I’ve been thinking about Marilyn Monroe in that iconic scene – “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Unforgettable performance. Monroe commands that screen with charm and razor-sharp timing, surrounded by men in tuxedos offering jewels while she purrs about what really matters.

She might be called a gold digger, but strip away the spectacle, and you’re left with a brutal truth about women’s economic precarity. Monroe wasn’t being shallow. She was being strategic in an era when women had almost no financial options. That song is a survival manual.

The term “gold digger” traveled from 1800s California mining camps to become one of our most vicious weapons, meaning someone seeking relationships for money. Dictionaries note that the term targets women because they historically needed marriage to achieve any socioeconomic status.

Patriarchal structures spent centuries making sure women couldn’t own property, control money, or earn decent wages—then labeled them mercenary for seeking financial security through the only door left open.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Wealthy men seeking attractive partners? No moral panic there. Yes, “gigolo” exists—but when did you last hear it spit out with the same venom?

When a man pursues wealth through women, we frame him as clever, even entrepreneurial. When a woman does it, she’s predatory. Male gold diggers exist but gigolo carries exotic intrigue, maybe even admiration. Gold digger drips with contempt.

Notice when the rhetoric about gold diggers explodes? Economic downturns. When men’s financial decisions crash the economy, somehow women become the villains. Convenient deflection from systemic failure onto individual women’s character.

In 2025, sugar daddy websites function as ordinary dating platforms, with major sites claiming millions of users as part of the $8 billion global online dating market. Sites brand themselves as “mutually beneficial arrangements”—transactional relationships where nobody pretends about what’s really happening.

Here’s the practical question: How many of us factored a partner’s earning potential into our relationship decisions? Education? Career prospects? Family wealth? That’s gold digging too—you might just call it “compatibility” or “similar values.” The only difference is honesty about the transaction.

Many women still earn less, face higher healthcare costs, live longer with less retirement savings, and shoulder disproportionate caregiving costs. These aren’t 1950s problems—they’re 2025 realities.

Marriage has always been an economic institution. For both partners. Always. The gold digger stereotype survives because it’s useful. It lets us pretend marriage isn’t economic, shame women for naming what everyone knows, and avoid confronting why financial security through partnership remains more accessible than financial security through work.

What if someone you know has mastered this game completely—every move calculated, every connection leveraged, every relationship an investment strategy? They’re not a cautionary tale. They’re just refusing to perform the social fiction that love and money occupy different universes.

Perhaps the gold digger and the gigolo’s real transgression isn’t their strategy. It’s their refusal to be ashamed of it.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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