WAGs World
By Iona Todd
‘Wives and Girlfriends’ or rather ‘Women and Glamour’?
Or how about like, ‘Women Are (Sporting) Gods?’
No? Then what about ‘We Are (the cheeky) Girls’?
Because when it comes to sport, women are more than just the better halves…aren’t we?
When flicking through the glossiest moments in sport, we see how the omnipotent flashes of glitz bleed through games. A symbiotic relationship exists between glamour and sport. A world exists wherein sport hinges on the women who spin within its sphere.
Now, often relegated to the stands, it’s the wives, the girlfriends, who exist as an embodiment of a player’s accreditations. Off the pitch, off the oche, off the track, the WAGS are reduced to an acronym, all whilst acting as the theanthropic representation for respective sporting image.
To underestimate the WAG makes for a fate worse than death… Bad Street-Cred…
In the early 2000’s, it was the Cheryl Cole’s, the Vicky B’s, all of whom asserted a rich lookbook of graphic tees, coloured lozenges of bountiful jewellery, Bratz-pack style caps, and brown-tinted D&G sunglasses (Looks of which, I fully intend on replicating for the World Cup this summer btwwwwwwwwww). And as such, because sport rotates on an axis of popular culture and media, it is the women who act as the shimmering stars who keep the fires of attention blazing. And it’s not just through a tapestry of fashion. It’s more than that:
It’s the Lionesses winning their second UEFA European Women’s Championship Trophy. It’s the Red Roses winning the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup. It’s Fallon Sherrock who made history in becoming the first woman to win a match at the PDC World Darts Championship.
In 2025, it was reported that the visibility of women’s sport reached new highs. With 48 million viewers tuning into women’s sport last year, it’s clear that Women And Girls (WAGSSSSS SLAY) epitomise sporting attention and, with current stats, even success.
My sport of choice in this WAGs World is Darts. It’s the sport I was raised on. Nine-years-of-age with bright yellow Blackpool sunglasses sat in the back of the Winter Gardens, when sounds of Seven Nation Army thumped through the floorboards, I knew I had to be involved within this world.
Now, when I go to the pub, I go wearing my red high heels, sporting a bouncy blow-dry. There, sandwiched between purple pints of Dark Fruits and O’s of cherry-cola vape-smoke, I eye the round darts-board and the pulsing red bullseye.
Champagne finishes, feathers, lipstick and a bag of nails; the language of a working-class culture is perpetuated by the semantics of glamour. And whilst the conceptions of some sports were a little less than female-friendly, we do see women asserting their dominance in this culture more than ever before.
Nearly 684 million women globally identify themselves as sports fans. With around 72% of women describing themselves as ‘avid fans’ of at least one sport, it seems sporting culture is being injected with a femininity more than what exists in being just the wives and girlfriends of the players, but the competitors and the winners too.