The love of athletes lives on have been a national obsession for almost as long as we've had professional athletes: Marilyn Monroe For example, Joe DiMaggio's relationship was big news in the 50s. Back then, and for a long time, our interest tended to focus on pairings like this, in which a famous celebrity rubbed shoulders with a sports icon, and their combined star power made it difficult to look away.
Then came 2006 World Championshipwhich brought the England team to the quiet resort town of Baden-Baden, Germany. This was a year after debut TMZduring the heyday of America's toxic preoccupation with party girls like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, media companies have begun to realize what they can do with celebrity gossip online. The 24/7 news cycle was hungry for women to watch and hate in equal measure, and found them ready in the wives and girlfriends of England players.
Among them were some established tabloid stars, most notably Victoria Beckham (married to David, of course) and pop star Cheryl Tweedy (then engaged to Ashley Cole, the England left-back). But the group also included many lesser-known women. And instead they didn't lay low courting titles shopping, dancing on tables and generally leading a media circus that lasted until their partners were eliminated from the tournament in the first round of the playoffs.
That's how it was in the rest of the world met with WAGabbreviation that was circulating at that time in the British press for several years. Literally speaking, a WAG is simply the wife or girlfriend of an athlete. But WAG, as it looked in Baden-Baden, became entrenched in the public consciousness, creating an identity that pointed to a specific type a woman living a special lifestyle. The prototype VAG is young, white, thin, handsome and, if at all possible, blonde. She is also shallow, banal, and status-obsessed. She lives to drink rose wine, go to parties and spend her husband's money.
The term sparked immediate backlash, especially from the wives themselves: “Don’t call me a WAG,” Tweedy. said “Standard”, not forgetting to clarify that she does not need a rich husband to take care of her – her shopping trips and club visits were carried out with her own money, thank you very much.
It didn't matter. This jargon and its associated associations have stuck. By 2010, the New York Times marked that the New Jersey Nets “may be second to last in the league in scoring and average in rebounding, but they can compete with the best WAGs.” (One of their strikers, Kris Humphries, was dating Kim Kardashian at the time.) In 2015, E! debuted a reality show called VAG Los Angeleswhich became the first in a Housewives-style franchise that eventually included Miami And Atlanta Also. Then in 2019 we got V.A.Gata Christie Scandal: Football WAG Coleen Rooney's claims that fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy leaked details about her to the tabloids… and that she had private Instagram posts to prove it. The story was juicy and funny, but it didn't dispel the idea that the life of a WAG is for petty, snarky women with nothing better to do than spy on each other and then tell the press about it.
Throughout all of this, the WAGs that received the most attention were almost always either famous themselves or partnered with extremely famous players. If you can name an American WAG, it's probably someone like Aisha Curry or Brittany Mahomes – women whose husbands receive multimillion-dollar contracts and endorsement deals.
But each NBA roster has 15 players. The NHL allows 23 players, the MLB allows 40, and the NFL allows 53. And most of those players aren't even close to being name brand players. The lowest paid make up the league minimum, which still costs a lot of money: anywhere from $700,000 to a million dollars, depending on the sport. But that's only if they can stay in the lineup all year. Falling from the top tier doesn't make them unprofessional, but it can cost them significant income. For example, baseball players do not have guaranteed contracts, meaning that if you are sent to the minors for the 2022 season, your salary will drop from $700,000 to $57,200.
Of course, this is not starvation wages. But for these athletes, money insecurities are compounded by other insecurities—mainly about where you live, potential injuries, and an ever-aging body. The player's romantic partner is subject to the same pressures—fluctuating income, sudden changes in life situation, and worries about the future. But she puts up with them in order to serve someone else's dream. And even if she travels fairly regularly, she spends a significant portion of the year alone, which becomes especially difficult if the couple has children.
This this is the life of most professional athletes and their wives; Allison Kucharczyk is much, much more than Aisha Curry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the most compelling content on social media comes from women in this situation—whose husbands are living the dream, but somewhat precariously, and whose lives, as a consequence, are equal parts desirable and interesting.
