The “Wife Guy”: Should we celebrate a man for being a ‘Wife Guy’?

Wife Guy

KAKALI DAS

It’s not a great time for men who have a knack for infidelity, especially not those who make their love for their wives a part of their personal brand. Such instances have the internet tightening its defences against these dreamy performances and examining – is there a problem with ‘wife guys’?

Wife guys let everybody know that they are comfortable stepping aside to let the limelight shine on their stunningly beautiful wives. Be it Ryan Reynold’s getting star-struck by Blake Lively at the Met Gala, Ranveer Singh pulling Deepika Padukone on stage to thank her, or Virat Kohli blowing a kiss to Anushka Sharma during a match – these men provide a refreshing break from the kind of masculinity in which men suppress their emotions in public.

Many celebrities rebrand themselves and become wife guys after marriage. There’s Justin Bieber – the quintessential bad boy turned man of faith, or the Jonas Brothers, collectively singing about being suckers for their wives.

We see the wife guys a lot on screen too – think Andy from Parks and Rec, Jim from The Office, Gomez from the Addams Family, or Jake from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Audiences are fond of the wife guy, often root for him. At face value, there’s nothing explicitly wrong with him.

In fact, he’s a welcome change, especially in India, where men who are publicly affectionate with their wives, are often termed as ‘jodu ka gulaam’ (wife’s slave). And if we look closer, we start to recognise certain cracks in this picture-perfect Ken doll wife guy.

When we put these men up on a pedestal, we imply that their appreciation for their wives and actions to support them are exceptional, when in fact, all of these actions are what you might and should expect from any healthy relationship. The fact that fans fawn over these men, holds up a mirror to our own social norms.

Ranveer Singh, India’s nomination for the ultimate wife guy unabashedly flirts with his wife during interviews, and constantly bombards her Instagram feed with heart eye emoji. But the fact that we fawn over this behaviour, says more about how little we see Indian male celebrities openly show affection, than it does about him being an extraordinarily great husband.

Another important point to note, as writer Amanda Hess explains in The New York Times is that, “The wife guy identity is often not just a personal choice, but a professional gambit.” This is a new manifestation of the family man image in the nineties and early 2000s. The combination of the rise of social media and greater purchasing power of female fans, has made it profitable for male celebrities to brand themselves as the ‘wife guy’ post marriage.

This is especially true for Ned Fulmer, whose wife is also his content collaborator and who built his content brand around being a nice, wife-loving man of a new woke age. And suddenly a news made headlines – “Fans were beyond shock that certified wife guy Ned was even capable of cheating on his beautiful wife, Ariel Fulmer.”

This is why, we are wary of this trend, since it might entail male celebrities manufacturing a not necessarily accurate image of their relationships with their wives, in order to gain more clout with their female fans. Another slightly strange aspect of this phenomenon is the way that wife guys hype their partners. They call attention to their wives as if they are displaying them.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, in trying to subvert norms around heterosexual coupledom, wife guys end up upholding the oldest trope of them all – the trophy wife. If you pay attention, wife guys don’t actually say anything about their wives that we don’t already know.

Their wives are almost not even the point. The point is that these men cannot get enough of a beautiful woman they get to call their own. And thus, tied in holy matrimony, they get to write songs about it, tweet and post about it, and do all the things that in seeming to draw attention to their wives, draws attention only to themselves.

And perhaps the most complicated effect of the wife guy trend, is that it ends up worsening the disparity between public displays of affection, between men and women in heterosexual relationships. When Anushka Sharma is by Virat Kohli’s side, and if by chance he doesn’t perform well, she is brutally trolled for distracting him, or worse being a bad omen. However, when Virat Kohli publicly praises her professional achievements or shows his gratitude for her, we stan him for being a supportive husband.

What the wife guy phenomenon gets wrong is how it centres men as representative of equality and respect in marriage itself. We do not know what kind of husbands these wife guys make away from the public eye, and frankly it’s none of our business. And we are not advocating for ‘cancelling’ or dismissing male celebrities for being ‘wife guys’, we’re definitely asking for some introspection.

It’s important to be mindful of why this tag of the ‘wife guy’ exists to begin with, and why glorifying this behaviour on the internet affects the unfair standards we set for men and women in relationships.

And on a parting note, let’s leave you with a little bit of a thought experiment. Would a ‘husband’s girl’ sell as well as a ‘wife guy’?

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