But of course, Kelce is putting his life on the line by… playing American football and Swift’s expansive catalogue of albums, which has shaped female discourse around the world, is trivial in comparison. Of course, Anushka Sharma and Sharmila Tagore were to be blamed for their husbands’ poor performances on the field, relentlessly attacked on the internet, even by Tagore’s own father, for being ‘distracting’. But WAGs like Beckham, who were used to being dismissed as frivolous gold-diggers by the media, took it on the chin, capitalising on the attention to build personal brands long before the age of the influencer. So much so that a 2009 survey found that 60 per cent of UK women aged 21 to 25 aspired to become WAGs. Presumably, it wasn’t embarrassing to have a boyfriend then.
We are now living in a post-Greta-Gerwig-Barbie world where insecure men are considered icky. In their stead have risen men like Mamdani, alongside actors Riz Ahmed and George Clooney, who never miss out on the opportunity to fangirl over their wives in public. “Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an advisor to Kofi Annan on Syria and was appointed to a three-person commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza Strip,” Tina Fey stated while hosting the 2015 Golden Globes. “So tonight, her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.” Clooney laughed the loudest in the audience. Ahmed pauses on the Oscar red carpet to fix his bestselling author wife Fatima Farheen Mirza’s hair. Kohli races to embrace a teary Sharma after winning his matches, calls her his ‘lucky charm’ and repeatedly condemns trolls for attacking her. Mamdani goes pink as he gushes over Duwaji in interviews, revealing that he’s planning on getting allergy shots so he and his wife can adopt cats together. “Always trust a man with a cool wife,” reads a comment under one of Duwaji’s posts.
