A European Informational Website
learn more
Language: en
WAGs (or Wags) was an acronym used particularly (but by no means exclusively) by the British tabloid press to describe the Wives And Girlfriends of the England national football team. It came into common use during the 2006 World Cup, held in Germany, although it had been used occasionally before that.
The first recorded use of the term was in 2004.[1] In 2006 it was generally printed as "WAGs", but a singular, "Wag" or "WAG", quickly came into vogue, even though the singular form would correctly have been "wife or girlfriend": for example, "any additional pounds she gained during Wag drinking sessions";[2] "a property heiress, model and actress, appears a likely sports WAG".[3] Susie Dent's annual Language Report for the Oxford University Press (2006) capitalised the entire acronym as "WAGS".[4]
"WAG"/"wag" came also to be used somewhat tautologically ("deluxe-edition Wag girlfriend"[5]) and increasingly in non-footballing contexts: for example, the first wife of comedian Peter Cook (1937-95) was described as a "Sixties Wag"[6] and actress Jennifer Ellison, because of her former choice of clothes, "once ... the epitome of a Wag".[7] Fashion writer Shane Watson coined a collective noun, "waggery".[8]
Prominent WAGs of 2006 included Victoria Beckham, wife of former England captain David Beckham, whom the New Yorker described as "Queen of the wags"[9] and the Sunday Times as "the original Wag";[10] Cheryl Cole, née Tweedy, of the group Girls Aloud, who married Ashley Cole in July 2006 ("Wag weds"[11]); Coleen McLoughlin, girlfriend of Wayne Rooney, who was variously described as a "chavette", dubbed by the tabloid newspaper The Sun a "super WAG"[12] and, by the end of the year, listed by the Times as a "national treasure" [13]; and Carly Zucker, partner of Joe Cole, who was a fitness instructor, 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".[14] In 2007 the Times referred to Steven Gerrard's fiancée Alex Curran as an "über- WAG" ("tussling over the remote with his über- WAG fiancée" [15]). Another WAG engendered considerable interest due to her relative youth - she was A-level student Melanie Slade, the girlfriend of Theo Walcott, who, at seventeen, was himself the youngest member of the England squad.
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.
Particular attention was paid to WAGs' nights out and shopping expeditions in the spa town of Baden-Baden, where the England team was based. It was estimated in the press that the combined spending of English WAGs during the World Cup was of the order of £1 million,[16] although, despite reports of a collective hotel bill of over £250,000 and the consumption of £40 bottles of champagne,[17] no specific evidence for this figure was advanced. Interest was such that physician Thomas Stuttaford wrote an article for the Times in which he concluded that their shopping sprees were unlikely to have been a manifestation of the clinical condition of compulsive control disorder.[18]
Some people, though, became tired of what they regarded as some of the wags' apparently empty lifestyle.[19] And, more significantly, the Sunday Times reported the apparent concerns of some members of the English Football Association's board that interest in the WAGs had at times tended to overshadow the performance of the England team itself, which was eliminated from the tournament in the quarter-finals.[20] Lisa Armstrong, novelist and fashion editor of the Times, reflected that "if the England team had been as keen to outperform one another as the WAGs, [they]'d have slaughtered the opposition".[21] Accordingly, there were suggestions that the presence of WAGs might not be welcome during future competitions ("FA sends off Wags for non-stop partying"[22]) and, indeed, Steven Gerrard reflected that, in 2006, "really, the FA should have flown the WAGs in and out".[23]
The WAGs' activities did however provide a "benchmark" of sorts. A Labour 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",[24] 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.[25]
Fashion writers of 2006 identified certain consequences of what Lisa Armstrong described as “WAG fall-out”[26] and Tina Gaudoin as "Waglash".[27] These were mostly the perceived negative implications of “over-exposure” of certain styles: for example, that the Hermès “Birkin” bag had become less desirable as a result of being de rigueur among WAGs in Baden-Baden[28] (a development dubbed by Shane Watson as "baglash"[29]); 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”.[30]
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",[31] while her colleague Sarah Vine offered advice on "buying some nice perfume that won't make you smell like a WAG on heat".[32] When it was reported, in 2007, that Coleen McLouhglin 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?" [33]
However, some women did aspire to the "WAG" look. McLoughlin 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".[34] Sunday Times columnist India Knight 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".[35] 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".[36]
In 2007 the magazine The Oldie held a competition in which readers were invited to submit a "wedding song" for Wayne Rooney and Coleen McCloughin [37]. The winning entries included the following lines:
<blockquote> Coleen:our shopping star, whose carrier bags Announce that Britain's shoppers are the best; A natural leader of consuming WAGs Passing with flying colours every test [38];</blockquote>
and:
<blockquote> And shower blessings on this glorious Wayne As on this sweet Coleen, and all her train: May petals fill the air, as tipsy WAGs Tread disco-nimbly round their Gucci bags [39]. </blockquote>
Interest in the partners of footballers dates back at least to the late 1960s when England captain Bobby Moore (1941-93) and his first wife Tina were 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 [40] , a view that seems to have been shared by some other members of the squad [41]. 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 [42].
