping any hopes or ideas to myself, since sharing them only invited scorn.

Loneliness wrapped around me like a cloak. Outside of the wrestling ring, I was a young woman far from home, hopping between cheap motels and guesthouses. I had no traveling companion or confidant. My phone calls home were brief (international calls were expensive, and I couldn’t exactly vent to my parents about the R-rated details of my matches). I remember sitting on a lumpy hotel bed in Santo Domingo after a show, dialing my mother’s number from a calling card. She asked how things were going and I forced cheer into my voice: “Oh, it’s amazing. I’m learning a lot. The crowds are really into it!” I reported no injuries, no problems. After hanging up, I stared at the cracked ceiling and felt tears blur my eyes. It struck me that night how utterly alone I was. I couldn’t tell my family the truth; I didn’t want them to worry or say “we told you so.” I had no friends here to confide in. My journal became my only outlet. By the weak light of a bedside lamp, I would scribble pages and pages about what I felt. Confusion, anger, shame. Those journals read like letters from someone losing faith in themselves.

Travel days were perhaps the hardest for my psyche. I’d be on a bus or a plane with the rest of the crew, and everyone would be chattering in Spanish or Creole or Patois. I’d be reading a book or a magazine, trying to disappear into the background. Sometimes I’d catch a few of them glancing my way, perhaps wondering if I understood what they were saying about me (usually I didn’t fully, but I could guess the gist). There were nights after shows where the roster went out together to a bar or a late dinner. I was seldom invited explicitly, but I’d tag along just to not sit alone in a hotel. Even then, I felt like a ghost among them. I’d nurse a drink and nod along while they recounted funny moments from the show (almost always highlighting how one of them “taught the gringa a lesson” in the ring, eliciting laughter). I became fluent in smiling politely while my heart ached inside.

In such an environment, I began to question everything about myself. Impostor syndrome hit me hard. I thought, “Maybe I’m not a real wrestler at all. Real wrestlers win matches and have respect. I’m just a joke.” The others reinforced this by treating me as an inferior. If there was a cramped van ride, I’d often get crammed in the worst seat or have luggage dumped onto my lap, small signs of disrespect that accumulated. It felt like I was sinking deeper into a hole of irrelevance, my identity consumed by the role of loser.

There’s a concept I’d learn later in my studies: role engulfment. It’s when one role in your life becomes so dominant that it erases all others, defining your entire identity. That was happening to me. I wasn’t a young woman with dreams or a friendly colleague in the eyes of those around me, I was just “La Jobber Americana”, the American jobber, the loser. Over time, I too started to see myself that way, even outside the ring. I carried the shame with me in how I walked, how I avoided eye contact, how I acquiesced to every demand. The foreign fool who left home seeking glory and found only ridicule. That narrative played on loop in my mind during many lonely nights.

If all this sounds bleak, it’s because it was. Those backstage realities, the indifference of promoters, the mockery of peers, and the gnawing solitude were arguably worse than the physical abuse in the ring. Bruises heal faster than broken confidence. And at this point in my journey, my confidence was in tatters. Yet, amid this despair, a strange resilience was forming in me (though I couldn’t recognize it yet). I got up each day, I laced those boots, I stepped into the ring knowing I’d be humiliated again and I did it anyway. There’s a kind of quiet power in that persistence, a seed of something that would bloom much later when I began to unpack the experience and turn it into wisdom.

VI. The Gaze & the Body
All the while, as I was enduring these beatings and humiliations, I became acutely aware of how my body was being perceived and used. In professional wrestling, especially in those days and in those places, a woman’s body was often treated as a commodity, a tool for drawing eyes and eliciting reactions, whether cheers, jeers, or leers. I entered the ring in my skimpy white outfit to play the wholesome heroine, but that outfit, that persona, also invited a certain kind of gaze. The predominantly male audiences couldn’t miss that I was presented as a sexualized figure: the blonde American in tight, shiny trunks. When I made my entrances, I’d hear catcalls and wolf-whistles amidst the crowd noise. Men in the front rows would blatantly rake their eyes over me. A few times, while I walked around the ring before the bout, I felt hands from the audience pat or grab at me (security was lax at some venues and fans would lean right over the guardrails). I’d flinch and step away, but I had to keep smiling as Rose, the friendly good girl, as if nothing happened. My body was public property for those few minutes or at least that’s how the fans acted.

