In the middle of the World Cup, I was on BBC radio, arguing with Fiona McIntosh, a Grazia magazine columnist, about the Wags, who at the time were the wives and girlfriends of the England soccer team.
At the moment, the Wags have become the Swags (summit wives and girlfriends, for G8). They will soon all cede to the Gwags, which doesn't really work as an acronym, but is the best-established gaggle -- golf's Ryder Cup wives who famously line up in their skirt suits for a photocall proving ... well, nobody knows what it proves. Here are some ladies; they have reached the apex of life's happiness, by snagging rich men. Well done them. Let's get back to the radio news program.
I was expecting some nice banter. She was going to say, "We're covering the Wags because it's a bit of fun, and people like to read about it," and I was going to say, "Yes, what a lot of fun, that Coleen's a pretty young thing, isn't she, I've written about her myself, loads of times, but still, isn't it a bit retrogressive, the way we're talking about them as adjuncts to their menfolk ...," and she was going to say, well, whatever she might have said.
I got as far as my adjuncts number, and McIntosh said, "No, a lot of these women are entrepreneurs in their own right," and instead of being pleasant and answering this pleasantly, I saw red. Because they are not famous and they are not on the cover of Grazia for being "entrepreneurs". We do not look at their dinky handbags and their accessorized bits and bobs and say, "I wish I could be an entrepreneur like she is." We don't do this massive-scale, nationwide eavesdropping to see what business plans they might be talking about.
Posh (Victoria Beckham) is, apparently, "a very intelligent woman, creating a brand." My arse! It does not matter which sunglasses she gets him to sponsor and what magazines she tells him to be in. It doesn't matter that (Wayne Rooney's other half) Coleen McLoughlin has a column in Closer magazine and makes 10 times more than she ever would if she worked in the local supermarket. It doesn't matter that they're not "like wives in the 50s, sitting at home," that they're "out there," "managing images," all this is so much PR bilge, so many euphemisms for "they spend money, they encourage the spending of money. How very now of them, how very helpful, wouldn't you be proud if they were your daughters."
None of this could possibly matter less: What matters is that they are in the public eye for sleeping with men. They are famous because of who they are having sex with. That's all that's going on here! Nothing to see, folks. If you want modernity, if you want the fruit of the women's movement in all its 21st century ripeness, may I direct you somewhere else. All that's going on here is that some beautiful women are having sex with some rich, sporty men.
All gender prejudice proceeds from this crucial notion: "You, love, you bring the high-quality sexual attributes, and calculate carefully how you dispense them. He will bring the money." Every idea, from women not enjoying sex and only doing it for the money, to promiscuous women being sluts because they're giving it away too cheap and lowering the market value for the rest of us, to women trying to trap men, lure them into a commitment when they'd rather play the field, every tinny, narrow, inauthentic cliche about men and women, all the trite business that starts in the sitcom and ends with women getting paid less for the same work and then raped on the way home, every stitch of this ugly straitjacket comes from this central idea: you bring the pussy (make him beg, mind); he'll bring the wallet.
To be honest, even if the situation were regularly reversed, even if female tennis players traveled with their boyfriends, and the HABs were photographed wherever they went, trying on swimming trunks, that would still not make it OK, except, of course, I don't know whether that would make it OK, since it never happens.
With the wives and girlfriends of your older public figure, the coverage is even worse, even more coarse and patronizing. Here is the caption from the London Daily Mail newspaper: "First there were the World Cup wives and girlfriends. Now meet their G8 counterparts, pictured here taking a stroll in the sun in St Petersburg ... "
In what respect is Cherie Blair, leading lawyer, the "counterpart" of 17-year-old Melanie Slade (England teenage soccer star Theo Walcott's girlfriend)? Oh, of course, they are both getting laid! They both have a man, and they both, you know, sleep in the same bed as him.
That Bernadette Chirac must be the counterpart to Nicole Merry, though I can't see Thierry Henry getting jiggy with her, fnarr fnarr ...
In this ideological scheme, where women snag men with sex and wiles, and men droolingly hand over their credit cards, what does it mean, to see these couples in their autumn years, with their suits and their steady walking pace, and their passionless togetherness? This is respectability, and decency, and old-fashioned loyalty. Never mind what these women have achieved in their own lives, that's irrelevant -- the men stay with them because that's the reward you give a good hunting dog who can no longer smell; it rendered you fine service. You're not going to ditch it now, are you, you're getting on a bit yourself, even though you'd be well within your rights to find a younger hunting dog for some afternoon hunting fun.
If the G8 were to last as long as the World Cup, stage two of the Misogyny Symposium would kick in -- we would start to speculate about which wife hated which other wife, and who offended whom by flirting with whose husband. How do Cherie and Laura really feel about another dinner? While we're here, how are things between Mrs Faldo and Ms Woods? In this universe, women can never get on with one another in an uncomplicated way, since they are constantly fighting off competition for their husband's favor, and clearly, when nobody is getting any younger, rivalry is hot and vengeful. Scratch any world view in which the women are stripped of three dimensions and operating only as satellites to their menfolk, and you will find them ultimately portrayed as bitches. Well, naturally -- they have nothing to trade but sex. Of course they are animals.
The problem is all of this sounds like a tirade against the women themselves. Jamelia is the partner of the soccer player Darren Byfield, but would never travel with him because she has her own career as a singer (and also, he is not that good at soccer, and never goes anywhere); at the start of the World Cup, she said, "Footballers' wives don't do anything. All they do is spend their boyfriends' money. If I'm going shopping, I'll pay with the money I've worked hard for. I would die of embarrassment if I had to resort to taking a boyfriend's cards."
She is right; no "entrepreneurship" blarney for her. But she is also wrong, because the problem isn't the women themselves. I don't care whose money they spend, couldn't give a toss that the (rumored) total shopping bill for the World Cup was a million squids, couldn't care less whether or not Flavia Prodi buys herself something pretty on her way through Moscow. The generosity of any relationship is that you're prepared to share your life with someone; sharing each other's money is a speck to that. I don't care if they don't have their own careers. These soccer players only have careers through some in this toxic "Go sister! Net that man! You can do it, with your pretty ways, and also your breasts!" slither out of the argument by pretending to respect these women as individuals. This drags you into a mudfight where you must discredit the Swags or the Wags themselves in order to overturn the concept. That process, incidentally, is known as the "waglash." I am not interested in the waglash. I am only interested in the creators and peddlers of waggery. They should be ashamed.
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