Gold digger

Reader question:

Please explain this quote, with “gold digger” in particular: “Samantha is trying to warn Joey about gold diggers while she is the gold digger he should be worried about.”

My comments:

Okay, let’s see. Joey is a rich man. Samantha is trying to warn Joey about women who want to date or marry him for his money but the speaker sees something else. The speaker thinks Samantha herself is that kind of woman – who wants Joey for his money.

So, opines the speaker, Samantha is the woman instead of anyone else Joey should be worried about and be wary of.

Who is this speaker?

Well, never mind that. We already can see Joey is involved in a situation that is very complicated.

So, let’s not delve further into Joey’s troubles and just be focused on and be satisfied with learning another idiom, namely the gold digger.

Literally, a gold digger is someone who digs a mine in search of gold nuggets or, if that’s not possible, tiny dusts of gold. Gold being the valuable metal it is, the gold digger is, by extension and analogy, synonymous with someone who pursues social relationships for financial gain.

Fair enough.

By dictionary definition, though, only women who marry a rich man not for love but for his money are gold diggers.

Only women.

That’s not fair, right? Men who marry rich women for money are there, right?

Right, but that’s not how dictionaries define “gold digger”. Per the dictionary, the gold digger refers specifically to women.

All right, that’s not fair. Everybody know that. Or they should know, but I put it down to plain old male bias. It is just one of the symptoms of the male dominant society we live in. If you’re a woman, you may feel that this is intolerable and rightfully so.

I understand your indignation.

I, too, feel bad about it, but only for men. Hereby, I want to speak on behalf of male gold diggers (we know they exist). Specifically, I would like all dictionaries to make amends by recognizing all of the women gold diggers’ male counterparts.

Political correctness aside, I just feel male gold diggers are being ignored and kind of looked down upon. I mean, gold digging is no mean feat and not easy of accomplishment for either male or female.

I, being an advocate for equality and fair play on all matters, think male gold diggers should seek and, eventually, get equal recognition from, first, the dictionary and then perhaps society at large.

They certainly deserve it.

And that’s my full, complete and unreserved support for all the gold diggers of my own gender sex.

For better or worse.

Anyways, you know what a gold digger is now and here are a few media examples:

1. Dick Van Dyke, 96, is speaking candidly about his marriage to his much-younger wife, Arlene Silver, 50, saying he worried fans would scrutinize their 46-year age gap.

In a new interview with Closer magazine, the “Mary Poppins” legend bluntly stated: “I thought there would be an outcry about a gold digger marrying an old man, but no one ever took that attitude.”

Van Dyke – who has a reported fortune of $50 million – first met Silver at the 2007 Screen Actors Guild Awards. At the time, he was 81 and she was just 35.

Silver – who was working as a makeup artist at the event – also spoke with Closer, recalling the moment she first laid eyes on her now-husband.

“He said, ‘Hi, I’m Dick.’ The first thing I asked him was, ‘Weren’t you in “Mary Poppins”?’ We got along immediately as friends, so it didn’t feel like he was so much older than me,” she told the publication.

The pair’s friendship subsequently turned romantic and they wed in February 2012.

Van Dyke and Silver celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary last month, and it seems they’re still as loved up as the day they said “I do.”

“We share an attitude,” Van Dyke cooed of his wife. “She can go with the flow. She loves to sing and dance, which we do almost every day. She’s just delightful.”

Silver subsequently chimed in: “He is the most perfect human being. I’ve never met anyone so happy, so genuine, so amazing. He’s just like a happy pill.”

- Dick Van Dyke, 96, feared fans would think wife, 50, was a ‘gold digger’, NYPost.com, March 14, 2022.

2. In the recent wave of documentaries demanding justice for the tragic blondes of the 1990s – Britney Spears, Princess Diana and Pamela Anderson among them – it’s unsurprising to find a new film about Anna Nicole Smith next in the queue.

