Rise of the gold-digger: The young women who shamelessly pursue older men for their money



When did it become acceptable to be a gold-digger?



After all, isn't a woman who sleeps with a man for money - or at least for extensive use of his credit card - called something else?

But then, 'prostitute' doesn't have quite the same glamorous, diamond-encrusted platinum ring to it, does it?



A new French film opens in the UK this week called Priceless.

It tells the story of a woman who selects her mates entirely on the basis of the size of their wallets.



Who needs sexual chemistry when you can have cold hard cash?

Determined: Audrey Tautou in the new film Priceless

Audrey Tautou is predictably Gallic and gamine in the lead role, but underneath the pretty tousled hair and shiny Chanel handbags, the message is an ugly one.

A man exists not as an equal partner in a kind, loving, relationship, but merely as someone to be fleeced for as much money as possible.



How depressing and how insulting to the millions of women who don't live their lives according to these mercenary rules.

While we are the majority, the sad fact is, we are all judged as a result of movies like this.

It makes us all look cheap. Priceless cannot be blamed alone.

The message it delivers is one that has been subtly gaining currency in recent times and not just on film.

A string of high-profile divorce cases - most notably that of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, where she walked away with £24 million, but also that of Susan Sangster, who amassed a fortune of £18 million from three marriages (before ex-husband number four successfully got a judge to call a halt to her divorce trolley dash) - contribute to the growing view that women are for sale and men are to be used as human cashpoints.



Calculating: Heather Mills received a £24m payout from her marriage to Paul McCartney

There is also, of course, the whole WAG phenomenon, predicated almost entirely on a cynical pact between rich, bored, badly behaved men (Ashley Cole comes to mind) and the women who want to live off them.

The gaggle of wannabe WAGs hovering outside any nightclub frequented by Premier League footballers is proof that there is an increasing number of women who believe that far from having their own life and their own job, the notion of being a human leech is to some degree a preferable career.

As evidence that bleeding a man dry is on the up, there is now a fashion label called Golddigga and even websites such as www.golddiggers. uk.com, devoted to ways of hooking a rich guy.

Click on www.sugardaddyforme.com and the deal being struck is clear.

A glamorous-looking young woman appears on the screen. 'Attractive, ambitious, insatiable,' it reads.



In other words, she's offering sex on tap. When the picture of the tastefully greying man floats into view, it says: 'Affluent, caring, generous.'

Yet, we're not supposed to call these women prostitutes. That would be rude.



But the line between the girl who asks for cash up front and the one who is taken to a designer boutique to choose the latest handbag is surely now as thin as the strap on a La Perla push-up bra.

I write as someone who could have taken the gold-digger route on two occasions.



On the first, I met a chap on a plane. He was sitting next to me in business class. We chatted politely and then the subject moved to shopping. 'I like to buy nice things for ladies,' he said.



I noted the plural.



'Would you like me to take you shopping when we land?' he asked.

That was too naked a business deal for me, which was what I presumed he would expect in return, so I declined. On the second occasion, I met a man at a very posh party. He dealt in diamonds.

He was persistent and persuasive and, in the end, I agreed to have dinner with him.



When he arrived, his chauffeur gave me a look as I got in which said: 'So, you're the new one?'



At the restaurant, the maitre d', who clearly knew my date well, did the same thing.



Before the starter had even been served, my dinner partner took a small packet out of his pocket, carefully unwrapped it and slid something across the table, with the words: 'So what does it take to become your lover?' I looked down and saw it was a diamond.

I could have taken it. I didn't. I felt insulted, cheapened. I pushed it back across the table.



Looking back, I should have walked out, butthe whole episode felt so surreal that I didn't feel fully enraged until afterwards and a small part of me also thought it would, perhaps, be rude to walk out.

But a growing number of women would slip that diamond straight in their handbag.

Let's not get this out of proportion.

Cynical pact: Badly-behaved Ashley Cole and wife Cheryl Tweedy from Girls Aloud

Of course, it is still only a tiny percentage of women that would dream of behaving like this; it's just that percentage - which is rising - think what they do is so acceptable. Listen to Sophie Sharp, a dancer from Bromley in Kent, who says: 'I've always been into expensive clothes and accessories and think nothing of paying £400 for a dress.

