26 years and billions of dollars difference

Jerry Hall, the 60-year-old former supermodel and her husband, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, presented a loved-up front at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London last week. The leggy blonde was dressed top to toe in a gold suit and pumps and the tabloid press calling her his 'golden girl'. Is she really his golden girl or an opportunistic gold-digger?

The two who married in March last year are separated by a 26 year age difference. Murdoch is worth an incredible $11.3 billion. His new bride, while not exactly living hand to mouth has a net worth of around $15 million; a significantly smaller sum than she demanded of Jagger’s $300 million fortune when the couple split in 1999 after 22 years and four children together.

Comparing Murdoch to her former choice of partner, Mick Jagger, he’s not what you might have expected her to be attracted to and the term ‘gold-digger’ was thrown around liberally when the couple who’d been introduced just four months earlier announced their engagement.

 

The history behind the “gold-digger”

It’s over 10 years since Kanye West’s "Gold Digger" single peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 but the term ‘gold-digger’ has been around a lot longer than that. Apparently, the term first appeared in 1911.

“These people are money mad, aren’t they? Worst bunch of gold-diggers I ever saw,” Rex Beach wrote in his 1911 novel The Ne’er-Do-Well.

The term was first used specifically to refer to a woman who marries a man for his money four years later. Virginia Brooks’ 1915 novel, My Battles with Vice, refers to a woman who is the queen of attaching herself to men for their money: “She can get money from a ‘Gypshun’ mummy, believe me.”

The term became mainstream through stage and screen: The Gold Diggers in 1919 and Gold Diggers of Broadway in 1929, respectively.

Since then the term has come to simply mean a woman seducing a rich man for his money.

 

Is there a male equivalent?

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang defines a gold digger as “a woman who associates with or marries a man solely for his wealth.”

There doesn’t seem to be a male equivalent though these days there are well-publicised examples of men hooking up with wealthy women only to divorce and end up financially better off.

 

Guy Ritchie

The movie director is on record as saying he believes that his marriage to Madonna was “ultimately very positive.” Eight years of marriage to Madge made him a very wealthy man.  He reportedly received a divorce settlement between $76 to $92 million.

 

Matt Rutler

Matt who? No one else knew who was when Rutler started dating Christina Aguilera in 2010. In 2013, she bought a new mansion in LA for $10 million. They are now engaged and expecting a child together. Long may it last!

 

Kevin Federline

Expecting his second child with Shar Jackson, Federline was a lowly paid back-up dancer when he first met Britney Spears. He flicked his pregnant partner to pursue Spears. They married three months later. The dream lasted 2 years and he received $13 million and custody of their two boys four out of seven days of the week. Federline receives $20,000 a month for child support. Surely there’s a name for that.

 

Published by: Divorce Resource