Its the summer of 2006 on a glitzy street in the German spa town of Baden-Baden.
A tan young woman is framed by the flashing lights of paparazzi cameras.
Shes sporting a newsboy cap, a cropped logo top, and a pair of bug-eye sunglasses.
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She is not an A-list actress, nor is she a pop star.
She is the wife of Jason Cundy, one of Englands top footballers.
This woman is Lizzy Cundy, and after this trip her life will never be the same.
Coleen McLoughlin and Alex Curran during England Players wives and girlfriends enjoy a night out at restaurant and local bar.
After this shell be forever known as anoriginal WAG.
Everyone wanted to know what we were doing.
It just went crazy.
Coleen McLoughlin (in the center), girlfriend of England footballer Wayne Rooney, is filmed by a television crew as she walks to her hotel on June 23, 2006, in Baden-Baden, Germany.
It was like the Beatles.
One memory sticks out.
It was like the new rock stars had come to town, she says.
Lizzie Cundy attends the UK gala screening of80 for Bradyat The Ham Yard Hotel at March 20, 2023.
Fast forward to 2024, and similar scenes are playing out at Kansas Citys Arrowhead Stadium.
Nonetheless, their brief moment of stardom changed celebrity culture for good.
An acronym for wives and girlfriends, the termWAGfirst appeared in the early 00s.
But it wasnt until 2006 that the WAG went truly stratospheric.
midfielder Steven Gerrard), Elen Rivas (then married to Frank Lampard, a midfielder for Chelsea F.C.
), and Carly Zucker (girlfriend of midfielder Joe Cole).
Cundy and her cohort were a new brand of relatable celebrity.
It turned out this made her only more appealing.
Girls could really relate to us, Cundy says.
They thought, I could be there; that could be me.
WAGs were, in many ways, the original influencers.
But in reality, life as a WAG was far from easy.
The tabloids couldnt get enough of them.
The pages were filled with stories of how the young women spent their timeand their money.
According to the tabloids reports, it was a summer of excess.
They allegedly drank too much champagne and spent too much on designer clothes.
They were, as one paper concluded, hooligans with credit cards.
As oneDaily Mailwriter practically sneered, Their lack of imagination and narrowness of outlook is staggering.
They possess no curiosity about anything other than clothes, champagne, and their reflections.
There are two sides to the coin, says Cundy of the brutality of the press.
Its not always a bed of roses, and its not always easy.
It may look like a beautiful lifestyle, but believe me.
The tabloids also saw their personal lives as fair game.
As Cundy puts it, The press couldnt wait to sharpen their knives to look into our relationships.
That was not really fair, says Cundy.
A lot of the playerswanttheir wives and partners next to them at the games.
Theywantthem to be traveling with them.
I think its a bit harsh to blame them for being a distraction.
It was the papers that wanted them on the front of the pages.
I would say, look at the media rather than the girls themselves.
Its not new, saysYvonne Tasker, the chair of media and communication at the University of Leeds.
There has always been this fascination with the public presence of certain women, sometimes famous, sometimes notorious.
She points to silent film star Clara Bow as an example.
At the turn of the 21st century, this tradition reached its distasteful peak.
Tasker adds, In quite a British way, the press was policing these women.
All of this coincided with a period of unprincipled practices in the media.
Previous restrictions about what was considered acceptable seemed to falter, explains Tasker of the media climate.
The women who found themselves at the center of this media storm were entirely unprepared.
After all, they were the first of their kind.
Most of them had no media training, no support, and no guidance.
We all were overwhelmed, Cundy recalls.
No one was expecting it.
Some of the girls didnt like it.
But the majority of them actually loved it, and really thought, Lets use this to our advantage.
Thats exactly what many of the original WAGs did.
I thought, This is business, she says.
She spearheadedWAGS World, a 2008 reality series about her life in the spotlight.
The Musicalat Londons Charing Cross Theater in 2013.
And in 2019 she penned a memoir,Tales From the Red Carpet.
Lizzie Cundy attends the UK gala screening of80 for Bradyat The Ham Yard Hotel at March 20, 2023.
I made a living from it, she says.
And many of the girls also went on to do big brands, big TV shows.
They really milked it.
After the peak of the WAG at the 2006 World Cup, the phenomenon slowly died down.
We are there to play, not for a holiday, he said at the time.
(Its worth noting that England actually faredworsein the 2010 World Cup.)
The WAGs slowly faded out of the headlines.
The OG British WAGs really only lasted for one generation.
Just take Katie Goodland, wife of Harry Kane, or Paige Milian, fiancee to Raheem Sterling.
But in America its a different story.
The main difference is that social media has largely taken the place of the tabloids.
Social media does mean that the scrutiny is now more immediate and direct, Cobb says.
Its [no longer] filtered through the tabloids lens.
The British WAGs may have been pre-social-media influencers, but they had no agency of their own.
Celebrities are now curating or attempting to curate their own social media presence, says Tasker.
Theres much more awareness of the need to present yourself.
The current crop of WAGs in America is seemingly smarter and savvier than the original group of Brits.
They have media training and press teams and platforms of their own.
