WAGs
Encyclopedia
WAGs is an acronym, used particularly by the British tabloid press, to describe the wives and girlfriends of high-profile footballers, originally the England national football team
. The term came into common use during the 2006 FIFA World Cup
, although it had been used occasionally before that. The acronym has since been used by the media in other countries to describe the wives and girlfriends of sportsmen in general.
In 2006 it was generally printed as "WAGs", but a singular, "Wag" or "WAG", quickly came into vogue (even though the singular form would logically be "wife or girlfriend", reading as "WOG"); for example: "any additional pounds she gained during Wag drinking sessions"; "a property heiress, model and actress, appears a likely sports WAG". Susie Dent
's annual Language Report
for the Oxford University Press (2006) capitalised the entire acronym as "WAG" ("wife and/or girlfriend") .
"WAG"/"wag" came also to be used somewhat tautologically
("deluxe-edition Wag girlfriend") and increasingly in non-footballing contexts: for example, the first wife of comedian Peter Cook
(1937–95) was described as a "Sixties Wag" and actress Jennifer Ellison
, because of her former choice of clothes, "once ... the epitome of a Wag". Fashion writer Shane Watson coined a collective noun, "waggery". One can also be "Wagged"
This type of acronym is of long-standing in British English. For example, during the Second World War, a series of County War Agricultural Executive Committees or CWAECs was known widely as "War Ags".
the press gave increasing coverage to the socialising and shopping activities of the English WAGs, who were based in the German town of Baden Baden. It was frequently suggested that England's exit from the tournament in the quarterfinals was a result of such distractions.
Prominent WAGs of that year included Victoria Beckham
, wife of then England captain David Beckham
, whom the New Yorker described as "Queen of the Wags" and the Sunday Times as "the original Wag"; Cheryl Cole
, née Tweedy, of the group Girls Aloud
, who shortly afterwards married Ashley Cole
("Wag weds"), from whom she was divorced in 2010; Coleen Rooney, née Mcloughlin, who married Wayne Rooney
in June 2008 and who was variously described as a "chav
ette", by The Sun
a "super WAG" and, by the end of the year, listed by the Times as a "national treasure
"; and fitness instructor Carly Cole née Zucker, wife of Joe Cole
, described by Susie Whally in the Sunday Times as a "new WAG on the block [who] has set the tone for the season's most wanted muscles". Other WAGs that aroused considerable interest included Melanie Slade, due to her relative youth - she was an A-level student at the time - girlfriend of Theo Walcott
, who, at seventeen, was himself the youngest member of the England squad; Abbey Clancy, girlfriend of Peter Crouch
; Steven Gerrard
's fiance Alex Curran
, a model frequently featured in tabloids and fashion magazines; and former Spanish waitress Elen Rives, the then fiancée of Frank Lampard
.
Nancy Dell'Olio
, an Italian property lawyer who was the girlfriend of the then England coach Sven-Göran Eriksson
, enjoyed quite a high public profile of her own, partly as a result of long-running press interest in aspects of Eriksson's private life.
member of the UK Parliament, Denis MacShane
, described the Conservative Party's
summer ball
of 2006 (for which tickets cost £400) as "mak[ing] the WAGs of Baden Baden look like the Bloomsbury set", a comparison with the "Bohemian"
artistic group of the early 20th century that grew up initially around sisters Vanessa Bell
and Virginia Woolf
.
Leo Beckett, husband of British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett
was described as the "political equivalent of a WAG" because of the extent to which he accompanied his wife on official business.
"Birkin
" bag had become less desirable as a result of being de rigueur among WAGs in Baden-Baden (a development dubbed by Shane Watson as "baglash"); or that reaction to WAGs’ excessively coiffed hair and "vacant perfection" had perhaps been the "tipping point" for a revival of fashions of the 1980s, commended by Armstrong as "the last era of anti-slick".
Armstrong also assured readers who wished to perfect the elements of "beach chic" that the use of denture cleaner to whiten the tips of nails would not make them "look like a WAG", while her colleague Sarah Vine offered advice on "buying some nice perfume that won't make you smell like a WAG on heat". When it was reported, in 2007, that Coleen Rooney would be launching a range of beauty products, London Lite coined the term, "eau de wag" and asked, "who, tell us, who really wants to smell like Coleen McLoughlin?"
observed, while waiting in an airport queue, that "it's as if a low-level wannabe footballer's wife vibe that is neither aesthetically pleasing nor edifying has become the norm ... I saw this phenomenon en masse". Among other features, Knight identified "enough pink glitter to satisfy the girliest
of five-year-olds", massive handbags and huge designer sunglasses
.
Reflecting on sunglasses as an accessory, Sunday Times Styles senior fashion writer Colin McDowell suggested that, whereas women had been sure that the poise of Jacqueline Kennedy
(1929–94) and Audrey Hepburn
(1929–93), style icons of the mid-20th century, had been due to their shading their eyes, "Wags ... far from using dark glasses to encourage others to leave them alone, treat them as a weapon to attract and excite the paparazzi
".
(1941–93) and his first wife Tina had become regarded as a stylish and "golden" couple. During the 1970 World Cup
in Mexico
the England manager Sir Alf Ramsey (1920–99) expressed concern at the effects on the team's cohesion of the presence of the wives of four players, a view that seems to have been shared by some other members of the squad. England's quarter-final defeat by West Germany
in that competition has been widely attributed to goalkeeping lapses by Peter Bonetti
, whose pre-match nerves were thought by many, including Ramsey himself, to have been accentuated by rumours circulating about the alleged behaviour of his wife Frances. By contrast, during the 1966 World Cup, their wives drove themselves to Wembley and the FA booked them a single function room in the Royal Garden Hotel at Kensington.
Interest in such partnerships scaled new heights in the late 1990s and early 21st century with the marriage (in 1999) of David Beckham
to singer Victoria Adams
("Posh Spice") of the Spice Girls
. The couple were widely known as "Posh and Becks" and every aspect of their relationship and nuance of dress were subjected to scrutiny in the press and other media. Victoria Beckham was quoted as saying that she and her husband had "so many wider interests ... fashion, make-up. I mean you think, yeah, football's great, and singing's great. But you've got to look at the bigger picture".
Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane
had lashed out at footballers' wives and girlfriends, as well as their lavish lifestyle, during their trophyless season in 2001-2002. Keane blamed United's loss of form on some of his team-mates' fixation with wealth, claiming that they had "forgot about the game, lost the hunger that got you the Rolex, the cars, the mansion." Earlier in the season, Keane had publicly advocated the breakup of the Treble-winning team as he believed the team-mates who had played in United's victorious 1999 Champions League final no longer had the motivation to work as hard. When Keane became manager of Sunderland A.F.C, he complained about the difficulty signing players to the city in northeast England, as their wives or girlfriends insisted they only move to teams based in London. He remarked "If someone doesn't want to come to Sunderland then all well and good," Keane said. "But if they don't want to come to Sunderland because their wife wants to go shopping in London, then it is a sad state of affairs. Unfortunately that is what is influencing a lot of footballers' decisions. Priorities have changed for footballers and they are being dictated to by their wives and girlfriends."
It was widely assumed that perceptions of the lifestyle of Victoria Beckham
influenced the ITV drama series Footballers' Wives
(2002) and in particular the character of Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe
(played by Susie Amy
). The term "footballer's wife" came to be associated with a spouse leading a "high" life of socialising and shopping. Alf Ramsey, who thought the role of a footballer's wife essentially that of a housewife, had once observed that he "didn't know much about women and the only women I know are footballers' wives". However, as his biographer noted, this remark was made "at a time when the phrase 'footballers' wives' had yet to become the embodiment of predatory lust."