Once the match began, that gaze didn’t disappear; it just shifted. The fans, men and women alike, watched my body get tossed and contorted. I was painfully aware that every time my opponent twisted me into a compromising position or lifted me up, parts of my body were on display. When I was bent backwards over a knee in a submission hold, I could hear male fans hollering not about my pain but about how it made my chest stick out. When my trunks inevitably rode up, exposing a bit of rear end, there’d be hoots of approval. It was mortifying to sense that even as I was suffering, some were viewing it through a sexual lens. I realized that for some spectators, this was not just a morality play of good vs. evil, it was also a form of sexual spectacle. Violence and sexual titillation were wrapped up together in their experience of my matches.

I began to sense a strange duality in the physical interactions I had in the ring. On the surface, it was violence: one woman hurting another. But there is an underlying intimacy to wrestling that’s hard to describe. My opponents’ hands were on my body, their sweat mingled with mine, their limbs entwined with mine in holds. They would sometimes speak in my ear – usually instructions or taunts – their breath literally on my skin. In another context, some of those moments could almost be tender or erotic, two bodies in tight contact, breathing hard. Of course, in reality it was aggression, domination, power play. But I couldn’t help later reflecting on how blurred the line can become. As a performer, I was required to sell the idea that this was a fight, but the very nature of a wrestling “fight” meant performing choreographed moves that often resembled a kind of intense dance or even, at times, a rough facsimile of a lover’s embrace. Being hoisted over a man’s shoulder, or straddled by a woman pinning me, or carried out in someone’s arms, these are poses that could be found in romance or fetish art, yet here they were used to demean.

The audience’s reaction often had an undercurrent of the erotic, especially the male portion of the crowd. I could tell some of the men were enjoying the spectacle of my humiliation in a way that wasn’t just about cheering their local heroine. There was a glint in some eyes, a crude comment here or there about my body. “I’ll comfort you after, baby!” I heard one man yell with a laugh as I limped away from a match. To them, I wasn’t just a defeated wrestler; I was a sex object in distress, a combination that, disturbingly, some people find arousing. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but later I learned that there's actually a known fetish for this kind of scenario. Some fans (often men) are specifically drawn to seeing a wrestler – especially a woman – get dominated and humiliated in the ring. The turn-on for them is the powerlessness and degradation of the attractive body on display. One commentator in an article I read years later described how he “loved seeing [jobbers] beat up, slammed, thrown around, slapped, humiliated”. He even admitted it wasn’t about sexual orientation; it was the humiliation itself that was the draw. That revelation clicked a piece of the puzzle into place for me: a portion of my audience may have been essentially fetishizing my beatdowns. My pain was their pleasure, quite literally.

It wasn’t only men who watched me, though. There were always some women in the audience too, and I often wondered what they saw in those matches. Did they see me as a symbol of prissy American arrogance getting its comeuppance? Or did they empathize with me as a fellow woman being brutalized and sexualized? Perhaps both, depending on the individual. I do recall subtle differences in the female gaze. Some women looked at me with a sort of pity or concern. Their faces would wince when I took a hard fall. Others seemed to cheer just as loudly for their local heroine destroying me, maybe out of national pride or simply because I was cast as the opponent. But there were also a few occasions that surprised me. After one show, as I was gingerly walking to the locker room, a local young woman, probably in her twenties, approached me. She spoke softly, in halting English, and said, “You’re very brave. They like to see you lose, but I cheer for you.” She gave me a quick, shy hug. I was so taken aback that I nearly broke into tears on the spot. That small gesture told me that at least to her, I wasn’t just a joke or a sex object; I was someone she admired for enduring what I did. Perhaps she read my body not as something to be objectified, but as a symbol of perseverance or an underdog spirit.

Another layer to this complex gaze: the homoerotic undertones of what we were doing. Officially, the wrestling world I was in was very conservative and heterosexist. The stories were always man vs man, woman vs woman, straightforward battles of strength or nationalism or good vs evil. Romance angles, if any, were strictly boy-girl. Yet, what was happening in front of everyone’s eyes? Two women, clad in minimal, skin-tight clothing, were entangled in a fierce physical struggle. There’s a reason that academic observers have noted wrestling’s erotic dimension. As one cultural scholar put it, wrestling (and the bodybuilding imagery around it) has a long history of serving as a kind of covert erotica, especially for gay audiences. This applies to women’s wrestling too. I suspect some portion of the crowd, maybe closeted, maybe not even fully conscious of it, derived a kind of thrill from watching a dominant woman handle another woman’s body so forcefully. There were moments in my matches where the line between fighting and a sort of aggressive foreplay might appear blurred to an outsider: say, when Lady Nova pinned me by sitting astride my chest, or when La Diabla dragged me by my hair into a compromising position. Officially, these were acts of domination to show my humiliation. Unofficially, they had a charge to them, a muscular woman towering over a scantily-clad, subdued victim. It tapped into something primal and visual.

