Ember Moon gave an interview saying that people in NXT were told to come to work dressed sexy. Here’s the quote.
“We would have to sit through stupid meetings about how we’d have to dress sexy. I remember looking at someone else (and laughing). I cater to children. I’m not about to wear fishnet booty buttcheek shorts because we had a two-hour meeting about how to dress like Mandy Rose. That’s not fair. Mandy is absolutely phenomenal and an amazing person, but not everyone is Mandy Rose. I started seeing this downslope as soon as Hunter was gone. For the first bit, we didn’t know why, we just knew he wasn’t there. I got so angry. I was sitting there thinking, ‘I did nothing wrong. I didn’t piss off Vince.’”
My take is that it does seem that NXT has gotten more edgier in terms of sex appeal. And personally speaking, I think NXT is on a roll right now both creatively and in the ring. This is the most I’ve enjoyed NXT since early 2020/pre pandemic. That being said, you should never force someone to dress sexy if they don’t want to. That’s problematic and kind of creepy.
It should also be noted that talent are blaming John Laurinaitis and not Shawn Michaels or Bruce Prichard for all of this according to Fightful, though it’s not confirmed whether or not Laurinaitis had anything to do with it. I think more likely it’s Vince McMahon telling Laurinaitis to tell the talent to start dressing sexy, with Laurinaitis being the fall guy.