Broadly speaking "Footballer's wife" and "WAG" were synonymous, but the latter was more generic, while the former connoted someone who seemed particularly pampered, perhaps with some of the characteristics also of an "Essex girl
".
During the 2005-6 season the actress Joanna Taylor
, wife of Fulham midfielder Danny Murphy, wrote a regular column for the Times whose title, "Footballer's Wife", was no doubt partially ironic.
member Cheryl Cole
, to reject the eponym and to emphasise their credentials as career women in their own right.
The singer Jamelia
(whose footballer boyfriend, Darren Byfield
of Bristol City
, played for Jamaica
, which failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup) drew a distinction between, on the one hand, those WAGs, such as Victoria Beckham, who are "businesswoman", and Cole and Rooney, who "have a job", and, on the other, those who, in her view, had the wrong "priorities" and simply spent their boyfriends' money. This categorization had some similarities both with Lisa Armstrong's comparison of supermodels with WAGs and with the suggested "WAG"/"footballers' wife" distinction. Indeed it is possible to argue that, over the two-month period of 2006 that the WAGs were in the public spotlight, a subtle distinction emerged between "WAG" as a general acronym and the increasingly used "Wag" in the colloquial sense of a "footballer's wife".
) was launched. This featured two teams of WAGs (few of whom had been among the party in Baden Baden the previous year) who competed to run fashion boutiques over a period of three months. The separation of one of the contenders, Michaela Henderson-Thynne, from her erstwhile partner, Middlesbrough
midfielder Stewart Downing
, raised some issues of principle and terminology. Giles Smith
in the Times enquired whether "one can still be registered as a WAG after one has separated from one's footballer?" Smith noted also that a former beauty queen
and controversial Celebrity Big Brother contestant, Danielle Lloyd
, whose relationship with West Ham United
's Teddy Sheringham
was "less than concrete", was referred to, during a guest appearance on WAGs Boutique, as "an on-off WAG". Smith wondered whether, in those moments when a woman was an "off-WAG", she was really a WAG at all. London Lite referred to Henderson-Thynne and Cassie Sumner, a WAGs Boutique participant whose supposed relationship with Michael Essien
was the subject of some doubt, as "fake WAGs".
As if to emphasise the perceptive opinion of former England full-back Jimmy Armfield
that there was "a real international flavour to this World Cup", the Sunday Times published during the 2006 tournament a photograph of the wives of French players Thierry Henry
and David Trézéguet
with the caption "French Wags Nicole Henry and Beatrice Trezeguet share a smacker [i.e. kiss]".
For its part, the French press referred to the English wives and girlfriends ("les épouses et petites amies des joueurs") as "les Wags": "Et lorsque les Wags ont fini leur shopping ..." [And when the Wags had finished their shopping]. Similarly, in German, "die WAGs" was adopted. Austria's Seitenblicke, for example, carried a story "Ich bin keine WAG!" in German about Cheryl Cole's apparent disclaiming of the appellation of "WAG": "Ich war bei 'Girls Aloud' bevor ich Ashley [Cole] kennenlernte ..." [I was with Girls Aloud before I met Ashley].
, Hampshire on 17 May 2006, he was introduced by a fellow councillor, Alec Samuels, as "about the most famous mayor this city has had in 790 years ... He is the father of the girlfriend of a footballer".
, the Mail on Sunday referred to the "LA WAGs whose husbands earn less in ten years than Beckham in one week". The Mail claimed that these WAGs, who included actress Bianca Kajlich
, were "stay-at-home girls" who "possess not a Chloé
dress, a Prada
handbag or a Manolo Blahnik
shoe between them. And they are awaiting the arrival of Victoria Beckham with some trepidation".
Wives and Girlfriends") for the girlfriends of male participants in the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships in 2006. The most photographed WWAG in the British press during the tournament of 2006 was Kim Sears, the girlfriend of Scottish player Andy Murray. Sears is the daughter of Nigel Sears, former coach of the Slovak player Daniela Hantuchová
.
The Sun used an alternative form, "WOWs" ("Wives of Wimbledon"), to draw attention to photographs of such "girls with WOW factor" as the Australian actress, Bec Hewitt
, née Cartwright, wife of Lleyton Hewitt
, Wimbledon champion in 2002.
and Tony Jacklin
, though not to the extent of footballers; one golf relationship that received substantial tabloid coverage was the marriage of Tiger Woods
and Elin Nordegren
, which ended after even more widely publicized revelations of Woods' serial infidelity. Jacklin, who was then widowed at the time in 1988 had a date with a teenage girl, who then sold the story to The Sun
newspapers. Faldo is best remembered in the frontpage outside of sports, in 1998, having his Porsche 959
trashed by an ex-girlfriend with his golf clubs.
The term "wives and girlfriends" (in unabbreviated term) was commonly used during the Ryder Cup
golfing competitions at The Belfry
in 2002
and Oakland Hills
near Detroit in 2004
, the press having given these partners about as much coverage as the golfers themselves, due to the patriotic competitive nature of the sport which extends to themselves. London Lite
and Metro
used the slightly patronising acronym "WABs" ("wives and birdies", the latter a pun on the term for a one under par
score for a hole) with reference to the partners of the European team as they arrived in Ireland for the 2006 Ryder Cup
at The K Club
, Straffan, County Kildare.
team in the series of test matches
against Australia that began in Brisbane
, Queensland in November 2006: for example, "Jessica the Cwag knocks Ashes
Test crowd for six" (the subject of this headline being singer Jessica Taylor
, of the group Liberty X
, fiancée of batsman and occasional off-spinner Kevin Pietersen
). Although "CWAG" (rather than "WAG") was not used all that widely, there were predictable claims after England had lost the series 5-0 that the presence of wives and girlfriends had undermined the cohesion of the touring party. "WAG" had previously been applied in the context of cricket: for example to model Minki van der Westhuizen, who had been associated with the South African captain, Graeme Smith
.
More recently, the Australian media has started to use the "WAG" term to describe the partners of their own cricket team
. See Australian Cricket WAGs.
of Prince William, and Chelsy Davy
, girlfriend of Prince Harry
. Others identified as "RAGs" were Princess Beatrice
, Princess Eugenie
, champion equestrian eventer
Zara Phillips
, and Lady Gabriella Windsor
. Subsequently, under the heading "Windsor Mads outdo the Wags", Jasper Gerard reported in the Sunday Times on festivities involving "the Windsor Mads (mothers and daughters), as Fergie
[Sarah, Duchess of York] and Eugenie celebrated Beatrice's forthcoming 18th birthday".
's relationship with Dannii Minogue
and the marriage of Dario Franchitti
and Ashley Judd
.
One example of a well known wife of a sportsman is Michaela Fogarty, the wife of former Superbike World Championship
star Carl
. At the height of her husband's fame, she has been photographed in pit and paddock areas and has also appeared in print advertisements for Ducati motorcycles, which her husband has ridden for. Despite never appearing in the spotlight, much of her popularity is within the motorcycling fraternity, as she is known for her support of her husband. The two have even appeared in a series which they embark on an adventure riding.
(which had, among other things, imagined a table-top game, with a Gucci
ball, called "Subbuteo
Footballers' Wives" and referred to Coleen (McLoughlin) Rooney as "Noleen McCleavage") offered such additional terms as "SHAGS" ("unofficial girlfriends whose numbers appear on footballers' mobile phones") and "GAGS" ("Writs served by footballers accused of relationships with SHAGS"). Both of these were allusions to rumours two years earlier about the private life of an England international player.