Anna Nicole: You Don’t Know Me, a Netflix production directed by Ursula Macfarlane, revisits the life of the titular model and Playboy centerfold best known for marrying an octogenarian billionaire, then very publicly losing it all; in 2007, she was found dead in a Hollywood, Florida, Hard Rock hotel at the young age of 39, having taken a toxic mixture of methadone, Valium and a variety of sedatives. Diverging from the precedents set by the Britney and Diana films, however, this new documentary treats Smith less as a powerless victim of the media than the savvy protagonist of her own story. “She was a hustler,” Macfarlane tells the Guardian. “She made things happen on her own terms.”

Smith, born Vickie Lynn Hogan, began her life in the working-class, God-fearing town of Mexia, Texas. “She was born beautiful,” says a voiceover from her late mother, a police officer named Virgie Mae Hogan, as she recalls memories of grown men following her child through the local shopping mall. As an adult, Smith rarely spoke of her childhood except to say that she hated her abusive mother, and Macfarlane pieces together these early years with interviews with her subject’s brother and her uncle. From a young age, they say, Smith was rebelliously enterprising, fixated on gaining both attention and money. She dropped out of high school to get a job at a fried chicken restaurant, where at age 17, she married a co-worker who allegedly kept her locked inside the house. She gave birth to her son Daniel to soothe her own loneliness, then took off with him in pursuit of fame and fortune when he was six months old.

“She had an incredible work ethic,” recalls a former co-worker simply known as Missy who witnessed Smith on her early ascent to fame. Smith had modeled her Hollywood persona after the humor of Carol Burnett and the sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe, and played a record of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend on her first Playboy photoshoot to soothe her camera-shyness. Later revealed to have been lovers, Missy and Smith had met working at a Houston strip club called The Executive Suite, where Missy initially though she was taking a beautiful young novice under her wing. She quickly realized what becomes a recurring theme throughout the film: “No one needed to give her any pointers on how to attract a man … She doesn’t need a lot of help manipulating anybody.”

Smith first met the billionaire oil tycoon J Howard Marshall at the strip club in 1991, when he was 86 years old and she was only 23. Media treatment of their relationship had presented Smith as an opportunistic gold digger in Macfarlane’s mind, but during the film-making process, “one of the things that really surprised me was that their relationship, regardless of the distance in decades, was actually genuine,” the director says. “It was love, whatever love means, and it felt very important for us to set the record straight.”

The film approaches Smith and Marshall’s relationship with a measured tenderness, offering montages of the couple’s personal photographs and recordings of affectionate phone calls, plus home movies of loving exchanges between Marshall and Smith’s son. (As for how the film-makers got them, says producer Alexandra Lacey: “We can’t disclose the source of those, I’m afraid.”)

- ‘She was a hustler’: the fascinating true story of Anna Nicole Smith, TheGuardian.com, May 16, 2023.

3. Hong Kong actor Bobby Au Yeung recounted experiences of being labeled a “gold digger” due to his wife Rosanna Fu’s affluent background.

The actor opened up about these challenges during an interview with HK01, revealing that he had no initial knowledge of Fu’s wealth when they met in the early 1990s. He was attracted to her elegance and they quickly connected through meaningful conversations without any notions of arrogance from Fu.

Their relationship gained extensive media attention after paparazzi photographed Fu picking Au Yeung up in her car, which exposed her wealthy status. This led to multiple reports suggesting that Au Yeung was financially dependent on his girlfriend.

Even after Au Yeung purchased a car with his own money, accusations surfaced that he was using Fu’s funds. These allegations added considerable stress and pressure on him.

After Au Yeung and his wife married in 1996, accusations that he was a “gold digger” and supported by his wife’s family for career advancement intensified. Despite his success in acting, the gossip took a toll on him until a childhood friend advised him to disregard external opinions to protect his time with Fu.

Together for 28 years, Au Yeung and Fu have supported each other in both their careers and personal lives, choosing not to have children for greater personal freedom. In 2013, Au Yeung suffered a health scare with acute pneumonia that resulted in a coma, during which Fu was his primary caretaker. This stressful period caused her to lose weight, and upon his recovery, they shared a poignant moment of relief and tears.

…

His wife is believed to be a successor to Fu Lo Yung, a gambling tycoon in Macau.

- Actor Bobby Au Yeung discusses being tagged as ‘gold digger’ due to wealthy wife, E.VNExpress.net, June 26, 2024.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）