While Kristin Juszczyk said she’s proud of her accomplishments as a fashion designer and of “so much female empowerment” in the NFL, she and Kylie Kelce despaired of a term that’s been affixed to women like them.
Over the past couple years, it has become increasingly common for media reports to refer to Juszczyk, Kelce and other wives and girlfriends of professional athletes as “WAGs.”
During Thursday’s episode of “Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce,” Kelce asked Juszczyk to share her thoughts on the term, People reported. Juszczyk, who is married to San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, replied that she thinks the term is “derogatory,” and it “makes me crawl out of my skin.”
After Juszczyk asked where the term even comes from, she said: “I take such pride in what my husband does, and I love supporting him. It’s my favorite thing in the world. But that’s not the only person that I am. I’m my own individual.”
Kelce, who is married to former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, agreed that there is “a negative connotation” associated with the term, People reported. While Kelce doesn’t “think everyone intends it (to mean something negative), the vast majority (use it) in some type of negative capacity.”
The term indeed has a troubled history but came back into fashion after Taylor Swift began dating Kylie Kelce’s brother-in-law, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, during the 2023-24 NFL season. As the pop mega-star became a fixture at Chiefs games, and she joined other wives and girlfriends of Chiefs players in being the team’s biggest cheerleaders, she was said to be entering her “WAGs era.”
The media’s attention soon turned to other newly anointed WAGs from other sports teams, including Juszczyk and the other photogenic wives and girlfriends of San Francisco 49ers players.
Etymological deep dives show that U.K. tabloids began using the term in the 2000s to report on the extravagant, indulgent, party-girl antics of the wives and girlfriends of World Cup players, including David Beckham’s pop-music star wife, Victoria. The term continued to gain popularity, particularly surrounding the 2006 World Cup, The Telegraph later reported.
That’s when Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham and several other soccer WAGs stayed near the team camp in the spa town of Baden-Baden, Germany, “creating a spectacle the likes of which we may never see again,” as Glamour magazine observed in a 2023 analysis of the term.
The reporting on Beckham consequently revealed the dark side of the term and its connotations. In 2010, the British Equalities and Human Rights Commission labeled the term “offensive,” The Telegraph reported. A spokesperson for the commission said the term was typically used as “a “pejorative” phrase to demean a group of women, adding that the media rarely showed these significant others in a positive light. Four years later, a British journalist said that the term frames these women “as anonymous peacocks, identifiable only by their more famous footballing mates.”
That’s a sentiment that Juszczyk and Kelce seem to share, as Juszczyk asserted that the current class of wives and girlfriends of NFL stars are doing a “great job” of “redefining the word,” People reported.
“There has been so much female empowerment — whether that’s (within) the NFL (or) women in sports,” continued Juszczyk, who last year inked a licensing deal with the NFL to produce stylish, sports-themed fashions. Last month, she announced that she was launching a new sports apparel brand, Off Season, which features puffer jackets for five NFL teams, like the famous red one she made for Swift in January 2024.
Juszczyk admitted that she now tries “to feel honored” by being called a WAG, People reported.
“The (reason) why (WAG) has a negative tone is (because) these women are the backbone of these athletes,” she said. She explained that they do all the work, managing athletes’ home and family lives, so that they “can focus only on their career and on being successful on the field.”
Both Kelce and Juszczyk agreed that women should be “praised” for serving in this role during the NFL season.
“So often, I think the term WAG pigeonholes women into ‘you are defined solely by your significant other’s career,’” Kelce explained. “It’s so silly to me that just because you’re with someone, that you then get pigeonholed into like ‘oh you’re (just) a WAG.’ It’s ridiculous.”
For her part, Kelce is forging a media career beyond her identity as a former NFL wife. She’s now an up-and-coming media powerhouse: Her “Not Gonna Lie” podcast debuted at the top of the Apple and Spotify podcast charts when it debuted in December, according to The Independent.