Following the weddings of four England players in a single weekend in 2007, the Eyes "Glenda Slagg
" column referred jokingly to "SLAGS": "that's 'Stupid Lazy and Grasping Slappers' - Geddit?!?".
heavily criticised the WAGS culture, particularly in Baden-Baden two years previously, calling it a "circus" and giving praise to new England manager Fabio Capello
's more disciplined regime, and after England had qualified for the 2010 World Cup by beating Croatia
5-1, Capello made his first public comment on the WAGs by making it clear that the England players will only be able to see their wives and partners the day after a match, stating that "We are there to play, not for a holiday".
song "American Boy
", Kanye West
raps the lyrics; "But I still talk that ca-a-sh, Cuz a lotta WAGS wanna hear it". Two novels have been published about WAGs. The first, A Wag's Diary, was released in October 2007, published by Harper Collins; the second, A Wag's Diary in LA, was published in June 2008. Both books are written by Alison Kervin
.
Also is in the song Golddigger
by the Dolly Rockers
- "there is a WAG in every mag."
England national football team
The England national football team represents England in association football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England is the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first...
. The term came into common use during the 2006 FIFA World Cup
2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
, although it had been used occasionally before that. The acronym has since been used by the media in other countries to describe the wives and girlfriends of sportsmen in general.
Lexicography
The first recorded use of the term was in 2002: "It was never guaranteed that the wives and girlfriends (or "the Wags", as staff at the Jumeirah Beach Club call them for short) would get along. Mrs Beckham's tongue, for one thing, has previously run away with itself."In 2006 it was generally printed as "WAGs", but a singular, "Wag" or "WAG", quickly came into vogue (even though the singular form would logically be "wife or girlfriend", reading as "WOG"); for example: "any additional pounds she gained during Wag drinking sessions"; "a property heiress, model and actress, appears a likely sports WAG". Susie Dent
Susie Dent
Susie Dent is an English lexicographer, well known as the resident dictionary expert and adjudicator on Channel 4’s long-running game show Countdown. As of January 2009, she is the longest-serving member of the current on-screen team, having first appeared on the show in 1992.Dent was educated at...
's annual Language Report
Language Report
The Language Report was an account of the state and use of the English language published by the Oxford University Press in 2003...
for the Oxford University Press (2006) capitalised the entire acronym as "WAG" ("wife and/or girlfriend") .
"WAG"/"wag" came also to be used somewhat tautologically
Tautology (rhetoric)
Tautology is an unnecessary or unessential repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing...
("deluxe-edition Wag girlfriend") and increasingly in non-footballing contexts: for example, the first wife of comedian Peter Cook
Peter Cook
Peter Edward Cook was an English satirist, writer and comedian. An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. He has been described by Stephen Fry as "the funniest man who ever drew breath," although Cook's...
(1937–95) was described as a "Sixties Wag" and actress Jennifer Ellison
Jennifer Ellison
Jennifer Lesley Ellison is an English actress, glamour model, television personality, dancer and singer...
, because of her former choice of clothes, "once ... the epitome of a Wag". Fashion writer Shane Watson coined a collective noun, "waggery". One can also be "Wagged"
This type of acronym is of long-standing in British English. For example, during the Second World War, a series of County War Agricultural Executive Committees or CWAECs was known widely as "War Ags".
2006 World Cup
During the 2006 World Cup2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
the press gave increasing coverage to the socialising and shopping activities of the English WAGs, who were based in the German town of Baden Baden. It was frequently suggested that England's exit from the tournament in the quarterfinals was a result of such distractions.
Prominent WAGs of that year included Victoria Beckham
Victoria Beckham
Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...
, wife of then England captain David Beckham
David Beckham
David Robert Joseph Beckham, OBE is an English footballer who plays midfield for Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer, having previously played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, and A.C...
, whom the New Yorker described as "Queen of the Wags" and the Sunday Times as "the original Wag"; Cheryl Cole
Cheryl Cole
Cheryl Ann Cole is an English pop and R&B recording artist, songwriter, dancer, actress and model. She rose to fame in late 2002 when she auditioned for the reality television show Popstars: The Rivals on ITV. The programme announced that Cole had won a place as a member of the girl group, Girls...
, née Tweedy, of the group Girls Aloud
Girls Aloud
Girls Aloud are a British and Irish pop girl group based in London. They were created through the ITV1 talent show Popstars The Rivals in 2002. The group consists of Cheryl Cole , Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh. They are signed to Fascination Records, a Polydor...
, who shortly afterwards married Ashley Cole
Ashley Cole
Ashley Cole is an Barbadian-English professional footballer who plays for Chelsea and the England national team. He plays as a left-back and has been named one of the best in the world....
("Wag weds"), from whom she was divorced in 2010; Coleen Rooney, née Mcloughlin, who married Wayne Rooney
Wayne Rooney
Wayne Mark Rooney is an English footballer who plays as a striker for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team...
in June 2008 and who was variously described as a "chav
Chav
A chav is a term that is used in the United Kingdom to describe a stereotype of teenagers and young adults from an underclass background.-Etymology:...
ette", by The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
a "super WAG" and, by the end of the year, listed by the Times as a "national treasure
National treasure
The idea of national treasure, like national epics and national anthems, is part of the language of Romantic nationalism, which arose in the late 18th century and 19th centuries. Nationalism is an ideology which supports the nation as the fundamental unit of human social life, which includes shared...
"; and fitness instructor Carly Cole née Zucker, wife of Joe Cole
Joe Cole
Joseph John "Joe" Cole is an English footballer who plays for Lille, on loan from Liverpool, and the England national football team as midfielder. He started his career with where he played more than 100 games during five years, until he left for Chelsea in 2003...
, described by Susie Whally in the Sunday Times as a "new WAG on the block [who] has set the tone for the season's most wanted muscles". Other WAGs that aroused considerable interest included Melanie Slade, due to her relative youth - she was an A-level student at the time - girlfriend of Theo Walcott
Theo Walcott
Theo James Walcott is an English footballer of Jamaican descent who plays for Arsenal and the England national team. Walcott is a product of the Southampton F.C. Academy. He is a striker who is usually deployed on the right wing as a wide forward to exploit his speed...
, who, at seventeen, was himself the youngest member of the England squad; Abbey Clancy, girlfriend of Peter Crouch
Peter Crouch
Peter James Crouch is an English footballer who plays as a striker for Premier League club Stoke City and the England national team.Crouch started his career as a trainee with Tottenham Hotspur...
; Steven Gerrard
Steven Gerrard
Steven George Gerrard MBE is an English footballer who plays for and captains Premier League club Liverpool. He also has 89 caps for the England national team. He has played much of his career in a centre midfielder role, but he has also been used as a second striker and right winger...
's fiance Alex Curran
Alex Curran
Alex Curran is an English model, fashion columnist for the Daily Mirror and the wife of Liverpool and England footballer Steven Gerrard. She is described as a leading "WAG" of the England national football team, along with women such as Victoria Beckham and Coleen Rooney...
, a model frequently featured in tabloids and fashion magazines; and former Spanish waitress Elen Rives, the then fiancée of Frank Lampard
Frank Lampard
Frank James Lampard is an English professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder for Chelsea and the England national team. He also holds the position of vice-captain for his club side...
.
