Behind Every Man? The Value of the Celebrity WAG in Western Media Culture. (original) (raw)

Abstract

""Despite the passing of gay marriage laws that challenge the traditional ‘man and wife’ version of matrimony, along with declining rates of heterosexual weddings (especially for the less well-off) and stubbornly high divorce rates, the idealization of heterosexual marriage remains a constant in Western media culture. Coverage of celebrity couples is a key part of the burgeoning marriage industry, and the traditionally feminine and supportive wife is still, often, a key signifier of a successful man. In recent years this version of celebrity heteronormative relations was perhaps most keenly illustrated at the 2006 FIFA World Cup Finals in Germany, when the term WAG entered the lexicon of everyday discourse to describe women such as Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole who were at once visibly supportive of their footballer partners and perfect versions of the postfeminist edict that links independence with hyper-femininity and conspicuous consumption. This paper examines the phenomenon of celebrity WAGs, beginning with an examination of the media coverage of the 2006 World Cup, and follows the term towards the present day as it crosses multiple public arenas (including sport, politics, music, and film), to the point where its usage is now a banal description of women’s unearned access to fame. It argues that the commodity value of the WAG has become increasingly important for the media representation of those public spheres in that it reinforces traditional gender power relations while simultaneously suggesting that it is a role with agency and power. As such, though WAGs appear to be ‘peripheral’ celebrities, they are key figures in the media representation of postfeminist-neoliberal femininity.

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