The irony is that the surface narrative was traditional, the virtuous girl punished by the villain, essentially reinforcing a kind of moral order (don’t be naive, don’t be an outsider challenging the status quo). But the subtext could be subversive, a sort of homoerotic power display that nobody would openly acknowledge. I sometimes wonder how many people in those crowds or later watching bootleg recordings of the matches were enjoying it on multiple levels: the official story and the unsaid fantasy beneath.

And what about me, the person inside that spectacle? How did all this sexualization and gazing affect me internally? It’s complicated. At the time, I mostly felt shame. I’d never been shy about my looks. I knew I was fit and attractive enough by conventional standards, and I was okay using that in my presentation. But I wanted to be respected as an athlete and a performer, not just leered at. Being treated like a piece of meat, a “sexy loser”, really ate at my self-esteem. I would cover myself up with a towel as soon as I got backstage, as if that could ward off the lingering stares. I felt this odd disconnect: the persona “Rose” was supposed to be proud and bright, comfortable in her skin, even a bit flirty in that All-American way. But I increasingly felt self-conscious and small. It was as if every wandering eye, every catcall, every intrusive camera flash was chipping away at the confidence I once had about my body. I started to feel almost ashamed of my curves and muscles because they seemed to invite humiliation. There were nights I’d stare in the mirror and resent the very body I’d built through bodybuilding, the strong legs and broad shoulders, because somehow they weren’t saving me from being physically overpowered or sexually objectified; instead, they were being put on display as part of the spectacle of my defeat.

However, in hindsight, I can also analyze this with a bit more nuance. My body was the battleground for all these conflicting gazes and meanings. It was fetishized and empowered and degraded all at once. That is a lot for a young woman to process. I didn’t have the tools then to articulate it, but later I understood: what was happening to me was not just physical or emotional, but existential. My bodily autonomy, my identity, they were being constantly challenged in that ring. And perhaps, at some deep level, enduring that changed how I related to my own body and to concepts of power and desire. I would come to see parallels between what I experienced and things like BDSM dynamics or exposure therapy, where controlled powerlessness can lead to surprising psychological outcomes. At the time, though, I only knew that stepping into the ring meant subjecting myself to an intense microscope of the gaze, one that saw me as heroine, villainess, sex object, victim, and entertainer all in one. It was exhausting in ways I am still finding words for.

In the end, the contradictions were stark: outwardly, the storyline was simple and conservative (good girl loses to bad girl, crowd happy). But under the surface, a dozen subplots played out about gender, sexuality, power, and spectatorship. I was too busy surviving it to fully grasp it then. But the impressions were etched into me: every whistle, every lingering stare, every time an opponent’s hand lingered a second too long on my body during a pin, these sensations and moments lodged in my psyche. They would resurface years later when I began to unpack the trauma and, oddly, the insight that came with it.

For now, suffice to say that my body was not solely mine in those moments in the ring. It belonged to the match, to the crowd, to the narrative being woven. It was a tool for my opponent to use, a canvas on which the promoters painted a story of defeat, and an object for some spectators’ fantasies. Coming to terms with that reality was another layer of the humiliation, one that cut deeper than any single slap or slam.

VII. Humiliation as Total Institution
By the latter part of my tour, the humiliation had become complete and all-encompassing. It wasn’t just that I was losing wrestling matches, I was being diminished as a person on multiple levels. The entire environment functioned like a machine designed to strip me down. My race, my gender, my personality, all became targets within this ongoing ordeal. I was being humiliated not just as "the loser", but very specifically as a white American woman who had dared to play heroine on someone else’s turf. The audiences and even my colleagues took a special satisfaction in seeing me, a blonde Yankee “do-gooder,” brought low. It was a perverse inversion of historical power dynamics: perhaps in another era the white foreigner might have been lionized, but here she was ritually humbled by local heroes of color. I could feel it in those moments like when a wrestler would yank me by my hair and drag me around, the crowd’s roaring approval carried an undercurrent of “Put her in her place!” Whether that place was because I was an outsider, or because I was a woman who seemed too full of sunshine, or both, hardly mattered. I represented something they wanted to see smashed. And smashed I was, over and over.