Nancy Dell'Olio
Nancy Dell'Olio
Annunziata Dell'Olio, better known as Nancy Dell'Olio, is an Italian-American property lawyer who first came to public notice as the girlfriend of Sven-Göran Eriksson, then manager of the England national football team.-Early life:...
, an Italian property lawyer who was the girlfriend of the then England coach Sven-Göran Eriksson
Sven-Göran Eriksson
Sven-Göran Eriksson , in Sweden commonly referred to just by his nickname Svennis, is a Swedish ex-football manager. From October 2010 to October 2011 he managed Football League Championship side Leicester City....
, enjoyed quite a high public profile of her own, partly as a result of long-running press interest in aspects of Eriksson's private life.
Political comparisons
The WAGs' activities did however provide a "benchmark" of sorts. A LabourLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
member of the UK Parliament, Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane is a British politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Rotherham since the 1994 by-election and served as the Minister for Europe from 2002 until 2005, as well as being a current Policy Council member for Labour Friends of Israel.On 14 October 2010, it was announced...
, described the Conservative Party's
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
summer ball
Ball (dance)
A ball is a formal dance. The word 'ball' is derived from the Latin word "ballare", meaning 'to dance'; the term also derived into "bailar", which is the Spanish and Portuguese word for dance . In Catalan it is the same word, 'ball', for the dance event.Attendees wear evening attire, which is...
of 2006 (for which tickets cost £400) as "mak[ing] the WAGs of Baden Baden look like the Bloomsbury set", a comparison with the "Bohemian"
Bohemian style
In modern usage, the term "Bohemian" is applied to people who live unconventional, usually artistic, lives. The adherents of the "Bloomsbury Group", which formed around the Stephen sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in the early 20th century, are among the best-known examples...
artistic group of the early 20th century that grew up initially around sisters Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...
and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
.
Leo Beckett, husband of British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett
Margaret Beckett
Margaret Mary Beckett is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Derby South since 1983, rising to become the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under John Smith, from 18 July 1992 to 12 May 1994, and briefly serving as Leader of the Party following Smith's death...
was described as the "political equivalent of a WAG" because of the extent to which he accompanied his wife on official business.
Implications for fashion
Fashion writers of 2006 identified certain consequences of what Lisa Armstrong described as "WAG fall-out" and Tina Gaudoin as "Waglash". These were mostly the implications of "over-exposure" of certain styles: for example, that the HermèsHermès
Hermès International S.A., or simply Hermès is a French high fashion house established in 1837, today specializing in leather, lifestyle accessories, perfumery, luxury goods, and ready-to-wear...
"Birkin
Birkin Bag
The Birkin bag is a handmade purse by Hermès and named after actress and singer Jane Birkin. The bag is a symbol of wealth due to its high price and elusiveness to the public....
" bag had become less desirable as a result of being de rigueur among WAGs in Baden-Baden (a development dubbed by Shane Watson as "baglash"); or that reaction to WAGs’ excessively coiffed hair and "vacant perfection" had perhaps been the "tipping point" for a revival of fashions of the 1980s, commended by Armstrong as "the last era of anti-slick".
Armstrong also assured readers who wished to perfect the elements of "beach chic" that the use of denture cleaner to whiten the tips of nails would not make them "look like a WAG", while her colleague Sarah Vine offered advice on "buying some nice perfume that won't make you smell like a WAG on heat". When it was reported, in 2007, that Coleen Rooney would be launching a range of beauty products, London Lite coined the term, "eau de wag" and asked, "who, tell us, who really wants to smell like Coleen McLoughlin?"
Wannabes
However, some women did aspire to the "WAG" look. Mrs Rooney noted that "apparently more and more women are getting into debt because they try to shop and party like a footballer's wife. If I heard of anyone doing that, I'd tell them to get a grip". Sunday Times columnist India KnightIndia Knight
India Knight is a British journalist and author. She is known for her contribution to the British media, as well as her books: My Life on a Plate, Don't You Want Me?, The Shops, Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet and The Thrift Book , all of which are published by Penguin books...
observed, while waiting in an airport queue, that "it's as if a low-level wannabe footballer's wife vibe that is neither aesthetically pleasing nor edifying has become the norm ... I saw this phenomenon en masse". Among other features, Knight identified "enough pink glitter to satisfy the girliest
Girly girl
Girly girl is a slang term for a girl or woman who chooses to dress and behave in a traditionally feminine style, such as wearing dresses, blouses and skirts, and talking about relationships and other activities which are associated with the traditional gender role of a girl.-History:The term is...
of five-year-olds", massive handbags and huge designer sunglasses
Sunglasses
Sunglasses or sun glasses are a form of protective eyewear designed primarily to prevent bright sunlight and high-energy visible light from damaging or discomforting the eyes. They can sometimes also function as a visual aid, as variously termed spectacles or glasses exist, featuring lenses that...
.
Reflecting on sunglasses as an accessory, Sunday Times Styles senior fashion writer Colin McDowell suggested that, whereas women had been sure that the poise of Jacqueline Kennedy
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...
(1929–94) and Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...
(1929–93), style icons of the mid-20th century, had been due to their shading their eyes, "Wags ... far from using dark glasses to encourage others to leave them alone, treat them as a weapon to attract and excite the paparazzi
Paparazzi
Paparazzi is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people...
".
Antecedents
Interest in the partners of footballers dates back at least to the late 1950s when the long-serving England captain Billy Wright married the singer Joy Beverley. By the late 1960s, then-captain Bobby MooreBobby Moore
Robert Frederick Chelsea "Bobby" Moore, OBE was an English footballer. He captained West Ham United for more than ten years and was captain of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup...
(1941–93) and his first wife Tina had become regarded as a stylish and "golden" couple. During the 1970 World Cup
1970 FIFA World Cup
The 1970 FIFA World Cup, the ninth staging of the World Cup, was held in Mexico, from 31 May to 21 June. The 1970 tournament was the first World Cup hosted in North America, and the first held outside South America and Europe. In a match-up of two-time World Cup champions, the final was won by...
in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
the England manager Sir Alf Ramsey (1920–99) expressed concern at the effects on the team's cohesion of the presence of the wives of four players, a view that seems to have been shared by some other members of the squad. England's quarter-final defeat by West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
in that competition has been widely attributed to goalkeeping lapses by Peter Bonetti
Peter Bonetti
Peter Phillip Bonetti is a former football goalkeeper for Chelsea, the St. Louis Stars, Dundee United and England. Bonetti was known for his safe handling, lightning reflexes and his graceful style, for which he was given the nickname, "The Cat"...
, whose pre-match nerves were thought by many, including Ramsey himself, to have been accentuated by rumours circulating about the alleged behaviour of his wife Frances. By contrast, during the 1966 World Cup, their wives drove themselves to Wembley and the FA booked them a single function room in the Royal Garden Hotel at Kensington.
Interest in such partnerships scaled new heights in the late 1990s and early 21st century with the marriage (in 1999) of David Beckham
David Beckham
David Robert Joseph Beckham, OBE is an English footballer who plays midfield for Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer, having previously played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, and A.C...
to singer Victoria Adams
Victoria Beckham
Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...
("Posh Spice") of the Spice Girls
Spice Girls
The Spice Girls were a British pop girl group formed in 1994. The group consisted of Victoria Beckham , Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell. They were signed to Virgin Records and released their debut single, "Wannabe" in 1996, which hit number-one in more than 30...
. The couple were widely known as "Posh and Becks" and every aspect of their relationship and nuance of dress were subjected to scrutiny in the press and other media. Victoria Beckham was quoted as saying that she and her husband had "so many wider interests ... fashion, make-up. I mean you think, yeah, football's great, and singing's great. But you've got to look at the bigger picture".
Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane
Roy Keane
Roy Maurice Keane is an Irish former footballer and manager. In his 18-year playing career, he played for Cobh Ramblers in the League of Ireland, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United, before ending his career at Celtic in Scotland....
had lashed out at footballers' wives and girlfriends, as well as their lavish lifestyle, during their trophyless season in 2001-2002. Keane blamed United's loss of form on some of his team-mates' fixation with wealth, claiming that they had "forgot about the game, lost the hunger that got you the Rolex, the cars, the mansion." Earlier in the season, Keane had publicly advocated the breakup of the Treble-winning team as he believed the team-mates who had played in United's victorious 1999 Champions League final no longer had the motivation to work as hard. When Keane became manager of Sunderland A.F.C, he complained about the difficulty signing players to the city in northeast England, as their wives or girlfriends insisted they only move to teams based in London. He remarked "If someone doesn't want to come to Sunderland then all well and good," Keane said. "But if they don't want to come to Sunderland because their wife wants to go shopping in London, then it is a sad state of affairs. Unfortunately that is what is influencing a lot of footballers' decisions. Priorities have changed for footballers and they are being dictated to by their wives and girlfriends."
Footballers' Wives
Victoria Beckham
Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...
influenced the ITV drama series Footballers' Wives
Footballers' Wives
Footballers' Wives is a British television drama surrounding the fictional Premier League Association football club Earls Park F.C., its players, and their wives. It was broadcast on the ITV network from 8 January 2002 to 14 April 2006...
(2002) and in particular the character of Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe
Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe
Carol Susan 'Chardonnay' Pascoe was a fictional character on the ITV1 television series Footballers' Wives, loosely based on glamour model Jordan and played by Susie Amy...
(played by Susie Amy
Susie Amy
Susie Amy is an English model and actress most famous for her role as Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe in the first two series of Footballers' Wives.-Biography:...
). The term "footballer's wife" came to be associated with a spouse leading a "high" life of socialising and shopping. Alf Ramsey, who thought the role of a footballer's wife essentially that of a housewife, had once observed that he "didn't know much about women and the only women I know are footballers' wives". However, as his biographer noted, this remark was made "at a time when the phrase 'footballers' wives' had yet to become the embodiment of predatory lust."
Broadly speaking "Footballer's wife" and "WAG" were synonymous, but the latter was more generic, while the former connoted someone who seemed particularly pampered, perhaps with some of the characteristics also of an "Essex girl
Essex girl
An Essex girl is a pejorative stereotype in the United Kingdom of a female who is said to be promiscuous and unintelligent, characteristics jocularly attributed to women from Essex. It is applied widely throughout the country and has gained popularity over time, dating from the 1980s and 1990s...
".
During the 2005-6 season the actress Joanna Taylor
Joanna Taylor
Joanna Taylor , is an English actress and former model.-Career:A former student of the Guildford School of Acting, Joanna Taylor's big break came in 1999, when she won the role of Geri Hudson in Channel 4 teen soap Hollyoaks. She left in 2001, and has since starred in BBC One police drama,...
, wife of Fulham midfielder Danny Murphy, wrote a regular column for the Times whose title, "Footballer's Wife", was no doubt partially ironic.
"Jamelia" categorisation
Undoubtedly the "WAG" image of shopping and clubbing, as portrayed in the press in 2006, tended to stick. This led some WAGs, such as Girls AloudGirls Aloud
Girls Aloud are a British and Irish pop girl group based in London. They were created through the ITV1 talent show Popstars The Rivals in 2002. The group consists of Cheryl Cole , Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh. They are signed to Fascination Records, a Polydor...
member Cheryl Cole
Cheryl Cole
Cheryl Ann Cole is an English pop and R&B recording artist, songwriter, dancer, actress and model. She rose to fame in late 2002 when she auditioned for the reality television show Popstars: The Rivals on ITV. The programme announced that Cole had won a place as a member of the girl group, Girls...
, to reject the eponym and to emphasise their credentials as career women in their own right.
The singer Jamelia
Jamelia
Jamelia Niela Davis , best known mononymously as Jamelia, is an English singer-songwriter, model, entertainer, television presenter and actress. She is most famous for her use of a cappella and prolific work in the R&B genre...
(whose footballer boyfriend, Darren Byfield
Darren Byfield
Darren Asherton Byfield is an English-born professional footballer of Jamaican descent who played for Walsall. His predominant position is as a forward.-Career:...
of Bristol City
Bristol City F.C.
Bristol City Football Club is one of two football league clubs in Bristol, England . They play at Ashton Gate, located in the south-west of the City...
, played for Jamaica
Jamaica national football team
The Jamaica national football team is the national team of Jamaica and is controlled by the Jamaica Football Federation. After decades in CONCACAF obscurity, they gained many fans throughout the world after they qualified for the 1998 FIFA World Cup...
, which failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup) drew a distinction between, on the one hand, those WAGs, such as Victoria Beckham, who are "businesswoman", and Cole and Rooney, who "have a job", and, on the other, those who, in her view, had the wrong "priorities" and simply spent their boyfriends' money. This categorization had some similarities both with Lisa Armstrong's comparison of supermodels with WAGs and with the suggested "WAG"/"footballers' wife" distinction. Indeed it is possible to argue that, over the two-month period of 2006 that the WAGs were in the public spotlight, a subtle distinction emerged between "WAG" as a general acronym and the increasingly used "Wag" in the colloquial sense of a "footballer's wife".
WAGs Boutique
In January 2007 a "reality" television series called WAGs Boutique (ITV2ITV2
ITV2 is a 24 hour, free-to-air entertainment television channel in the United Kingdom owned by ITV Digital Channels Ltd, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998, and is available on digital television via satellite, cable, IPTV and terrestrial platforms. The channel has the...
) was launched. This featured two teams of WAGs (few of whom had been among the party in Baden Baden the previous year) who competed to run fashion boutiques over a period of three months. The separation of one of the contenders, Michaela Henderson-Thynne, from her erstwhile partner, Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough F.C.
Middlesbrough Football Club , also known as Boro, are an English football club based in Middlesbrough, who play in the Football League Championship. Formed in 1876, they have played at the Riverside Stadium since August 1995, their third ground since turning professional in 1889...
midfielder Stewart Downing
Stewart Downing
Stewart Downing is an English footballer who plays for Liverpool and the England national team. Primarily a winger, Downing has previously played for Aston Villa, Middlesbrough and Sunderland.-Middlesbrough:...
, raised some issues of principle and terminology. Giles Smith
Giles Smith
Giles Smith is a British journalist and former musician. In 1998 he was named sports journalist of the year.Smith was one of the two members of the band Orphans of Babylon who in 1983 produced the cassette Pinch Me - I Think I'm In Kent.This cassette featured 36 tracks including "Helluva Break By...
in the Times enquired whether "one can still be registered as a WAG after one has separated from one's footballer?" Smith noted also that a former beauty queen
Beauty Queen
"Beauty Queen" is the second song from Roxy Music's second album, For Your Pleasure. The lyrics refer to Ferry's girlfriend, Valerie Leon, one-time UK beauty queen, B-movie actress and model working in the Newcastle area, circa 1973.-Musicians:...
and controversial Celebrity Big Brother contestant, Danielle Lloyd
Danielle Lloyd
Danielle Lloyd is an English glamour model. The former Miss England 2004 and Miss Great Britain 2006, she first rose to prominence when she was stripped of her Miss Great Britain 2006 title after posing for nude pictures featured in the December 2006 edition of Playboy magazine and her alleged...
