{{short description|Type of romantic relationship in which a person engages for wealth rather than love}} {{for multi|processes used to acquire gold metal|Gold mining|and|Gold panning|other uses}} [[File:JudgeMagazine24Jul1920.jpg|thumb|''The Gold Digger'' (''Judge'', 24 July 1920)]] [[File:Gold Diggers of Broadway lobby card.jpg|thumb|Lobby card for ''Gold Diggers of Broadway'' (1929), an example of a film which helped create the American public association of chorus girls with gold diggers]] A '''gold digger''' is a person who engages in a type of transactional sexual relationship for money and social status rather than love.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rosenberger |first1=Stephen |title=The Relation Equation |date=2014 |isbn=9781498202671 |page=60 |oclc=896840085 |language=en}}</ref> If it turns into marriage, it is a type of marriage of convenience.
== Etymology and usage == The term "gold digger" is a slang term that has its roots among chorus girls and sex workers in the early 20th century. In print, the term can be found in Rex Beach's 1911 book, ''The Ne'er-Do-Well'', and in the 1915 memoir ''My Battles with Vice'' by Virginia Brooks.<ref name="popik">{{cite web|url=https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/gold_digger/|title=Entry from October 25, 2009: Gold-digger|date=October 25, 2009}}</ref> The ''Oxford Dictionary''{{clarify|reason=Oxford University Press publishes many dictionaries. Which one?|date=June 2020}} and ''Random House's Dictionary of Historical Slang'' state the term is distinct for women because they were much more likely to need to marry a wealthy man in order to achieve or maintain a level of socioeconomic status.<ref name="popik"/><ref name="thompson"/>
The term rose in usage after the popularity of Avery Hopwood's play ''The Gold Diggers'' in 1919. Hopwood first heard the term in a conversation with Ziegfeld performer Kay Laurell.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Sharrar|first=Jack|title=Avery Hopwood: His Life and Plays|publisher=University of Michigan Press|year=1989|isbn=0472109634|location=Ann Arbor, Michigan}}</ref> As an indication on how new the slang term was, Broadway producers urged him to change the title because they feared that the audience would think that the play was about mining and the Gold Rush.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Donovan|first=Brian|title=American Gold Digger: Marriage, Money, and the Law from the Ziegfeld Follies to Anna Nicole Smith|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2020|isbn=978-1469660288|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|pages=4}}</ref>
==Society and culture== ===General=== There exist several cases where female public figures have been perceived as exemplars of the gold digger stereotype by the public. The best-known gold digger of the early 20th century was Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Joyce was a former show girl who married and divorced millionaires. She was characterized as a gold digger during her divorce battle with Stanley Joyce during the early 1920s. Some have argued that she was the real-life inspiration for Lorelei Lee, the protagonist in Anita Loos’ 1925 novel ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Donovan|first=Brian|title=American Gold Digger: Marriage, Money, and the Law from the Ziegfeld Follies to Anna Nicole Smith|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2020|isbn=978-1469660288|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|pages=225–226}}</ref> which holds gold digging as a central theme. Additionally, some have contended that the term "gold digger" was coined to describe her.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Rosenblum|first1=Constance|title=Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce|date=2015|publisher=Henry Holt and Company|isbn=9781627798242|language=en|oclc=919319036}}</ref> Former Olympian Eleanor Holm was dubbed the "swimming gold digger" for her divorce contest with Broadway impresario Billy Rose during the 1950s.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Donovan|first=Brian|title=American Gold Digger: Marriage, Money, and the Law from the Ziegfeld Follies to Anna Nicole Smith|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2020|isbn=978-1469660288|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|pages=98–105}}</ref> The press and public described model/actress Anna Nicole Smith as a gold digger for marrying multi-millionaire octogenarian J. Howard Marshall II. There was even a book published as a Little Blue Book (Little Blue Book No. 1392, ''Confessions of a Gold Digger'', by Betty Van Deventer, 1929).