This process didn’t stay confined to the ring. It engulfed my entire identity. The persona of “Rose the perennial jobber” effectively devoured the real me. I had no opportunity to be anything else. Day after day, week after week, I was the loser, the butt of jokes, the example of weakness. In psychological terms, my role became what sociologists call a “master role” – it superseded all other aspects of who I was. I was experiencing role engulfment: the boundaries between the character I played and the person I felt myself to be disappeared. Initially, I used to pep-talk myself in private: “They’re underestimating you. You know you’re actually strong. You’ll get through this and prove yourself.” But as the defeats piled up, that inner voice changed. It started agreeing with the outer world: “Face it, you’re nothing but a loser. This is who you are.”

The bullying mantra of “know your role” hammered that identity home. I heard it so many times that it echoed in my head even when I was alone. My impostor syndrome (that feeling I didn’t belong or deserve any success) transformed into something more devastating: a conviction that the only thing I did deserve was this shame. The veterans’ ridicule, the promoters’ neglect, the fans’ scorn, they all reinforced what I was starting to accept as truth. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see Dr. Rose Valentine (the name I’d one day earn through hard academic work) nor even the aspiring wrestler I once was; I saw “the girl who always loses,” a clown in a white costume that everyone laughed at. It’s frightening how quickly and thoroughly that took over my self-image.

This engulfing role brought with it a kind of learned helplessness. In the beginning, I would think of ways to maybe improve my situation, perhaps by training harder, or suggesting new storylines, or finding an ally. But soon I stopped trying. I would show up, do as I was told, take my beating, and slink away. I resigned myself to the notion that nothing I did would change the outcome. That resignation is one of humiliation’s most pernicious effects. It robbed me of initiative and voice. I became almost meek outside the ring, as if pre-emptively apologizing for my own presence. I didn’t speak up about late payments or unsafe moves that hurt me, because I felt I had no right. My naïveté was thoroughly shattered; I now understood I was in a system that was exploiting me, but I felt powerless to escape it.

Living in that constant state of defeat was in many ways traumatic. And like any trauma that repeats, it left a deep imprint. Each weekly humiliation wasn’t isolated; they accumulated and intertwined, forming something like a continuous traumatic stress. The best way I can describe it is that I was inside a total institution of humiliation. My entire world – physically, socially, psychologically – was organized around my abasement. In a classic total institution (like a prison or military boot camp, as Erving Goffman describes), you get systematically broken down through degradation ceremonies and loss of autonomy. That is exactly what was happening to me, albeit in the bizarre context of pro wrestling. My "degradation ceremonies" were those public squash matches and the post-match mockeries. My autonomy was nearly zero: I went where the promoter sent me, wore what costume was given, lost how I was told to lose. Even my emotions felt controlled. I was expected to smile and play brave until the moment I was to portray agony and shame. The humiliations were ritualized, following a script but still deeply personal in their impact. And like a prisoner eventually internalizes a prisoner identity, I had internalized the identity of defeated fool.

I recall a particularly low point that encapsulated how far I’d sunk. It was after a show in a small town in the Dominican Republic. I had lost (as usual), but that night something in me cracked. Back at the dingy hotel, I stepped into the shower to wash off the sweat and grime. As the cold water hit me (there was no hot water), I suddenly started sobbing uncontrollably. It was as if all the humiliation of the past months was pouring out at once. I slid down to the floor of the shower, hugging my knees, water and tears mingling on my skin. In that moment, I felt like I had died inside, the optimistic, adventurous girl who flew out from home was gone. What remained was a hollow shell who only knew how to lose and be laughed at. I cried until there were no tears left, then sat there trembling, thinking, “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”

That breakdown was the beginning of the end for “Rose” the wrestler. Shortly after, I informed Winston I was done with the tour once our agreed bookings were fulfilled. He barely protested, I suspect he knew the well was running dry, and perhaps there were other naïve youngsters he could recruit next. I wrestled my last scheduled match (another humiliating loss, though by then I was numb to the embarrassment) and left. I wish I could say I left in a blaze of glory or with some closure, but I didn’t. My final match in Mexico City wasn’t even in front of a huge crowd; it was a middling show in a shabby arena. I got pinned after a token effort. A few fans clapped for me out of pity as I hobbled away, but most were already looking to the next bout. There was no farewell ceremony, no acknowledgement, the character Rose simply vanished from their storyline, as many jobbers do.