, whose relationship with West Ham United
West Ham United F.C.
West Ham United Football Club is an English professional football club based in Upton Park, Newham, East London. They play in The Football League Championship. The club was founded in 1895 as Thames Ironworks FC and reformed in 1900 as West Ham United. In 1904 the club relocated to their current...
's Teddy Sheringham
Teddy Sheringham
Edward Paul "Teddy" Sheringham MBE is a retired English footballer, and the father of footballer Charlie Sheringham. Sheringham played as a striker, and had a successful career at the club level, winning almost every domestic honour available with his clubs, most notably the Treble with Manchester...
was "less than concrete", was referred to, during a guest appearance on WAGs Boutique, as "an on-off WAG". Smith wondered whether, in those moments when a woman was an "off-WAG", she was really a WAG at all. London Lite referred to Henderson-Thynne and Cassie Sumner, a WAGs Boutique participant whose supposed relationship with Michael Essien
Michael Essien
Michael Kojo Essien is a Ghanaian footballer who plays for Chelsea and the Ghanaian national team. He is a midfielder who has often been touted as a box-to-box midfielder for his ability to exert boundless energy in supporting offensive and defensive play...
was the subject of some doubt, as "fake WAGs".
Les Wags and die WAGs
Jimmy Armfield
James Christopher "Jimmy" Armfield, CBE, DL is an English former professional football player and manager who currently works as a football pundit for BBC Radio Five Live. He played the whole of his Football League career at Blackpool, usually at right back...
that there was "a real international flavour to this World Cup", the Sunday Times published during the 2006 tournament a photograph of the wives of French players Thierry Henry
Thierry Henry
Thierry Daniel Henry is a French professional footballer who plays for the New York Red Bulls in Major League Soccer.Henry was born in Les Ulis, Essonne where he played for an array of local sides as a youngster and showed great promise as a goal-scorer. He was spotted by AS Monaco in 1990 and...
and David Trézéguet
David Trézéguet
David Sergio Trezeguet is a World Cup winning French international footballer who currently is a free agent after being released by Baniyas SC on 21 Nov 2011....
with the caption "French Wags Nicole Henry and Beatrice Trezeguet share a smacker [i.e. kiss]".
For its part, the French press referred to the English wives and girlfriends ("les épouses et petites amies des joueurs") as "les Wags": "Et lorsque les Wags ont fini leur shopping ..." [And when the Wags had finished their shopping]. Similarly, in German, "die WAGs" was adopted. Austria's Seitenblicke, for example, carried a story "Ich bin keine WAG!" in German about Cheryl Cole's apparent disclaiming of the appellation of "WAG": "Ich war bei 'Girls Aloud' bevor ich Ashley [Cole] kennenlernte ..." [I was with Girls Aloud before I met Ashley].
Father of the girlfriend of a footballer
When Melanie Slade's father, Councillor John Slade, was installed as Mayor of SouthamptonSouthampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
, Hampshire on 17 May 2006, he was introduced by a fellow councillor, Alec Samuels, as "about the most famous mayor this city has had in 790 years ... He is the father of the girlfriend of a footballer".
LA WAGs
When it was announced in 2007 that David Beckham would be joining the American club Los Angeles GalaxyLos Angeles Galaxy
The Los Angeles Galaxy are an American professional soccer team, based in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, California, which competes in Major League Soccer , the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. It is one of the ten charter clubs of MLS, and the league's second...
, the Mail on Sunday referred to the "LA WAGs whose husbands earn less in ten years than Beckham in one week". The Mail claimed that these WAGs, who included actress Bianca Kajlich
Bianca Kajlich
Bianca Maria Kajlich is an American actress. Kajlich has had starring and supporting roles in television and film; she currently plays Jennifer on the CBS comedy Rules of Engagement.-Early life:...
, were "stay-at-home girls" who "possess not a Chloé
Chloé
Chloé is a French fashion house founded in 1952 by Gaby Aghion. Its headquarters is in Paris.-History:Gaby Aghion was born in Alexandria, Egypt in the year 1921...
dress, a Prada
Prada
Prada S.p.A. is an Italian fashion label specializing in luxury goods for men and women , founded by Mario Prada.-Foundations:...
handbag or a Manolo Blahnik
Manolo Blahnik
Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez CBE, , is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the self-named, high-end shoe brand.-Biography:Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and born and raised in the Canary Islands , Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris...
shoe between them. And they are awaiting the arrival of Victoria Beckham with some trepidation".
Lawn tennis
During the course of the World Cup, the Times coined the term "WWAGs" ("WimbledonThe Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
Wives and Girlfriends") for the girlfriends of male participants in the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships in 2006. The most photographed WWAG in the British press during the tournament of 2006 was Kim Sears, the girlfriend of Scottish player Andy Murray. Sears is the daughter of Nigel Sears, former coach of the Slovak player Daniela Hantuchová
Daniela Hantuchová
Daniela Hantuchová is a Slovak professional tennis player. She turned professional in 1999 and had her breakthrough year in 2002, when she won her first Tier I tournament and ended the year in the top 10.She is currently coached by Larri Passos...
.
The Sun used an alternative form, "WOWs" ("Wives of Wimbledon"), to draw attention to photographs of such "girls with WOW factor" as the Australian actress, Bec Hewitt
Bec Hewitt
Rebecca June "Bec" Hewitt is an Australian actress and singer. From 1998 to 2005, Hewitt played Hayley Smith Lawson on the soap opera Home and Away. As Bec Cartwright, Hewitt released an eponymous pop music album in 2002...
, née Cartwright, wife of Lleyton Hewitt
Lleyton Hewitt
Lleyton Glynn Hewitt born 24 February 1981) is an Australian professional tennis player and former world no. 1.In 2000, Hewitt had won ATP titles on all three major surfaces and reached one final on carpet. By 2001, he became the youngest male ever to be ranked no. 1 at the age of 20...
, Wimbledon champion in 2002.
Golf
Interest in the private lives of golfers has been popular in the tabloids since the relationships of Nick FaldoNick Faldo
Sir Nicholas Alexander "Nick" Faldo, MBE is an English professional golfer on the European Tour who now mainly works as an on air golf analyst. Over his career, he has won six majors: three Open Championships and three Masters. He was ranked the World No...
and Tony Jacklin
Tony Jacklin
Anthony Jacklin CBE is an English golfer, who was the most successful British player of his generation. He was also the most successful European Ryder Cup captain ever.-Early life and education:...
, though not to the extent of footballers; one golf relationship that received substantial tabloid coverage was the marriage of Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Formerly the World No...
and Elin Nordegren
Elin Nordegren
Elin Maria Pernilla Nordegren is a former Swedish model and the ex-wife of professional golfer Tiger Woods.- Early life :Nordegren was born in Stockholm, Sweden. Her mother, Barbro Holmberg, is a politician and the former Swedish migration and asylum policy minister, and the current Governor of...
, which ended after even more widely publicized revelations of Woods' serial infidelity. Jacklin, who was then widowed at the time in 1988 had a date with a teenage girl, who then sold the story to The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
newspapers. Faldo is best remembered in the frontpage outside of sports, in 1998, having his Porsche 959
Porsche 959
The Porsche 959 is a sports car manufactured by Porsche from 1986 to 1989, first as a Group B rally car and later as a legal production car designed to satisfy FIA homologation regulations requiring that a minimum number of 200 street legal units be built....
trashed by an ex-girlfriend with his golf clubs.
