The irony is that advertisers who ignore women’s sports for “lack of audience interest” will happily pay an influencer to wear their brand while filming her boyfriend in-between games. WAGs and female athletes are all playing by the same rules, even if only some of them profit from it.

Where weaponized incompetence is the performance of male helplessness, feminized incompetence is its mirror: the performance of effortless devotion. It’s not that these women lack agency or ambition—it’s that pretending not to has always been more profitable.