Athletes’ love lives have been a nationwide obsession for mainly so long as we’ve had skilled athletes: Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio’s relationship was large information within the ’50s, for instance. Then and for a very long time afterward, our curiosity was normally centered on pairings like these through which a longtime movie star shacked up with a sports activities icon and their mixed star energy made it inconceivable to look away.
Then got here the 2006 World Cup, which introduced Workforce England to the quiet spa city of Baden-Baden, Germany. This was a yr after the debut of TMZ, within the burgeoning days of America’s poisonous preoccupation with celebration ladies like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton — media corporations have been beginning to perceive what they may do on-line with movie star gossip. The 24/7 information cycle was hungry for ladies to ogle and hate in equal measure, and it discovered them readymade within the wives and girlfriends of England’s gamers.
Amongst them have been some established tabloid fixtures, most notably Victoria Beckham (married, after all, to David) and pop star Cheryl Tweedy (then engaged to Ashley Cole, a left-back for Workforce England). However the group additionally included loads of in any other case nonfamous girls. They usually didn’t lay low, as a substitute courting headlines by happening buying sprees, dancing on tables, and customarily ringleading a media circus that lasted till their companions have been ousted from the match within the first spherical of the knockout stage.
This was how the remainder of the world met the WAG, an acronym that had been circulating within the British press for just a few years at that time. Talking actually, a WAG is just an athlete’s spouse or girlfriend. However the WAG as seen at Baden-Baden lodged itself within the public consciousness, creating an identification indicating a specific sort of girl, residing a specific sort of life. The prototypical WAG is younger, white, skinny, lovely, and, if in any respect doable, blonde. She’s additionally shallow, vapid, and status-obsessed. She lives to drink pink wine, go to events, and spend her husband’s cash.
There was instant backlash to the time period, notably from the wives themselves: “’Don’t name me a WAG,’” Tweedy informed the Normal, ensuring to make clear that she didn’t want a wealthy husband to maintain her — her buying sprees and clubbing have been performed on her personal dime, thanks very a lot.
It didn’t matter. The lingo — and its associations — caught. By 2010, the New York Instances famous that the New Jersey Nets “could also be second to final within the league in scoring and center of the highway in rebounding, however they’ll compete with the perfect in WAGs.” (One in every of their forwards, Kris Humphries, was courting Kim Kardashian on the time.) In 2015, E! debuted a actuality present referred to as WAGs LA, which might turn into the primary in a Housewives-style franchise that ultimately included Miami and Atlanta as effectively. Then, in 2019, we bought the WAGatha Christie scandal: soccer WAG Coleen Rooney’s claims that fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy had been leaking particulars about her to the tabloids…and that she had the non-public Instagram posts to show it. The story was juicy and enjoyable, but it surely didn’t do a lot to dispel the notion that WAG life was for the essentially petty and catty, girls who had nothing higher to do than spy on one another after which tattle to the press about it.
All through all of it, the WAGs who bought probably the most consideration have been nearly at all times both well-known themselves, or partnered with extraordinarily well-known gamers. In case you can identify an American WAG, it’s doubtless somebody like Ayesha Curry or Brittany Mahomes — girls whose husbands command multimillion-dollar contracts and endorsement offers.
However there are 15 gamers on each NBA roster. The NHL permits for 23, MLB takes 40, and the NFL tops out at 53. And most of these gamers aren’t even near being name-brand guys. The bottom paid make the league minimal, which continues to be loads of cash: someplace between $700,000 and one million {dollars}, relying on the game. However that’s provided that they’ll keep on the roster all yr. Dropping down from the highest stage doesn’t take away them from the professionals, however it may value them substantial revenue. Baseball gamers, for example, don’t have assured contracts, which meant that for those who bought despatched all the way down to the minors in the course of the 2022 season, your wage plummeted from $700,000 to $57,200.
Which nonetheless isn’t poverty wages, to make sure. However for these athletes, uncertainty about cash is compounded by different kinds of uncertainty — mainly about the place you reside, doable accidents, and an always-aging physique. A participant’s romantic accomplice is topic to those identical pressures — the fluctuations in revenue, abrupt modifications in residing state of affairs, and worries concerning the future. However she places up with them within the service of another person’s dream. And even when she travels pretty frequently, she spends an excellent portion of the yr alone, which turns into particularly tough if the couple has kids.
This is life for almost all {of professional} athletes and their wives; there are numerous, many extra Allison Kucharczyks than there are Ayesha Curries. Maybe not surprisingly, a number of the most compelling social media content material comes from girls on this state of affairs — whose husbands reside the dream, however considerably precariously, and whose lives, as a consequence, are equal components aspirational and relatable.