The term "wives and girlfriends" (in unabbreviated term) was commonly used during the Ryder Cup
Ryder Cup
The Ryder Cup is a biennial golf competition between teams from Europe and the United States. The competition is jointly administered by the PGA of America and the PGA European Tour, and is contested every two years, the venue alternating between courses in the United States and Europe...
golfing competitions at The Belfry
The Belfry
The Belfry is a golf resort in Wishaw, Warwickshire, England, very near the Sutton Coldfield district of Birmingham, and owned since 2005 by Irish businessman Sean Quinn....
in 2002
2002 Ryder Cup
The 34th Ryder Cup Matches were held between 27–29 September 2002, on the Brabazon Course at The Belfry in Wishaw, Warwickshire, England ....
and Oakland Hills
Oakland Hills Country Club
Oakland Hills Country Club is a private golf club in Bloomfield Township, Oakland County, Michigan. It has hosted many prestigious professional golf tournaments throughout its history. The club consists of two 18 hole courses: the South Course and the North Course. The South Course has hosted all...
near Detroit in 2004
2004 Ryder Cup
The 35th Ryder Cup Matches were held September 17–19 at the Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township, Michigan.The European team won the competition by a margin of 18½ to 9½ points, the winning putt being made by Colin Montgomerie, who maintained his record of never losing in any of his...
, the press having given these partners about as much coverage as the golfers themselves, due to the patriotic competitive nature of the sport which extends to themselves. London Lite
London Lite
London Lite was the trading name of a British free daily newspaper, published by Associated Newspapers , and now defunct. It was available Monday to Friday afternoons and evenings from street distributors in Central London only...
and Metro
Metro (Associated Metro Limited)
Metro is a free daily newspaper in the United Kingdom published by Associated Newspapers Ltd . It is available from Monday to Friday each week on many public transport services across the United Kingdom.-History:The paper was launched in London in 1999, and can now be found in 14 UK urban centres...
used the slightly patronising acronym "WABs" ("wives and birdies", the latter a pun on the term for a one under par
Par (score)
The word "par" is a term in the game of golf used to denote the pre-determined number of strokes that a scratch golfer should require to complete a hole, a round , or a tournament...
score for a hole) with reference to the partners of the European team as they arrived in Ireland for the 2006 Ryder Cup
2006 Ryder Cup
The 36th Ryder Cup Matches were held 22–24 September 2006 at the K Club, Straffan, Co. Kildare, Ireland. Team Europe won the competition by a score of 18½ to 9½ points, equalling their record winning margin of 2 years earlier. This was the first time Europe had achieved three successive victories...
at The K Club
The Kildare Hotel and Golf Club
The Kildare Hotel and Golf Club is a golf and leisure complex located at Straffan, County Kildare, Ireland. It is built on the old grounds of Straffan House and at present is jointly owned by Gerry Gannon and Michael Smurfit....
, Straffan, County Kildare.
Cricket
"CWAGs" (Cricket Wives and Girlfriends) was applied to partners of the England cricketCricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
team in the series of test matches
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
against Australia that began in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, Queensland in November 2006: for example, "Jessica the Cwag knocks Ashes
The Ashes
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of the most celebrated rivalries in international cricket and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues...
Test crowd for six" (the subject of this headline being singer Jessica Taylor
Jessica Taylor (Liberty X)
Jessica Taylor is an English singer, previously with the Brit Award winning pop group, Liberty X. The group consisted of herself, Tony Lundon, Kevin Simm, Michelle Heaton, and Kelli Young.-Personal life:...
, of the group Liberty X
Liberty X
Liberty X were a British pop vocal group formed by the five contestants eliminated from the final ten qualifiers from the 2001 ITV show Popstars. The group consisted of Tony Lundon, Kevin Simm, Michelle Heaton, Kelli Young and Jessica Taylor...
, fiancée of batsman and occasional off-spinner Kevin Pietersen
Kevin Pietersen
Kevin Peter Pietersen, MBE is a South African-born English cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and occasional off spin bowler who plays for England and Surrey...
). Although "CWAG" (rather than "WAG") was not used all that widely, there were predictable claims after England had lost the series 5-0 that the presence of wives and girlfriends had undermined the cohesion of the touring party. "WAG" had previously been applied in the context of cricket: for example to model Minki van der Westhuizen, who had been associated with the South African captain, Graeme Smith
Graeme Smith
Graeme Craig Smith is a South African cricketer and captain of the South African cricket team Test Match side, having succeeded Shaun Pollock after the 2003 Cricket World Cup...
.
More recently, the Australian media has started to use the "WAG" term to describe the partners of their own cricket team
Australian cricket team
The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...
. See Australian Cricket WAGs.
British Royal Family
In July 2006 The Sun carried an article on the "RAGs" ("Royals and Girlfriends"), a term introduced for young female members of the British Royal Family, as well as Kate Middleton, then girlfriend and now wifeWedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton
The wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton took place on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey in London. Prince William, the eldest son of Charles, Prince of Wales, first met Catherine Middleton in 2001, when both were studying at the University of St Andrews. Their...
of Prince William, and Chelsy Davy
Chelsy Davy
Chelsy Yvonne Davy is a Zimbabwean National who was the on-off girlfriend of Prince Harry of Wales from early 2004 to May 2010.- Early life :...
, girlfriend of Prince Harry
Prince Harry of Wales
Prince Henry of Wales , commonly known as Prince Harry, is the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and fourth grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
. Others identified as "RAGs" were Princess Beatrice
Princess Beatrice of York
Princess Beatrice of York is the elder daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah, Duchess of York...
, Princess Eugenie
Princess Eugenie of York
Princess Eugenie of York Eugenie Victoria Helena; born 23 March 1990) is the younger daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah, Duchess of York...
, champion equestrian eventer
Eventing
Eventing is an equestrian event comprising dressage, cross-country, and show jumping. This event has its roots in a comprehensive cavalry test requiring mastery of several types of riding...
Zara Phillips
Zara Phillips
Zara Anne Elizabeth Phillips, MBE is the second child and only daughter of Princess Anne and her first husband Captain Mark Phillips and is 13th in the line of succession to the throne...
, and Lady Gabriella Windsor
Lady Gabriella Windsor
The Lady Gabriella Marina Alexandra Ophelia Windsor , known both professionally and personally as Ella Windsor, is an English freelance feature writer, and the only daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent .Her paternal great grandparents were King George V of the United Kingdom and Mary of...
. Subsequently, under the heading "Windsor Mads outdo the Wags", Jasper Gerard reported in the Sunday Times on festivities involving "the Windsor Mads (mothers and daughters), as Fergie
Sarah, Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York is a British charity patron, spokesperson, writer, film producer, television personality and former member of the British Royal Family. She is the former wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, whom she married from 1986 to 1996...
[Sarah, Duchess of York] and Eugenie celebrated Beatrice's forthcoming 18th birthday".
Motor racing
Though the term has never been used, many high profile sportsmen in motor racing have publicly enjoyed high profile relationships with celebrities, for instance Jacques VilleneuveJacques Villeneuve
Jacques Joseph Charles Villeneuve, , is a Canadian musician and automobile racing driver. He is the son of the late Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve, and is the namesake of his uncle...
