That was no lady wrestler, that was my accountant

Half listening, I heard on the news the other day that some city in Montana was asking all of its jobs applicant to divulge the full list of any websites/social media sites that they had anything to do with. I believe they were even asking - can this be right? - for the passwords of prospective candidates to those sites. (Can this be right?) And it used to be that just a Google here and there sufficed.... But I guess that Googling won't getcha everything you want (and possibly need) to know about someone you're about to hire, since people can, after all, have plenty of aliases and be living all sorts of very real or merely virtual second lives out there.  Of course, for 99.99% of the jobs that exist, and for 99.99% of job candidates, someone's extra-work life is none of the hiring company's damned business, and should have absolutely no impact on a hiring decision.

Still, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out in a world where the entire concept of personal and private is becoming so foreign.

The above was a digression - something I generally indulge in in the middle of a post, not at the outset - but I was thinking of the Montana requirement when I read an article in the Boston Globe on the Boston League of Women Wrestlers.

I have dim recall of the "lady wrestlers" that were featured on Saturday wrestling in my childhood. The ladies were never really the focus of the action, action dominated (in these parts) by wrestlers like Killer Kowalski and Haystack Calhoun. The women wrestlers I remember were mostly lots-of-hair blondes wearing modest leopard skin bathing suits. (Or am I conflating them with Sheena the Jungle Girl?)

Well, baby, we have apparently come a long way.

The Boston League of Women Wrestlers - nice play on the League of Women Voters, by the way - is a group of (mostly younger) women who, well, wrestle in the "classic" exaggerated persona, in your face fashion that made Saturday morning wrestling so much fun to watch. (Click through warning: this site is not without a bit of raunch.)

Christina Sartori is BLOWW's general manager - her persona is a cheerleader - and, in her words:

‘‘This is what we like to do. Some girls like to do yoga on their spare time, but we prefer to beat each other up.’’

One of those who prefers to beat folks up is accountant Jenna Henson, a Texas A&M philosophy major who wrestles as Skank Williams Jr.  Henson sounds like a philosophy major's philosophy major, and an accountant's accountant: she's shy, and nothing like the "blunt and crude" persona she's developed. But through her life as Skank, she's become more outgoing.

Jaime Krudsen works at McLean Hospital as a pain researcher. When she's not researching, she's inflicting - as the Pennsylvania Duchess, a character that satirizes the Pennsylvania Amish she grew up around.

“My character disapproves of everything, and I am always upset with people because they are showing their ankles,’’ she said. “I don’t like anyone, and I don’t approve of modern cultures.’’

Her signature move it “the Butter Turner.’’

The Wrathalie is the Outback character portrayed by Australian Athalie Paynting, an interior designer with her own company, and says of herself:

"What I really like doing is restoring old furniture and specializing that piece for that specific project.’’

I didn't go through the entire roster on the BLOWW site, but two of my favorites, with especially funny write-ups, were

Dewey Decimate (signature move: "The Late Fee"), who:

... snapped one afternoon while processing a stack of overdue books (all with torn dust jackets and ripped pages!!!)....She went to the 700s (Arts and Recreation) and memorized every wrestling book in the collection. Now you'd better not let her catch you mistreating the written word.

And Malicious Mile Heidi who grew up wanting to be a flight attendant, but whose lack of charm ended her up on the Minneapolis to Tulsa run.

Sick of handing out seat belt extenders, eating microwavable meals, and listening to corny pilots, while seeing the same scenery, Heidi snapped.

Ah, snapped.

I know the feeling.

Almost makes me want to shed a couple of decades and come up with a persona of my own.

Maybe I could wrestle as The Marketing Bim, who snapped when the dumbest person in the world asked her the dumbest question in the world at a trade show. Who snapped when the dumbest salesperson in the world showed her the e-mail blast he'd just sent out to everyone in SalesForce - complete with grammatical errors, typos, and flat-out WRONG statements about the company and its products. Who snapped when the cartons containing 10,000 brochures were delivered, and she discovered that she had a typo of her own on page one! (What bim proofed this, anyway?)

All I can say is, none of these women would be likely to get a job in that town in Montana that needs to know all. But I bet they are some fun to work with.