Before professional wrestling, Booher was a sex photojournalist and sex worker, developing her Queen Adrena wrestling character based on her work the dominatrix world. So often, fat people in entertainment are meant to be successful in spite of their bodies, but Booher demanded that her success exist because of her body. After her professional wrestling career was finished, she continued working as a stuntwoman, and frequently appeared in cameo roles in film and television. No matter the role, Booher made sure that her truth was always represented as being huge, horrifying, and hot. If you look at her character names from her acting career, they perfectly embrace her attitude like Tough Broad, Big Lady w/ Whip, Nude Model, Meanest Woman Truck Driver or stereotypical “big” sounding character names like Mrs. Lurch and Bertha. She completely owned who she was, and no one would dare question her unless they wanted to experience her proven strength.
We like to believe that our current era is more progressive than the years that came before, but we’ve still not had someone in the public eye that looks or acts like Booher. Sure, there’s plenty from the 1980s era of GLOW that has aged poorly (like the time they had her wear a Nazi helmet to make her seem like more of a heel, yikes) but in terms of fat representation, the show is still untouchable. With the exception of “Shrill” or the criminally underseen women’s arm wrestling film “Golden Arm,” studios still struggle with how to represent fat women on screen in non-stereotypical roles. Booher was the blueprint for breaking the mold, and she will be so dearly missed.