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 almost universally 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".[43]
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 [44], 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" [45].
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". An illustation of this distinction was possibly provided by singer Louise Nurding, formerly of the group Eternal, who married Liverpool and England midfielder Jamie Redknapp in 1998. Though a celebrity in her own right, who even posed from time to time for "glamour" photographs for "lads'" magazines (she was FHMs "sexiest woman of the decade" in 2004), her lifestyle, and that of her husband, was essentially unostentatious and apparently uncomplicated. Therefore, while she might, by definition, have been described as a "WAG", the eponym, "footballer's wife", would arguably have been unsuitable.
During the 2005-6 season the actress Joanna Taylor, wife of Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Danny Murphy, wrote a regular column for the Times whose title, "Footballer's Wife", was no doubt partially ironic.
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 Aloud member Cheryl Cole, to reject the eponym and to emphasise their credentials as career women in their own right.[46]
The singer Jamelia (whose footballing boyfriend, Darren Byfield of Millwall, 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 was a “businesswoman”, and Cole and McLoughlin, who “have a job”, and, on the other, those who, in her view, had the wrong “priorities” and simply spent their boyfriends' money.[47] 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 acroymn and the increasingly-used "Wag" in the colloquial sense of a "footballer's wife".
In January 2007 a "reality" television series called WAGs Boutique (ITV2) 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?" [48] 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 [49]. London Lite referred to Henderson-Thynne and Cassie Sumner, a WAGs Boutique participant whose supposed relationship with a footballer was the subject of some doubt, as "fake WAGs".[50]
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",[51] the Sunday Times published 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]".[52]
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].[53] Similarly, in Germany, "die WAGs" was adopted. Seiten Blicke, for example, carried a story ("Ich bin keine WAG!") about Cheryl Tweedy's apparently disclaiming the appellation of "WAG": "Ich war bei Girls Aloud bevor ich Ashley [Cole] kennlernte ..." [I was with Girls Aloud before I got to know Ashley].[54]
When Melanie Slade's father, Councillor John Slade, was installed as Mayor of Southampton, 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".[55]
When it was announced in 2007 that David Beckham would be joining the American club Los Angeles Galaxy, 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".[56]
A website was set up in early 2007 dedicated to the WAGs of the Sunday Football Leagues across the UK. http://www.sundayleaguewags.co.uk
During the course of the World Cup, the Times coined the term "WWAGs" ("Wimbledon Wives and Girlfriends") for the girlfriends of male participants in the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships in 2006.[57] The most photographed WWAG in the British press during the tournament of 2006 was Kim Sears, the girlfriend of Scottish player Andrew Murray. Sears was 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.[58]
Interest in the private lives of golfers has been popular in the tabloids since the relationships of Nick Faldo and Tony Jacklin, though not to the extent of footballers; one current golf relationship that receives substantial tabloid coverage is the marriage of Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren. 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 competive nature of the sport which extends to themselves. London Lite[59] and Metro[60] 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.
"CWAGs" (Cricket Wives and Girlfriends) was applied to partners of the England cricket 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"[61] (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.[62] "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.[63]
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 and Chelsy Davy, the girlfriends of Prince William and Prince Harry.[64] Others identified as "RAGs" were Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, champion equestrian eventer Zara Phillips, and Lady Gabriella Windsor.[65] 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".[66]
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 Villeneuve's relationship with Dannii Minogue.
One example of a well known wife of a sportsman is Michaela Fogarty, the wife of former World Superbike star Carl. At the height of her husbands 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.
A compendium of WAGs galleries can now be viewed, featuring WAGs from the sports of football, motor racing, golf and cricket.[67]
Other imitative acronyms to emerge in 2006 included:
In an irreverent parody - "Those World Cup Acronyms in Full" - the satirical magazine Private Eye (which had, among other things, imagined a table-top game, with a Gucci ball, called "Subbuteo Footballers' Wives" and referred to Coleen McLoughlin as "Noleen McCleavage"[74]) 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").[75] Both of these were allusions to rumours two years earlier about the private life of an England international player.
Two novels are set to be published about Wags. The first, A Wag's Diary, is out in Ocotber 2007, published by Harper Collins; the second, A Wag's Diary in LA, will be published in June 2008 as Wags totter back into the spot light when the European Championships kick off. Both books are written by Alison Kervin.
<div class="references-small"> </div>
Contents