An awkward casualty of nannyism is that it’s made the phrase “trophy wife” meaningless – alright, perhaps not completely irrelevant, but certainly subject to misinterpretation. Before political correctness ran amuck and we developed an unremitting need to make kids feel good about themselves, trophies used to be awarded for real accomplishment - winning was meaningful.
Today, successful parenting apparently requires unwarranted pampering of children in order to eliminate the experience of failure from their lives. The result? Rooms full of ‘participation awards’, not to mention an entire generation of self-satisfied mollycoddles.
So no longer can it be taken for granted when one man says, “he’s got a trophy wife” that he’s being complementary about the other man’s achievement by getting hold of an especially younger, and typically more attractive, wife. Now, thanks to nannyism, chauvinistic jealousy can no longer be presumed. This phrase may actually be meant to mock or ridicule – “Sure he’s got a trophy wife . . . it’s just not first place!”
I suspect it’s probably still a safe bet to infer that a woman still equates “trophy wife” with contemptuous gold-digger.