When I finally boarded a plane back home, I felt like a survivor crawling out of wreckage. Physically, I was banged up, sporting a few scars and probably a minor concussion or two, but nothing permanent. Psychologically, though, I was a different person. I had entered this journey an exuberant, trusting rookie with big dreams. I was returning a humbled, disillusioned young woman who had seen the dark underbelly of her dream industry. The dream of stardom didn’t just fade; it was actively beaten out of me. In its place was a hard-earned lesson in exploitation: I learned how a business (and people) can chew someone up and spit them out when it serves their purposes. I learned what it felt like to be on the absolute lowest rung of power, to be the one everyone else could step on to lift themselves higher.

It’s a harsh way to learn, but learn I did. The naïve part of me that believed all promoters’ promises and assumed good sportsmanship was effectively destroyed. I now understood the realities of power: I had none, others had it over me, and they used it freely. At age 22, I had gone through something akin to a war (at least on an emotional level). I came home not with glory and money, but with scars and a head full of conflicted emotions. Humiliation had been my constant companion for those months abroad, and it would continue to haunt me in memory. But as painful as it was, it also set the stage for who I would become next. I often think of a line I encountered later in my studies: “That which crushes the flower’s petals feeds the soil.” I was the flower – the rose – that had been crushed. But in time, the very experience of being crushed would indeed feed the soil of my growth, in ways I could not yet imagine.

VIII. Survival & Reframing
I returned home battered in spirit, yet I did not consider myself completely defeated as a human being. Paradoxically, even as humiliation had nearly broken me, a part of me had also hardened or maybe adapted to it. In the immediate aftermath, I carried a great deal of shame, not just shame from what had been done to me, but a weird shame about my own endurance of it. I would ask myself, “Why did you keep going out there? Why didn’t you run after the first night?” The truth is, something deep inside me compelled me to return to that ring again and again, to endure the pain and embarrassment. At first, I thought it was just stubbornness or the hope that things would improve. But later I wondered if there was also an element of a phenomenon psychologists call “benign masochism.” That is, finding a strange pleasure or satisfaction in experiences that are painful or scary but ultimately safe. It sounds twisted to frame it that way, but I have to be honest: on some level, I derived something from surviving each ordeal. Each time I got through a match, lying on the mat in agony as the crowd roared, a part of me was actually proud that I hadn’t quit halfway. I’d think, “They threw everything at me, embarrassed me completely, and yet I’m still here. I took it.” There was a grim satisfaction in that.

This is not to say I liked being humiliated. I hated it. But like a runner might hate the burn in her legs yet relish it as proof of pushing boundaries, I suspect I started to get a kind of perverse affirmation from pushing my limits of humiliation tolerance. It’s a difficult thing to admit that there might have been an inkling of “enjoyment” buried in all that misery but recognizing it was key to my healing later. I realized I wasn’t purely a passive victim; some part of me was an active participant, maybe even seeking a form of validation through enduring hardship. The audience’s derision was not the validation I wanted, of course, but in my own mind, enduring it became a proof of my toughness. This hints at the line between pain and pleasure that benign masochism addresses. Just as some people get a thrill from the pain of a hot chili or a deep-tissue massage that “hurts so good,” I was possibly getting a psychological thrill (or at least a sense of purpose) from withstanding humiliation that would break most people. It’s a complicated, somewhat disturbing realization that I might have had a slight masochistic streak, emotionally speaking, that kept me going back for more.

Another critical reframing came when I started to view what I went through as not just humiliation but a performance. In those days on tour, I was so immersed in the role of loser that I rarely stepped back to consider the craft I was honing. But later, with distance, I recognized that I had become exceptionally good at a core aspect of professional wrestling: selling the action. “Selling” means reacting convincingly to moves, portraying pain, making the audience believe in the contest. And I had been selling my heart out every single match. In fact, the intensity of those matches forced me to develop what I half-jokingly call “PhD-level selling skills.” I learned to modulate my screams, facial expressions, and body language to elicit maximum sympathy (or schadenfreude) from the crowd. I learned how to take a brutal slam in a way that looked devastating but minimized actual injury, a skill that took both athleticism and acting. I learned little tricks, like how to stagger with a jelly-leg walk that conveyed dazed defeat, or how to time my gasps on the microphone just right when saying “I give up” to make it dramatic.

These are skills, and they might not have developed so sharply had I not been put through the wringer. I certainly didn’t appreciate it at the time, but in hindsight I can take pride in the professionalism and craft I exhibited. Even in the worst of circumstances, I cared about doing my job well. If I was slated to be crushed, I thought, then damn it, I’d make sure the crowd was entertained by my crushing. There’s a kind of dignity in that, oddly enough. I wasn’t winning trophies, but I was earning a reputation (at least among those in the know) as someone who could “make others look like a million bucks.” In fact, a quiet turning point came after a match in Puerto Rico when the woman who had just pinned me – a seasoned wrestler respected in the region – whispered to me during the referee’s three-count, “Good job, chica.” Later in the locker room she passed me and, almost begrudgingly, said, “You sell really well.” It was the closest thing to a compliment I got from a peer on that tour. And I held onto that comment like a lifeline. It meant that beneath the power imbalance and bullying, there was a recognition of my skill. I wasn’t utterly worthless; I was contributing to the show in a vital way.

