If you’re a woman and/or chronically online like me, you will have of course encountered that The Cut article. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please diverge to read it first, then come back and we can simmer in our rage together.
Written by Grazie Sophia Christie, a 27-year-old writer and editor-in-chief of her own magazine which she started this year (bankrolled by who, I wonder), it is perhaps one of the most binge-worthy and talked-about articles released by The Cut this year – and that’s saying something considering the outlet’s penchant for no-holds-barred and polarizing content. Titled ‘The Case For Marrying An Older Man,’ it chronicles her relationship with her now-husband, who she purposely set out to marry, choosing an “easier life path” than grinding her way up the corporate ladder. In my time, this is more commonly known as – the derogatory “dirty” word: gold-digging.
In a time where aspirational living is more coveted and in-our-faces than ever, it comes as no surprise that people are looking at all ways to achieve their dream lives rather than the “conventional” way of working your way there. I think why Grazie’s article caught public attention in such a big way is that she unapologetically deals with two rather taboo topics: marrying for money and age-gap relationships.
But let’s make no mistake: this article is less about age-gap relationships, and more about privilege. Was she hanging around the Tisch Art School hoping for a 30-something struggling creative to sweep her off her feet? No, she was not. Let’s not pretend this is anything other than what it is: she offered up herself for wealth and for wealth alone.
The thing that is perhaps the most infuriating part of all, is that it should be so easy to laugh and dismiss her point of view: a young, brain-dead woman writing about gold-digging her way into her aspirational lifestyle. But the fact is: she’s not. Although endlessly hounded online, Grazie is a good writer, and writes in a way that not only grips us throughout the article from start to finish, but also romanticises her POV in a way that makes you start to think, “Actually, maybe she’s onto something here…” before you’re shook out of your stupor and thrown back into the real world where you’re staring at her article on the handheld screen of your out-of-date iPhone 13. She’s clearly educated – a Harvard graduate – and has a clear understanding (albeit a pessimistic view) of the patriarchy and the role of being a woman in society.
Although cold and calculating (she snuck into a graduate party to meet a potential husband, got into her Uber to leave, saw her target walk out the door, and promptly manipulated him into a relationship by becoming his dream woman), you can’t fault her for being determined and knowing what she wants out of life. It might not be the way I would go about finding my long-term life partner, but variety is the spice of life, after all.
Perhaps I’m not thinking big enough. As a lacking long-term thinker, perhaps more people should look at their love lives with this kind of determined focus and strategy rather than just stabbing around in the dark. The problem is for me, I have a strong sense of self, and value my yapping and opinions too much to ever change who I am to fit into someone else’s ideals.
“I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.” How soulless to hand yourself over like a prize mare in a lucrative exchange, wiping your slate clean only for what is realistically some guy to hardwire you into a woman worth being with.
For someone writing so scathingly (and in my opinion, rightly so) about women’s roles in moulding their partners into the men they need to be, it’s something she sure did on her own, yet in reverse, rather moulding herself to fit his ideal of a perfect woman – while also folding his clothes, stocking his fridge, wiping his ass, etc… “In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since.”
At 27, one year younger than me, she talks of her youth not only as if it’s fleeting, but as it’s fled, talking about back then (four years ago) she had a freshness to her features, her breasts sat high on her chest, her ponytail bouncing and mesmerizing men wherever she walked. Fuck offffffffff! Perhaps she is educated, perhaps she is calculating, but here she is naïve in her view, thinking that at the ripe old age of 27 – barely finishing the third decade of her probably nine-or-ten- decade-long life – that her best years are behind her. I have never been sexier than I am now, and would be utterly crushed to think that the pinnacle of my life has already passed when I have so much left of it to come. It’s thoughts like these that make me feel like she’s angry with society – not her view on men – and when it comes to her 40s, 50, I wonder whether she will feel regret for settling into a life that she had to forgo on her personality to fit into. Money may be the solution for many a problem, but Maslow’s pyramid is made up of multiple layers, and having a partner who is her “mentor, [her] lover, and, only in certain contexts, [her] friend,” will only satisfy one for so long. Eventually, sex will take a back seat; she will be learned in herself, her career, and how she sees the world, and no longer want or need a mentor, and without a friend in someone who you share your life with, your life becomes very small and unsatisfied indeed.
