Since the FIFA World Cup of 2006, footballers’ wives have become a staple part of popular British culture, regularly appearing in glossy magazines, the tabloid press, reality shows and documentaries. Jen Bullen provides an analysis of how the media has created an exaggerated and stereotypical ‘wag’ (wife and girlfriend) figure. Wags are treated like royalty, living in a glamorous and fairy tale world and offering the aspiration of transformation to young women, while elsewhere they are denigrated as pathological and representative of a short-cut culture - gold-digging bimbos undeserving of their fame and fortune and, as such, subjected to symbolic violence based on their class and taste. Bullen examines such representations in relation to class, gender, celebrity and football.