But on my earnings it was hard to afford everything I wanted.' Well, um, yes it would be. Still, Sophie's solution was not to visit Primark but to get herself a sugar daddy instead. 'My friends told me to go to Chinawhite (the fashionable club in London),' she reveals.



So she put on her best low-cut black frock and, hey presto, she'd hooked herself a Dubai businessman. 'I didn't find him attractive,' she admits.



Even so, she accepted his offer to take her shopping.



A total of £2,500 later, she says, he flew back to Dubai with nothing more than a chaste peck on the cheek in return, to which it's tempting to say, is a likely story.



Sophie's current sugar daddy is a personal trainer with a celebrity client list. He runs a chain of gyms.



He has given her a one-bedroom house of her own near Bromley and presented her with a brand new £18,000 Toyota MR2 sports car just two months after meeting her.



They do have sex, and she says: 'I love him,' although whether she'd love him if he was a street sweeper is an open question.



Dangerous message: Audrey's character is an insult to women

In Sophie's world, being a golddigger is par for the course. All Sophie's friends are doing the same.



'I have friends who are dating rich men just to get designer clothes and jewellery, and one who was seeing a 50-year-old just so he would pay for her to have breast implants,' she says.



Rachel MacLynn is head of global membership for millionaires-only networking service Seventy Thirty.

'There are gold-diggers everywhere in London and other British cities. I'm constantly approached by young women,' she says.

'They are desperate for me to match them with our millionaire members.



'One posh girl in her early 30s approached me at a swish members club in West London and said she'd be willing to date any man up to the age of 80.

' What's interesting about the new breed of gold-digger is that they tend to be well-educated and come from good families.



Jess Kent, 23, a promotional assistant, is the daughter of a surgeon and a teacher from Northampton. She was just 17 when she told her parents she was flying to the Mediterranean for a modelling job. In fact, she had arranged a liaison with her 52-year-old boyfriend, who spent a small fortune with her at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo.



Or what about Natalie Parker, 24, who's studying French and Spanish at university in Southampton? Her parents - a property developer and a housewife - live in a four-bedroom, four-bathroom house with a gym and a pool in Spain.



'I've always dated wealthy men, even though I've not really been attracted to them,' Natalie muses.



So, has she ever had to offer sex with a sugar daddy to secure a lavish gift?

'Some of these men do want more at the end of the night,' she concedes, without actually answering the question.



It is worth saying that the men are not blameless in this unpleasant sex for designer clothes/ jewellery/breast implants transaction. A man who buys a woman is no better than the woman who agrees to sell herself. It all reduces human interaction to the level of a business deal.

Still, it is the women's attitudes that are so shocking. It's as if feminism never happened. Did it ever occur to Sophie or Heather or all the other young women who now aspire to be golddiggers, that they could work to provide a life for themselves rather than just expect a guy to buy it for them?



Looking further ahead, do these girls know the sort of deal they are doing? They are not only throwing away any moral sense, but also their independence, control of their own lives and self-respect.



If the deal is sex for money, the man with the cash may decide to go shopping himself elsewhere.



In Priceless, Audrey Tautou is locked out of her hotel room by one wealthy lover, leaving her standing shivering in a bikini. In the real world, a relationship where there is such an imbalance of power, where one partner has basically bought the other, might just about work if things go well.

But if Mr Rich tires of Ms Golddigger, he simply trades her in for a younger, firmer rival.



I didn't take the gold-digger route because I think it is wrong. It is insulting to men and it cheapens women. Every woman who does it polishes an image of womankind that the rest of us then have to try to argue against.



It makes us all look as if we are for sale for the price of a pair of Gucci shoes. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with men where they have said that basically all a woman is interested in is how much money they have and the size of their car.



When I explain that I have never dated a man for his money, nor have any of my girlfriends, that we have jobs and homes of our own and we wouldn't dream of expecting a boyfriend to provide either, they look at me with disbelief.



The image of womanhood that the gold-digger propagates is one of a greedily acquisitive airhead. She never reads a book or a newspaper, but knows the ticket price for the latest designer handbag.

Consumption replaces affection.



Her diamante sandals may be lovely and sparkly, but she tarnishes all of us.



Additional reporting: Sadie Nicholas.