There was a time when Chanen Johnson could say,  I'm making more money than an NFL player,  referring to her husband, Saints tight end Juwan Johnson.

While she has fun bragging about that now, that wasn't always the case. At first, she was conflicted about how much she wanted to share with the world. But after growing exasperated with the amount of hate she and other women who are in relationships with professional athletes were receiving -being called gold diggers, among the more polite invectives, and accused of being spoiled while their husbands paid all the bills - she finally decided to set the record straight.

 I was initially pretty scared to share that this was actually profitable for me,  she tells The Hollywood Reporter of her social media career.  But I was getting so angry that people were saying I didn't have a job.  Just in case the haters weren't aware, Chanen absolutely has a job - one that involves creating content for her nearly four million followers across multiple platforms.

Chanen is among a new generation of wives and girlfriends of pro athletes, aka WAGs, who have proudly reclaimed the once-demeaning term. The acronym first appeared in British tabloids in the early 2000s to refer to English soccer players' partners, such as Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole. The collective term lumped these women together, robbing them of individuality, and reducing them to merely decorative fixtures of Premier-league broadcasts while erasing their individual accomplishments.

Fast forward to today and WAGs are taking power back with the help of social media, creating content that shows what actually goes on in the life of an athlete's spouse. This has resulted in massive social media followings, sometimes bigger than their husbands' - Chanen has 770,000 followers on Instagram alone, which is 600,000 more than Juwan can claim on the platform.

(L-R) Allison Kucharczyk and Isaac Rochell attend Kentucky Derby 151 at Churchill Downs on May 3, 2025, in Louisville, Kentucky. Jeff Schear/Getty Images

Every sport has its WAGs and its WAG fans. But in the United States, one league reign

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