Why is everyone talking about Wife Guys?
This time last week I had no idea who Ned Fulmer was. If anyone had asked (which no one did) I’d have said it was that bloke from the Simpsons. It is not. Fulmer is a moderately famous internet personality who, until very recently, was a member of a YouTube crew called the Try Guys; as the name suggests, they’re a bunch of guys who try things. (Seven and a half million people have subscribed to their YouTube channel, so it seems they are pretty good at trying things.) In his spare time, it seems like Fulmer decided to try cheating on his wife with one of his employees: he was caught doing so and has now been booted out of the Try Guys. Like every celebrity who messes up, Fulmer has issued an apology via the Notes app and now appears to be trying to mend his marriage.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that none of this is particularly newsworthy and wouldn’t really be of much interest to anyone other than die-hard Try Guys fans. As it is, however, Fulmer’s extracurricular activities have been covered by everyone from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post. Large sections of Twitter have been talking about nothing else for days; Jezebel announced that the cheating scandal “broke the internet”.
Why all the fuss? Well, you see, Fulmer isn’t just another moderately famous man who cheated on his wife (those are a dime a dozen), he’s a man who has built his entire personal brand on creating content focused on how much he loves his wife. He’s a Wife Guy. If you lead a well-adjusted, healthy life that doesn’t involve obsessively checking Twitter every five minutes, you may not be familiar with the Wife Guy archetype. Essentially, it’s a man who is famous for publicly loving his wife or loudly announcing “Wife Events”. Over the years various subsets of Wife Guys have found online fame: there’s Curvy Wife Guy and Cliff Wife Guy and even Fake Wife Guy.
It’s not just the wild disconnect between Fulmer’s private life and his public persona that has got people so invested in the infidelity allegations, though. It’s the fact that he’s part of a wider trend: in recent years a number of high-profile Wife Guys have faced cheating-on-their-wife scandals. Last year, for example, the comedian John Mulaney, whose public image involved being a devoted husband, left his wife and immediately had a baby with Olivia Munn. The Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, who featured his wife and child in one of his music videos, has also been caught up in recent cheating allegations.
As everyone knows, once you’ve got three examples, you’ve got a bona fide trend. Cue lots and lots of trend pieces about how the Wife Guy is officially over. “Ding, Dong, the ‘Wife Guy’ is dead,” proclaimed Jezebel. “It’s official: wife guys are out,” said BuzzFeed News. “No more Mr Wife Guy,” announced Vanity Fair.
And thank God for that, really. As has been widely noted, the only reason that the Wife Guy archetype exists is because the bar is set very low for straight men. Society is very quick to fawn over a dude because he changes a diaper or looks after his own child (oh wow, it’s so great he’s babysitting! What a catch!) When a powerful man takes more than a few days of paternity leave? Well, you might as well make him a saint, stat. And when a famous man talks admiringly about his wife? A national treasure! As Jezebel notes: “Our default assumption is that heterosexual marriages are unhappy, that most men don’t care for their wives, that those who do love their wives are automatically deserving of our collective adoration.” It’s pretty sad, really. Time to set the bar just a little higher for men, don’t you think? The only person who should be famous for saying “my wife” a lot is Borat.
India’s highest court rules that all women have the right to an abortion
Thursday’s landmark ruling states that all women, regardless of marital status, have the right to an abortion up until 24 weeks. It also defines marital rape as rape. Previously abortion was only legal for married women or in cases of rape or a threat to the mother’s life up until 20 weeks.
University of Idaho says condoms shouldn’t be provided to students as birth control
A memo issued following the enactment of Idaho’s abortion law warns employees not to speak in support of abortion and instructs them to “proceed cautiously at any time that a discussion moves in the direction of reproductive health”. It includes advice on birth control because of ambiguity in the Idaho abortion law on “prevention of conception”.
Apple executive boasts in viral TikTok about how he loves fondling big-breasted women
Siri: please give me an example of what not to say when you are a high-profile executive at a company that has faced a ton of controversy in recent years over accusations of sexism and sexual harassment.
Brazilian couple dye a waterfall blue for a gender reveal
They are now being investigated by the country’s environmental authority. This is just the latest example of gender reveal parties going very, very wrong.
America’s unexpected new gun owners
More than half of new gun owners are likely to be women, according to data from Harvard. A firearm instructor interviewed by CNN noted that a lot of her clients are liberal women who don’t advertise the fact they’re carrying. I’m completely anti-gun but I can see how, in the current US climate, you would feel that if you can’t beat them you might as well join them. It’s a sad trend.
Older women boost London Marathon numbers
A rather more positive trend: the number of female runners aged 50 and older finishing the race has increased by 65% since 2018.
The week in pawn-triarchy
It’s been nonstop drama in the chess world recently. Over the past few weeks the sport has been battling a cheating scandal involving wild allegations about anal beads. Now there’s a sexism scandal: the chess commentator Ilya Smirin has been sacked by the International Chess Federation after he admitted on air he had said chess is “maybe not for women”. Maybe chess commentating is not for him.