Kicking feminism into touch -- the WAGs' way
Monday August 20 2007
It seems that the Sunderland manager is finding some difficulties in luring certain players to Newcastle because the North-East of England is, frankly, not London, or even Leeds, which at least has a Harvey Nichols.
Mr Keane complains of the players that, "clearly their wives are running their lives". And the WAGs calling the shots want decent locations to shop for their designer handbags, have their bikini waxes done and knock back the Cristal champagne by the jeroboam.
I don't know enough about football to say if Mr Keane is right in his sporting judgements. But I do think he should be credited with identifying a key moment in the history of something else -- feminism.
Was it for the WAGs' lifestyle that Germaine Greer dispensed with her bra? Was it for this that Emily Davison threw herself under the King's horse at the famous "Suffragette Derby" of 1913? Did a generation of women live in boiler-suits so that Coleen McLoughlin could become a millionaire fashion icon, or Victoria Beckham set the world on fire with her hairstyles, breast reconstructions and dieting secrets?
Yes -- is, alas, the answer. In the phenomenon of the WAGs, we can see the end of feminism, as it was conceived in the generation of the 1960s and 1970s.
Feminism was about a lot of different things, including job equality, legal status, education and freedom to choose one's own way of life. But at the very core of feminism was the pledge that a woman should be defined by her own identity, and not just in relation to a man.
Legal, and sometimes religious, definitions underlined a woman's role as an adjunct to a man: a daughter was "given away" in marriage by her father -- symbolising that she was moving from the custody of one man to another.
Nomenclature described women in relation to men. Miss Mary Smith was the daughter of Mr Smith. Unmarried, she carried the patronymic, or father's name. When married, she would be Mrs John Smith, and when widowed, the more forlorn tag of Mrs Mary Smith.
Behind all these customs lay the wicked tyranny of patriarchy, which feminism pledged to overthrow.
We, of that generation, had many quarrels with our mothers over such issues. My own mother's belief that the best career choice for any woman is to "marry a rich man" was passionately and rebelliously contested by her daughters. Why, Mother, we'd cry -- it's little better than prostitution! Indeed, we'd go on, prostitutes are more honest -- they just turn one trick for money, whereas a woman who marries for money is a more dishonest whore!
We would forge a world where such things wouldn't happen. Women would stop focusing on what they wore or the size of their bodies, stop spending hours and hours at beauty parlours. As for shopping! Only a ninny pursued such an empty-headed activity -- a deliberate male chauvinist conspiracy to distract women from serious matters.
Once liberated from patriarchy, women would choose serious and more worthwhile ways of spending their time.
And now the WAGs appear, disproving every aspiration of that ideology of feminism, and, I'm afraid, proving the most reactionary elements of our mothers' notions true. The best career choice may indeed be to marry a rich man.
These young ladies' rise to riches and world fame is not mainly by their own talent and hard work, but by the tried and tested path of being attractive enough to capture an Alpha Male. Having captured this dominant male, the WAGs' business is, first and foremost, body maintenance.
That entails hours at the beauty parlour, maybe cosmetic reconstruction, an intense focus on clothes, shoes, accessories, etc. And just as the mistresses of French kings extended their powers by founding factories which produced beautiful tapestries or porcelain, so the WAG consolidates her position by merchandising herself with her own fashion books, TV franchises, perfumes, and general celeb "brand". And naturally, wherever possible, she tightens her grip on her Alpha Male spouse since he has provided her with her identity.
My son, Patrick West, a football author, tells me that Roy Keane is partly right in that wives and girlfriends "do exert more influence on footballers than they used to, whereas in the old days footballers were more 'laddish', hard-drinking (like George Best, Bryan Robson, Norman Whiteside), and rebellious (like Stan Bowles, Rodney Marsh and Derek Dougan).
"Footballers are far more, literally, professional these days and much more conservative in their lifestyles and outlook."
But it could also be that some players might not want to go to Sunderland because they are a constantly underperforming team.
Keano, thus, is only partly right about the footballers. But I suggest he is wholly right about identifying the death of feminism.
