Cheryl Stixx Has Nothing to Prove (And Everything to Feel)
Written by Dominique Sisley for DAZED

I’m sure you’ve seen the compilations. Cheryl Stixx crying on X — mascara running, chin trembling, speaking like every word is being pulled straight from an exposed nerve. Or the fan edits: slow-motion entrance, her now-iconic theme “Vegas Bitch” rattling through an arena while she walks like she owns both the room and the ruin. The internet loves her in extremes — deified or devastated, nothing in between.

What it rarely captures is the in-between.

When Stixx answers the phone, she sounds disarmingly normal. Warm. Slightly breathless. “Wait, am I echoing? I feel like I’m echoing. That’s dramatic,” she says, half-laughing. There’s no arena reverb, no swelling soundtrack. Just a woman in her own space, trying to articulate the mess of being perceived at scale.

“It’s funny,” she says. “People think I’m either about to conquer something or about to collapse. And sometimes I am. But mostly I’m just… living.”

Her sophomore album, The Trial of Venus, doesn’t retreat from the spotlight — it reframes it. Where her debut was excavation — digging through her past, tracing the making of Cheryl Stixx as both myth and armour — this record is about now. About what it costs to keep becoming in public.
If the first album constructed the spectacle, this one steps outside of it. Desire, jealousy, faith, ego, devotion — nothing is arranged into neat empowerment arcs. There’s no origin story to hide behind. It’s present-tense, reactive, sometimes uncomfortably exposed. Not aspirational. Not resolved. Just intimate in a way that feels almost invasive.

“I didn’t want to sound strong,” she says. “I wanted to sound real. There’s a difference.”

Strength, in Cheryl’s world, is usually assumed. She main-evented Wrestlelution months ago — a milestone that lives online now as highlight reels and slow-motion GIFs — but she speaks about it like someone describing a fever dream.

“I don’t even remember the applause,” she says. “I remember the quiet right before. That split second where you’re like, ‘Oh. This is mine. I can’t run from it.’ That’s the part that sticks.”

If the internet prefers her mythologised, The Trial of Venus feels like a deliberate demystification. It’s sticky with feeling. It doesn’t resolve neatly. On first listen, it sounds like a woman in love. On second listen, it sounds like a woman interrogating why. By the third, it’s something closer to a confession booth with no priest on the other side.

“I feel everything at a ten,” she says. “Which is beautiful and exhausting. I’ll wake up and be like, okay, today I’m soft and spiritual. By 2PM I’m jealous of something I made up in my own head. By 6PM I’m writing poetry about it. It’s a lot.”

 

There’s no attempt to sand that down. If anything, she leans into it. “I used to think I had to pick a lane. Like, are you the good girl? Are you the sexy one? Are you the serious athlete? Are you the emotional wreck? And I’m like… unfortunately, I am all of it.”

On “Boys Call It Hot,” she plays with that tension — the way female desire is consumed, renamed, reframed depending on who’s watching. It’s raw, sharp, a little unhinged.

“I didn’t sit down and go, ‘Today I’m coming out,’” she says, rolling her eyes at the idea of branding vulnerability. “I just wrote what felt true. I’ve loved people in complicated ways. I’ve wanted things I was told not to want. That’s not scandalous. That’s being alive.”

She grew up religious — church on Sundays, doctrine that settled deep in the bones — but she resists the narrative that faith and liberation are opposites.

“I still believe,” she says plainly. “I just don’t believe in shrinking. Jesus was a rebel. He was flipping tables and hanging out with sex workers. If anything, I’m very on brand!”

There’s a pause, then she laughs. “I’m sure someone will clip that out of context.”

Her relationship to femininity is less aesthetic, more existential. It’s not about reclaiming softness so much as refusing to apologise for its volatility. “Sometimes femininity is nurturing and calm,” she says. “Sometimes it’s territorial. Sometimes it’s horny. Sometimes it’s petty. I’m not interested in pretending it’s always enlightened.”

She catches herself. “God, I sound insane.”

You don’t, I tell her.

“No, I do,” she insists, amused. “But I’m okay with that now. I’d rather be intense than numb.”
Intensity bleeds into everything — including the way she speaks about Quartz. There’s no grandstanding when his name comes up, no storyline gloss. Just care.