Understanding this gave me a new perspective: my humiliation was not entirely a one-way street. It was a performance in which I was a cooperative agent. Yes, I was on the receiving end, but I was also an actor hitting my cues. The outcomes were scripted; I was helping execute those scripts effectively. This realization was incredibly important. It allowed me to reclaim some sense of agency. I could say, “I was part of making those moments happen. I wasn’t just a victim; I was a performer, even an artist in a painful drama.”

Moreover, I came to appreciate the deep cooperation involved in wrestling, even in these lopsided squash matches. For an opponent to throw me safely, I had to jump and rotate just right. For them to apply a hold without actually injuring me, I had to position my body cooperatively and sometimes even suggest the move by my placement. We were working together, even when it looked like sheer domination. There’s a kind of trust in that. It’s strange to talk about trust when recounting how people humiliated me, but between the ropes, a certain trust must exist for both wrestlers to walk out intact. For example, when Lady Nova yanked my trunks and posed, she wasn’t trying to truly expose or violate me, she did it just enough for the comic effect, then subtly let the elastic snap back. We never talked about it, but she knew my limits physically. In retrospect, I recognize those small mercies and professional courtesies.

Acknowledging my complicity in the spectacle of my own humiliation was a breakthrough. It lifted some of the burden of shame off my shoulders. It was no longer, “I was weak and they did this to me,” but rather, “I participated in a show that required me to portray weakness.” That distinction is huge. It’s the difference between seeing yourself as a perpetual victim versus as someone who made choices (albeit under pressure) for the sake of a performance. I chose to continue. I chose to play the role fully. At any point I could have left (and eventually I did), but while I stayed, I committed to the role. Realizing that gave me a measure of pride back. Twisted as it may sound, I became proud of how well I lost.

I even came across a quote later from a wrestler who discussed the psychology of being the loser. He said, “Maybe being a jobber is having the power to give up the power.”. That resonated deeply. By surrendering night after night, by giving up my power in the ring, I was actually exercising a form of power, the power to elevate others, the power to fulfill what was asked of me, the power to endure. That mindset, that there was empowerment in my very powerlessness, became key in how I processed the whole experience later on. It’s a paradox, but a liberating one: I found power within my humiliation. Not power in the conventional sense, but the power of survival, of cooperation, of being the one who says, “Yes, I’ll lose and I’ll make you look great in the process.”

Back then, I didn’t articulate these things clearly. Survival was more instinctual. I took it one day at a time, trying to find small silver linings: a kind word from a fan, a nod of respect from an opponent, a personal record of how long I lasted before submission. But those small threads were what kept me from utterly falling apart. They were the beginnings of a reframing that would blossom much later when I revisited these memories with more knowledge and compassion for myself.

In the immediate aftermath of my return, I was just trying to get back on my feet emotionally. I stepped away from wrestling entirely. I couldn’t watch it on TV for a while; it gave me anxiety and flashbacks. Instead, I threw myself into something new. I went back to university to finish my degree, which I had dropped out of to chase wrestling. This was the start of me rebuilding. In the classroom, no one knew or cared that I had been a pro wrestler. I was just Rose (well, my real name, but let’s keep Rose here). That anonymity was a balm. It allowed me to slowly reclaim an identity outside the ring.

Yet, even as I tried to move on, the echoes of that experience stayed with me. I would catch myself applying lessons unconsciously: For instance, I became unflappable in seminar debates. After you’ve had 3,000 people laugh at you in a stadium, a snarky classmate is nothing! My tolerance for embarrassment in everyday life was oddly high. I also noticed I had a keen sensitivity to others who were being slighted or bullied; I’d jump to defend an underdog classmate during discussions. It was like my humiliation radar was always on. I understood what it felt like to be the low one in the hierarchy, and I couldn’t stand seeing it happen to someone else in any context.

These were signs that I was not just surviving but transforming my experience into something meaningful. Though I didn’t fully realize it yet, I was already on the path of reframing my humiliation, seeing in it the threads of resilience, skill, and even a strange species of courage. I had been to the bottom. I had survived. And now, I was inching my way back up, carrying with me the hard-won knowledge of what it means to lose everything and still stand back up.

