Explained: Who is a gold digger — the derogatory expression used to describe a certain kind of greedy woman? | Explained News,The Indian Express
The term ‘gold digger’, which started off as early 20th century slang, first entered print in Rex Beach’s 1911 book, 'The Ne’er-Do-Well', and was used to refer to people who were “money mad”.
Gold digger is a derogatory term that refers to a person who enters a relationship for monetary gain. It is frequently used in films, literature, music, and in everyday language. Dictionary definitions point to an inherently gendered connotation — the word is almost always used for a greedy woman who marries a wealthy man purely for financial gain.
Origin of the expression
The term ‘gold digger’, which started off as early 20th century slang, first entered print in Rex Beach’s 1911 book, ‘The Ne’er-Do-Well’, and was used to refer to people who were “money mad”. While it did have the gendered connotation at this point, the American suffragist Virginia Brooke in her 1915 book, ‘My Battles with Vice’, specifically referred to women who sought romantic relationships with men as ‘gold diggers’. They were presented as highly manipulative — one of the characters, Chrissy Tate, dresses provocatively, and has the ability to even “get money from a ‘Gypshun’ mummy”.
At this point, the word still had not gained widespread currency, and was used to primarily connote sex work, sociologist Brian Donovan noted in his book, ‘American Gold Digger’. The term became better known after Avery Hopwood’s hit 1919 play, ‘The Gold Diggers’, which was about three young women struggling to find work in Manhattan. The expression was new to mainstream society, so Broadway producers asked Hopwood to change the title — they were worried people would think the play was about mining or the Gold Rush.
The play was immensely successful, earning $2 million, and set the stage for various other musicals and films about gold-digging women, and established its derogatory, gendered connotation in mainstream society. By the 1930s, gold diggers had become part of a set of stock characters in Depression-era films, Donovan wrote.
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