But that’s the uncertain future, and one perhaps I’m projecting. For now, she is proud of her stance, which is interesting for a relationship tactic that is so commonly ostracised. “Gold digger” is one of man’s favourite insults for women – so much so that we have evolved to always offer to split the bill, to be steadfast in our careers, and yet, and yet… Only last year I was called a gold digger by an ex (along with unattractive, which is particularly rich considering both of those things are wildly untrue to anyone with eyes and/or a brain). I, along with many other of my peers, prefer men to pick up the cheque on dates, but by doing so we sacrifice something in return. Whether that’s sex, the upper hand, or a soft, vulnerable spot wide open for the “gold-digger” knife cut to plunge into, relationships are perhaps, in my most cynical mode of thinking, a deal of sorts. The only difference is: not all men are like this; oftentimes in my experience your date will pay for lunch, order you a car, invite you to a museum without thinking twice – but others, you have been branded something that is looked down upon, and something sometimes even equated with sex work (a profession also unfairly judged, if I do say so myself).
There are many women who think differently to me and want all date bills to be split down the middle – or even further, to pay for one’s own, yet no woman is safe from the gold-digger insult, regardless of how guarded they are when it comes to money. It is the one thing that the patriarchy teaches men that they have over women. We have beauty, nurture, wisdom and the ability to give them children; they are the protectors, the providers, but if something – anything – in your relationship goes awry, be prepared for the narrative to switch, and to be condemned for something society has taught you was the status quo. If the Barbie movie taught us anything, the patriarchy hurts men and women, both.
“Gold digger” is an insult usually used by men who should be the least worried that women are using them for their money, but by men who I presume subconsciously just can’t figure out why women would want to date them for reasons other than their (usually very meagre) wealth. With many cosmopolitan women opting to invest in designer handbags that rival into the thousands (that classic Chanel flap bag you see hanging off that 20-something year old’s shoulder in central London? The base RRP is now just shy of £10,000), it’s very unlikely that the girl you’re taking to mini golf on a Friday night is using you for your money – yet the verbal barb is still as sharp, nonetheless.
If anything, Grazie’s steadfast confidence – arrogance, even – in marrying for money is something to be admired, whether or not I agree with her way of going about it. Money and class is something that most people do take into account when searching for a lasting romantic relationship, yet it’s something that is an unspoken – and almost taboo – factor when comparing lifestyles for lasting compatibility.
Grazie looks at her choices from the point of view of empowerment, taking full accountability of the fact that now she can pursue her life’s work without having to worry about paying the bills or affording the final things in life. On Retail Therapy’s podcast, one of the presenters says, “If anyone did this to me– if I was 23 and a 33-year-old woman did this to me, I’d be head over heels. Are you telling me, that if you had an older woman walking around your new place saying, ‘This is the wine you’re gonna be drinking –’ like, I’m melting in front of her.” Frankly, I just don’t think this is true. Power plays a huge part in gender roles throughout society, and especially throughout relationships, and it’s been engrained in society and in the minds of men to have the upper hand, to be the leader. Men – not all men, before my male readers start crowing about generalisations, but most of them – want to be superior. They want to have the money, to make the decisions, to have their cake and eat it too. I find it hard to imagine a man who would take Grazie’s place and embrace the idea of having all his decisions and tastes dictated by his partner, because it’s just not the way the patriarchy is set up. It is far more accepted for a woman to enter into this financially subservient position than it is a man, even though both situations are problematic due to a loss of self ownership.
Ultimately, although Grazie makes some valid points, she does come off as naïve. I wonder if she will look back at what she has written in ten years’ time and laugh at what she didn’t know. I am sure she will, as we all do. For the moment she can take solace in the fact that a) she’s wealthy with a forgiving (?) husband, b) she can pursue her writing career with freedom to go shopping at Bal Harbour whenever she pleases, and c) she wrote one of the most divisive articles in The Cut’s recent history. Sorry about being 27 though!