IX. Psychological Aftermath
In the years after hanging up my boots, I underwent a profound psychological transformation. I channeled the intense experiences I had been through into a new purpose. I went to graduate school in psychology, driven in no small part by a desire to understand what had happened to me, to name it, to make sense of it, and ultimately to help others who had faced their own traumas and humiliations. Indeed, I became a therapist, specializing in trauma and recovery. On the surface, it’s a far cry from pro wrestling, but in a deeper sense it felt like a natural evolution. I had descended into the depths of powerlessness and shame; now I was determined to guide others out of similar darkness.

With time and education, I gained a language for what I had experienced. I learned about psychological trauma, how a sense of life threat or violation can fragment one’s identity and worldview. Humiliation, I discovered, is often a core wound in trauma survivors. People who have been abused or degraded frequently echo the feelings I knew so well: loss of trust, feelings of helplessness, deep-seated shame. As I sat with clients and heard their stories of being bullied, or of surviving domestic abuse, or enduring any form of soul-crushing humiliation, I felt an acute empathy. I could feel their pain in my bones, because I had lived a version of it. Of course, every trauma is unique, I would never claim my journey encompassed the totality of another’s. But those common threads of fear, shame, and powerlessness were familiar territory to me. In a way, my own experience became a compass in the therapy room. I could recognize the flicker of humiliation in a client’s downcast eyes or the quiver in their voice when recounting an incident. And I knew some of the terrain of the long road to recovery, because I had walked it myself.

One of the key insights I bring to my work (and to my ongoing self-reflection) is the idea that humiliation, like other traumas, can be survived and even transformed. Research in psychology shows that trauma doesn’t automatically destroy a person; in fact, many people find positive growth in the aftermath of adversity. There’s a term for it: post-traumatic growth. I realized that my own ordeal had, paradoxically, enriched me with certain strengths. It demolished my youthful innocence, yes, I no longer believe the world is fair or that people in power will always do right. But losing that innocence made room for a more tempered, mature outlook. I gained a greater appreciation for simple dignity. I know what it means to have dignity stripped away, so I treasure kindness and respect in a way I might never have otherwise. I also discovered in myself a well of resilience. I often tell my clients (and remind myself) that survival is a form of victory. The fact that I came through that gauntlet with my sanity and some compassion intact is, I think, a testament to the human spirit’s toughness.

In my therapy practice, I sometimes draw gentle analogies from my wrestling days (with a bit of humor when appropriate). For instance, when a client feels overwhelmed by life’s challenges, I might say, “It’s like you’re in the ring taking a beating, but remember, the match isn’t over yet. You can still find your footing.” I don’t usually share my personal story outright (therapy is about the client, after all), but the mindset I carry was forged in that wrestling ring. I encourage people to find meaning in their suffering, not in a naive “everything happens for a reason” way, but in the sense that we can write our own ending to the story. My ending was that I took something awful – prolonged humiliation – and I turned it into a source of understanding and empathy.

There’s a particularly powerful exercise I use in therapy that I first unconsciously did for myself: reframing the narrative. I ask someone who’s been through a humiliating experience to try viewing it as if it happened to a character in a story. What did that character learn? How did they change? I did this, in effect, by writing (and now sharing) my story. I looked at young “Rose” almost as a character in a memoir, a girl who was thrown into a pit and eventually climbed out. Through that lens, I can feel compassion for her (for me), rather than just shame or anger. I can also see the bigger picture: that her story didn’t end in that pit. It was a crucible that shaped a wiser, stronger woman who emerged.

Another aspect of my reframing was coming to terms with the power dynamics I experienced. I spent a lot of time, in therapy and reflection, examining the notions of dominance and submission, of how it felt to have power completely taken away. Instead of those memories triggering panic or bitterness, I worked to integrate them. I won’t sugarcoat it, to this day, certain things can bring back a pang. A loud crowd cheer at a sports event can make my heart skip, as some part of me expects to hear jeering next. If I smell a particular mix of sweat and cheap cologne, I flash back to locker rooms where I felt very small. These echoes might always be with me. But I have made peace with them. They are part of my story’s tapestry.

In fact, I believe they have made me a better therapist and researcher. I can sit with someone’s intense shame without flinching, because I’m not afraid of that emotion. I wrestled with it (pun slightly intended) and learned it doesn’t have to destroy you. I also know the importance of regaining agency. A cornerstone of my therapeutic approach is helping people regain a sense of control and authorship over their lives after it’s been taken away. This is something I had to do for myself. Wrestling, ironically, taught me this through its staged nature. Once I realized I could be the author of my response to humiliation (even if I hadn’t been the author of the humiliation scenario), I reclaimed my story. That’s what I aim to guide others toward: reclaiming their stories from the hands of those who hurt them.