=== Law === The recurring image of the gold digger in Western popular media throughout the 1920s and 1930s developed into an important symbol of a moral panic surrounding frivolous lawsuits. Sharon Thompson's research has demonstrated how public perception of the prevalence of gold digging has created disadvantages for female spouses without their own source of income in the negotiation of alimony cases and prenuptial agreements.<ref name="thompson" /> The gold digger stereotype triggered public discussions about heartbalm legislation during the 1930s, particularly breach of promise cases. Public outrage surrounding the image of frivolous lawsuits and unfair alimony payouts related to the gold digger archetype contributed to a nationwide push throughout the middle and late 1930s to outlaw heart balm legislation in the United States.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Donovan|first=Brian|title=American Gold Digger: Marriage, Money, and the Law from the Ziegfeld Follies to Anna Nicole Smith|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2020|isbn=978-1469660288|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|pages=57–84}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Donovan |first=Brian |date=2020 |title=Tort Tales, Gold Diggers, and the Crusade against Heart Balm |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0363199020937761 |journal=Journal of Family History |language=en |volume=45 |issue=4 |pages=394–410 |doi=10.1177/0363199020937761 |s2cid=221538502 |issn=0363-1990|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="nytimes/1935/03/26/first-lady">{{cite news |title=PERKINS 'SNUB' HIT BY MRS. ROOSEVELT; First Lady Defends Labor Secretary Against Letter of Miss Martha Ijams. - The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1935/03/26/archives/perkins-snub-hit-by-mrs-roosevelt-first-lady-defends-labor.html |access-date=30 December 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=1935-03-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200919231159/https://www.nytimes.com/1935/03/26/archives/perkins-snub-hit-by-mrs-roosevelt-first-lady-defends-labor.html |archive-date=19 September 2020 |quote=...endorsed New York's new anti-heart-balm law...}}</ref>
==Popular culture== ===Film=== The gold digger emerged as a dominant trope in American popular culture beginning in the 1920s. Stephen Sharot stated that the gold digger supplanted the popularity of the ''vamp'' in 1920s cinema.<ref name="sharot">{{cite book|last1=Sharot|first1=Stephen|title=Love and Marriage Across Social Classes in American Cinema|date=2018|publisher=Springer|isbn=9783319824321|language=en|oclc=1049600007}}</ref>{{rp|143–144}}
By the 1930s, the term "gold digger" had reached the United Kingdom through a British remake of ''The Gold Diggers''. While the film received negative critical reception, several sequels with the same title have been produced.<ref name="thompson">{{cite news|title=In Defence of the 'Gold Digger'|first=Sharon|last=Thompson|url=https://ssrn.com/abstract=2887022|publisher=Onati Socio-Legal Series}}</ref>
In the 1930s, the gold digger trope was used in a number of popular American films, most notably ''Gold Diggers of 1933'', ''Gold Diggers of 1935'', ''Baby Face'', ''Red-Headed Woman'', ''Dinner at Eight'', and ''Havana Widows''. Film historian Roger Dooley notes that the gold digger is one of the most common of the “stock company of stereotypes that continually reappear in the films of the 1930s.”<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dooley|first=Roger|title=From Scarface to Scarlett: American Films in the 1930s|publisher=Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich|year=1979|isbn=0151337896|location=New York|pages=19}}</ref> Gold diggers in 1930s cinema were often portrayed in positive, sometimes heroic, ways.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Slavens|first=Clarence|date=2006|title="Gold Digger as Icon," The Gold Digger as Icon: Exposing Inequity in the Great Depression"|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23416172|journal=Studies in Popular Culture|volume=28|issue=3 |pages=71–92|jstor=23416172}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Jacobs|first=Lea|title=The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942|publisher=University of California Press|year=1997|isbn=0520207904|location=Berkeley, California}}</ref> The character has featured in many films since the 1930s such as ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'' (1953) and ''How to Marry a Millionaire'' (1953), both starring Marilyn Monroe, or as a villainous foil, as in both versions of Disney's film ''The Parent Trap''.
===Music=== The gold digger image or trope appears in several popular songs, including "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" (1938), "Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend" (1949), "Santa Baby" (1953), "She Got the Goldmine (I Got The Shaft)" (1982), and "Material Girl" (1984). Rap music's use of the "gold digger script" is one of a few prevalent sexual scripts that is directed at young African-American women.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stephens |first1=Dionne P. |last2=Phillips |first2=Layli D. |title=Freaks, Gold Diggers, Divas, and Dykes: The Sociohistorical Development of Adolescent African American Women's Sexual Scripts |journal=Sexuality and Culture |date=1 March 2003 |volume=7 |issue=1 |page=3 |doi=10.1007/BF03159848 |s2cid=143036176 |language=en |issn=1936-4822}}</ref> The 2005 hit "Gold Digger" by Kanye West<ref>{{cite web | url=https://people.com/celebrity/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-kanye-wests-gold-digger-10-years-later/ | title=10 Things You Didn't Know About Kanye West's 'Gold Digger,' 10 Years Later }}</ref> was the ninth best selling and ninth most played song of the 2000s, according to People Magazine.
==See also== * Age disparity in sexual relationships * Hypergamy * Mistress (lover) * MRS degree * Prostitution * Separate property systems * Sugar baby * Social stigma * Transactional sex * Treating (dating) * Trophy wife
==References== {{Reflist}} {{Close relationships navbox}}
Category:1910s neologisms Category:Social status Category:Stereotypes of women Category:Pejorative terms for women Category:Slang terms for women