“I genuinely want him to do well,” she says. “And I don’t mean titles. I don’t mean applause. I mean like… I want him to sleep at night. I want him to feel steady in himself. We get so trapped in thinking success is the scoreboard. It’s not. It’s whether you can look at yourself when it’s quiet.”
It’s the kind of answer that feels too soft for the spectacle they both inhabit. And maybe that’s the point.
 

“I fall flat all the time,” she continues. “Publicly. Loudly. I spiral. I doubt. I overthink. I’m a hot mess. But I don’t disappear. That’s my thing. I stay. Even when it’s embarrassing. Especially when it’s embarrassing.”
 

There’s something defiant in that — not the glossy empowerment of “thriving,” but the more stubborn act of remaining visible while imperfect. The album mirrors that philosophy. It doesn’t present growth as linear. It doesn’t punish her for contradiction. It just lets her be contradictory.
“I’m a sad girl,” she says casually. “But I’m also very horny. And very hopeful. And overly romantic. And dramatic. And stubborn. And probably annoying. That’s the cocktail.”

 

Does she ever wish she felt less?
 

“Sometimes,” she admits. “It would be easier. I see people who seem so contained, so composed. I’m like, wow, what’s that like? But then I think… if I didn’t feel this much, I wouldn’t make anything worth listening to. I wouldn’t walk into rooms the way I do. I wouldn’t love the way I love.”
For someone so often framed as provocative, stirring the pot seems less about chaos and more about honesty.
 

“I don’t wake up trying to shock people,” she says. “I wake up trying to not lie. If that shakes something, good. Maybe it needed shaking.”
 

The Cheryl of fan edits — bathed in firelight, strutting to “Vegas Bitch,” eyes sharp enough to cut glass — is still there. But so is the one who overthinks text messages, who cries in the car, who questions herself at 3AM and still shows up the next day.
 

“I’m not trying to be iconic,” she says. “I’m trying to be honest. If that ends up iconic, cool. If it ends up messy, also cool.”

 

 

Before we hang up, she circles back to something she said earlier — about being perceived in extremes.
 

“I think people are scared of women who feel this much,” she says. “We’re easier to digest when we’re either broken or perfect. But the middle? The complicated part? That’s where I live.”
And maybe that’s the real spectacle. Not the pyro. Not the entrance music. Not the milestones archived online. Just a woman refusing to edit herself into something quieter.
“I finally like who I am,” she says, almost surprised by it. “And she’s a lot.”
 

She laughs again — full, uncontained.

And you believe her.
 

I do not believe her.

DON'T CRY, STIXX. SHOW ME! 

8 minutes ago, B-17 said:

DON'T CRY, STIXX. SHOW ME! 

yeah crying has kinda sorta become my thing, I guess. also… kinda grieving rn, sorry, it’s all I’ve got

I saw you crying about the violence inherent in the system.

interesting takeaway, k.

I mean, this is just my view on it. Grain of salt and all that. But the small details of what you want your story to be versus what is remembered are working against you in this regard. Final visual of Stixx to end this season, once again, her ineptitude, ineffectiveness, and naive nature. Yes, she is a Face, and a Face often lends itself to poor choices for the sake of narrative. But this is a Face that seems not to have learned that words are not enough. She can't control others or their actions, and often discusses the evolution that she wants to be viewed as. But she is not a strong, independent woman. She is lost in a whirlwind of actions and decisions that she seems paralyzed over. 

 

Decisiveness, grit, and the will to do what is right are traits that would serve you well. Fans want relatable characters, and Stixx has those in spades of insecurities, but they don't want to keep seeing these traits win. They want to know that they, too, can feel insecure and vulnerable, but that they can overcome those faults. Believing in someone is not a bad thing, but when you keep believing in the wrong people and get burned for it. It's you who isn't learning.   

 

Your "Thank You" isn't a love letter to the fans, or even an awakening of love and loyalty. It is a pledge of what you claim you will do, but then fail to do later that night.   

 

You needed to smack that German BDSM Toul upside the head. But you didn't, you hoped words would be enough, again.  

ok