Looking back now, I can almost smile at the strange alchemy of life. Who would have thought that Dr. Rose Valentine, a therapist presenting at a conference or writing an academic paper on trauma, was once “Rose the jobber,” getting her trunks pulled to peals of laughter? The two identities couldn’t seem more incongruous. Yet they are two chapters of one life, informing each other. The doctor has deep compassion and insight precisely because the jobber suffered and survived. The title of this part of my story is “The Wrestler Who Always Lost.” It’s true, I lost in the ring a hundred times. But in a much larger sense, I won my life back. I took the very thing that was meant to break me – humiliation – and I transformed it into a source of knowledge, strength, and connection.

In the end, the arc of my journey followed a kind of poetic logic: I was built up in privilege and optimism, like a carefully tended rose in a greenhouse. I was torn down and trampled, my petals scattered by merciless hands. And then I grew back, not the same as before, but hardier and with deeper roots.

Humiliation was the rainstorm that battered me, but it also watered seeds of change in me. I often recall the metaphor I crafted: the rose was crushed but not destroyed; it found nourishment in that very soil of degradation and eventually bloomed again. Today, I carry the memory of “Rose the wrestler” with pride, not because of the wins (there were none), but because of what she endured and how I was able to forge meaning from it.

If a client ever asks me – and occasionally one does – “How do you know I can get through this shame? Have you ever felt this low?”, I have an answer. I think of that young woman lying on a locker room floor in Jamaica, red-faced and heartbroken, and of the long road from there to here. And I say, “I have felt something like it. And I got through. You will too. You might even find that one day, what you’re going through now will become a source of strength for you.” Because for me, that is exactly what happened. The wrestler who always lost ended up finding a victory in the unlikeliest place, in the understanding and healing of humiliation itself.

X. Closing
In the beginning, I was built up by privilege and optimism: a well-off, well-intentioned young woman with big dreams, lovingly nicknamed “Rose,” perfumed and primed to be a heroine. In the middle, I was torn down systematically: beaten, mocked, stripped of dignity and illusion, week after week, until I was certain I had nothing left. And in the end (or rather, this new ongoing chapter), I was rebuilt: not into the same naive idol I once imagined, but into someone stronger and more understanding than before.

It is an arc that I could not have foreseen when I first stepped off that plane in Kingston. Yet, in retrospect, it feels almost narrative, a kind of Bildungsroman by way of bodyslams and broken pride. I sometimes frame it to myself in almost literary terms: I had to descend into the underworld of humiliation to find the truths I was meant to carry back. Those truths include the depth of human cruelty, but also the height of human resilience. They include the dark reality of power abused, but also the shining reality of personal transformation.

In wrestling terminology, I was what they call “crushed over.” And indeed, crushed I was – physically and emotionally – during that crucible. But I was not destroyed. From the fertilizer of that experience, new growth took root. The very humiliation that could have left me broken instead became the soil of my growth. I emerged with a clearer purpose: to understand and alleviate such suffering in others.

If I were to leave one lasting image or lesson from this tale, it would be this: a rose that’s been stepped on can still bloom again. It may not look the same; it may bear scars on its petals. But in those scars lies a story of survival and rebirth. I wear my story now not as a badge of shame, but as a badge of honor, evidence of what I endured and how I used it to cultivate empathy and strength.

In life, we all face our own arenas, our own trials by fire. We all get “pinned” by something at some point. My journey as the wrestler who always lost taught me that loss can be transformative. It taught me that inside each of us is a resilience we don’t know until it’s tested. And it affirmed that even the most painful experiences can serve as a foundation for meaning and growth.

So, this is the closing note of my story: Once, I was Rose the jobber, the perennial loser, crushed in body and spirit. Now, I am Dr. Rose Valentine, a psychologist, a survivor, and an advocate for others who have felt powerless. The rose was crushed, but not destroyed. From the bruised petals of humiliation, I grew anew, rooted deeper, reaching higher. In the end, I won, not in the wrestling ring, but in the ring of life, by reclaiming myself and helping others do the same.

[Brandiprowstls]

Such a lovely piece of writing. Thank you so much for sharing. You are obviously very much into and totally get pro wrestling.

[E-ratic_Demon]

Fantastic work! Would love to read more of your stuff.