's relationship with Dannii Minogue
Dannii Minogue
Danielle Jane "Dannii" Minogue is an Australian singer-songwriter, actress, television personality, radio personality, fashion designer and model...
and the marriage of Dario Franchitti
Dario Franchitti
George Dario Marino Franchitti is a Scottish racing driver. He formerly competed in the CART series before switching to the IndyCar Series where he was 2007 champion, and won the rain-shortened 2007 Indianapolis 500. Franchitti is also a former NASCAR driver for Chip Ganassi Racing, competing...
and Ashley Judd
Ashley Judd
Ashley Judd is an American television and film actress, who has played lead roles in films including Ruby in Paradise, Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy, Where the Heart Is and High Crimes...
.
One example of a well known wife of a sportsman is Michaela Fogarty, the wife of former Superbike World Championship
Superbike World Championship
Superbike World Championship is the worldwide Superbike racing Championship. The championship was founded in . The Superbike World Championship season consists of a series of rounds held on permanent racing facilities...
star Carl
Carl Fogarty
Carl 'Foggy' Fogarty is the most successful World Superbike racer of all time in terms of the number of championships and number of race wins...
. At the height of her husband's fame, she has been photographed in pit and paddock areas and has also appeared in print advertisements for Ducati motorcycles, which her husband has ridden for. Despite never appearing in the spotlight, much of her popularity is within the motorcycling fraternity, as she is known for her support of her husband. The two have even appeared in a series which they embark on an adventure riding.
Other acronyms
Other imitative acronyms to emerge in 2006 included:| Acronyms | Description |
|---|---|
| CHAPs | "celebrities' husbands and partners"; |
| HABs | "husbands and boyfriends" for the partners of female tennis players at Wimbledon (and other female athletes); |
| MAGs | "mothers and girlfriends", or the singular "MAG" for mother of a WAG (e.g. "Wonder who's paying for Coleen's MAG's shopping?") |
| SADs | "sons and daughters" of footballers, a term used by the Sunday Times with reference to Bianca Gascoigne, daughter of Paul Gascoigne Paul Gascoigne Paul John Gascoigne , commonly referred to as Gazza, is a retired English professional footballer.Playing in the position of midfield, Gascoigne's career included spells at Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Rangers, Middlesbrough, Everton and Gansu Tianma, where he scored at least a goal... who played for England in the 1990 World Cup, Shaun Wright-Phillips Shaun Wright-Phillips Shaun Cameron Wright-Phillips is an English footballer who plays for Queens Park Rangers and the England national team. He is the adopted son of former England international, Ian Wright and the half-brother of fellow professional football player Bradley Wright-Phillips... , the adopted son of Ian Wright Ian Wright Ian Edward Wright, MBE is a retired English footballer turned television and radio personality.Wright enjoyed success with London clubs Crystal Palace and Arsenal, spending six years with the former and seven years with the latter. With Arsenal he has lifted the Premier League title and both major... (Arsenal and England) and Calum Best Calum Best Calum Milan Best is a British-American former fashion model turned celebrity, and television personality.-Career:... , son of George Best George Best George Best was a professional footballer from Northern Ireland, who played for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team. He was a winger whose game combined pace, acceleration, balance, two-footedness, goalscoring and the ability to beat defenders... (Manchester United & Northern Ireland); |
| SAPs | "spouses and partners" a gender neutral alternative to WAGs and HABs |
| SWAGs | used both for "supporters without a game" (i.e. England fans at a loose end in Germany on days when their team was not playing) and, according to the Guardian, "Summit wives and girlfriends" (the partners of World leaders attending the G8 G8 The Group of Eight is a forum, created by France in 1975, for the governments of seven major economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1997, the group added Russia, thus becoming the G8... Summit 32nd G8 summit The 32nd summit of the G8 group of industrialised nations took place from 15 July to 17 July 2006 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The venue was the Constantine Palace, which is located in Strelna on the Gulf of Finland... in St Petersburg Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea... , Russia on 15–17 July 2006). |
Private Eye
In an irreverent parody - "Those World Cup Acronyms in Full" - the satirical magazine Private EyePrivate Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
(which had, among other things, imagined a table-top game, with a Gucci
Gucci
The House of Gucci, better known simply as Gucci , is an Italian fashion and leather goods label, part of the Gucci Group, which is owned by French company PPR...
ball, called "Subbuteo
Subbuteo
Subbuteo is a set of table top games simulating team sports such as association football, cricket, both codes of rugby and hockey. The name is most closely associated with the football game, which for many years was marketed as "the replica of Association Football".The "Subbuteo" name is derived...
Footballers' Wives" and referred to Coleen (McLoughlin) Rooney as "Noleen McCleavage") offered such additional terms as "SHAGS" ("unofficial girlfriends whose numbers appear on footballers' mobile phones") and "GAGS" ("Writs served by footballers accused of relationships with SHAGS"). Both of these were allusions to rumours two years earlier about the private life of an England international player.
Following the weddings of four England players in a single weekend in 2007, the Eyes "Glenda Slagg
Glenda Slagg
Glenda Slagg is a fictional parodic columnist in the satirical magazine Private Eye. She first appeared in the mid-1960s. Her writing style is a pastiche of several female columnists in British newspapers, notably Jean Rook and Lynda Lee-Potter: brash, vitriolic and inconsistent.Glenda's column...
" column referred jokingly to "SLAGS": "that's 'Stupid Lazy and Grasping Slappers' - Geddit?!?".
Criticism
In an October 2008 press conference, England and Manchester United footballer Rio FerdinandRio Ferdinand
Rio Gavin Ferdinand is an English footballer. He plays at centre back for Manchester United in the Premier League and for the England national football team...
heavily criticised the WAGS culture, particularly in Baden-Baden two years previously, calling it a "circus" and giving praise to new England manager Fabio Capello
Fabio Capello
Fabio Capello is an Italian football manager and former player. He is the manager of the England national football team.Capello has the distinction of winning the domestic league title with every club he has coached throughout his career...
's more disciplined regime, and after England had qualified for the 2010 World Cup by beating Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
5-1, Capello made his first public comment on the WAGs by making it clear that the England players will only be able to see their wives and partners the day after a match, stating that "We are there to play, not for a holiday".
Popular culture
Like many cultural trends or coined phrases, references to WAGs have appeared in popular culture. In the EstelleEstelle (musician)
Estelle Fanta Swaray commonly known as Estelle, and formerly as Est'elle, is an English R&B singer-songwriter, rapper and record producer.-Early Life:Estelle was born 18 January 1980 in Hammersmith, London, England...
song "American Boy
American Boy
"American Boy" is the second single from the album Shine by British R&B singer Estelle and features American rapper Kanye West. The song is her first international single...
", Kanye West
Kanye West
Kanye Omari West is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and...
raps the lyrics; "But I still talk that ca-a-sh, Cuz a lotta WAGS wanna hear it". Two novels have been published about WAGs. The first, A Wag's Diary, was released in October 2007, published by Harper Collins; the second, A Wag's Diary in LA, was published in June 2008. Both books are written by Alison Kervin
Alison Kervin
Alison Kervin is an award-winning journalist, biographer and novelist.- Fiction writing :Kervin has previously written 11 books, including four novels...
.
Also is in the song Golddigger
Gold Digger (Dolly Rockers song)
"Gold Digger" is the debut single by English girl group Dolly Rockers. It was released digitally in the United Kingdom on 30 August 2009 and physically the day after...
by the Dolly Rockers
The Dolly Rockers
The Dolly Rockers are an English girl group from London, Leeds and Manchester. The group currently consists of Lucie Kay, Sophie King and Daniele Owen. They first became known when they competed in UK talent show The X Factor in 2006, making it through to the "judges' houses" stage, however they...
- "there is a WAG in every mag."