The women joining high-end gyms for a month – to find a rich husband

Telegraph

4 days ago

If Becky Sharp were to step out of the pages of Vanity Fair and into present-day London, she wouldn't be plotting from a chaise longue in the parlour – she'd be on the treadmill at a luxury gym, watching a finance executive do push-ups in expensive trainers and a luxury watch.
'It's kind of a running joke between me and my girlfriends,' says Amelia, 24, who works in media. ' If you're on the lookout for a rich husband then you 'could' get a month's membership at [the exclusive health club] Third Space, meet someone, and once you've bagged your man, stop the subscription, or, better yet, get him to pay for it.'
Welcome to 2025, where feminism has given young women unprecedented freedom – and yet, thanks to extortionate house prices, sluggish salaries and a cost of living crisis, some are being forced to revisit a centuries-old economic model: marry rich and live well.
'The truth is I can't afford not to meet someone who earns more than I do,' says Jemima, 31, who works in art and lives in a rented flat share in Archway, north London. 'My parents don't have enough money to give me a good deposit and my own salary will never breach the six-figure mark. I love my job but I also want a kitchen island and a garden and the occasional holiday. Is that really so much to ask?'
Apparently not, according to TikTok, anyway. Last year, a song went viral on the social media app with the lyrics, 'I'm looking for a man in finance: trust fund, 6'5', blue eyes,' went viral – not as satire but as something closer to a lifestyle manifesto.
The song's creator later said that it was meant to be a parody of the 'soft life' influencers: women who encourage their peers to find themselves a 'provider' to take care of them, and then spend their days procreating, shopping and travelling without any financial responsibilities. As one commenter under the original post rather bluntly put it, 'I'll marry for money so my kids can marry for love'.
Jemima, like Becky Sharpe, is attractive and intelligent, but with a freedom that Thackeray's most famous character could only dream of. She has a good degree from a Russell Group university, a high-status job and – after spending her early twenties living in Paris and Madrid – can switch to French or Spanish mid-sentence if she feels like it. With no children and healthy parents, she can reinvent herself or relocate at will. Her sights, however, are firmly set on becoming Mrs Hedge Fund Manager.
Stephanie Alice Baker, a sociology professor at City St George's, believes this is a logical – if somewhat depressing – response to the economic upheaval of our time. 'Despite the rise of feminism, many young women who have ticked all the boxes they were told to are still struggling financially,' she says, 'so there is something very tempting in this idea being promoted on social media about living a kept life. These accounts tell women to meet a rich man by going here or wearing this, but what they are really offering is a remedy to the difficulties an entire generation feels.'
As Baker notes: the advice isn't vague. It's practical and strategic. Influencers – mostly American for now – share curated guides on how to bag high net-worth boyfriends: join country clubs, frequent expensive supermarkets, gatecrash glossy parties and go to church in the most exclusive parts of the city (to prove their qualifications, these videos are usually followed by clips of the influencers at Louis Vuitton or Hermes with the rich husband in question, picking out an expensive trinket while he gazes on adoringly). TikTok's Mina Rich, who apparently married a 'seven-figure entrepreneur', recommends golf tournaments, philanthropic galas and 'accidental' encounters at high-end art galleries.
Britain, of course, is a little different – but that doesn't mean the same impulse doesn't exist. Anna Bey, who is based in London, advises her followers to profit from the summer and travel to islands like Mykonos or Ibiza, where rich young men tend to congregate. Her other banker-meeting spots include art openings, Chelsea pubs and the business class lounge at Heathrow Terminal Five.
A former personal trainer at Third Space agrees that the luxury health clubs popping up around London are the 2025 version of the Nineties singles bars. 'The men are mainly lawyers, finance bros, tech people and, depending on the branch, digital influencers,' she says. 'There's lots of cash going around. In my opinion, the best way to mingle with men is on the gym floor. It'll be rare for you to start conversation in the classes as the main goal is to sweat, but on the floor you can take your time and rest and potentially share the rack.'
Slightly more manageable for anyone earning £30,000 a year are the bars and pubs around Monument and Cannon Street, where City boys tend to congregate for drinks after work. 'We all know which private members' clubs in the City are worth joining,' says one anonymous user on Reddit (The Walbrook Club, The City of London Club, and Ned's Club, apparently). 'If you're looking to meet someone rich, there's no point joining Soho House, the Groucho or Quo Vadis – they're just filled with arty types paying off a mortgage on a small house in Zone Three.' Brutal.
As gendered as it feels, Baker says this isn't an issue confined to women. 'Young people of both sexes are struggling to make ends meet or buy a property or even a car. All the markers of adulthood their parents and grandparents attained relatively easily are no longer seen as feasible. As a result, they turn to people peddling fantasies on social media: men have Andrew Tate telling them how to get rich quick; women have influencers telling them to put on a dress and go to a City bar – but it is all part of the same phenomenon and it does make sense in late-stage capitalism.'
Hence Jemima being so determined to meet her marriage goals that, in order to control any dangerous impulses to go out with a scruffy DJ or a badly-behaved artist, she has even set herself some rules: from now on she'll only date men who went to Oxbridge or one of the Ivy League universities, who already make over £150,000 and who, ideally, own their own home.
'I realise it sounds a bit much, as I don't tick any of those boxes myself, but men have different criteria, and if I want the sort of life that was normal a generation ago then I have to stick to them,' she reasons.
Sadly the truth, as Becky Sharpe learnt all too quickly herself, is that money tends to end up with money.
'The number one way to marry rich is proximity,' says Vivian Tu, an author and TikTok influencer who teaches people how to make the big bucks. 'If you're born into a wealthy family, you are far more likely to marry someone rich; if you want to marry someone who went to an Ivy League college, good luck – unless you went to an Ivy League yourself, in which case it is pretty easy. If you want to meet someone in finance then work in finance yourself: it's much easier to find a rich and successful husband when you yourself are rich and successful – focus on the main plot-line and the rest of the story comes together.'
In Britain, of course, this is also wrapped up in class. One friend – who married one of the country's more eligible aristocrats – laughs when I text to ask exactly how she met her husband. 'LOL', she replies. And then a few minutes later adds, 'At a shoot. I was invited at the last minute and he was there and we were put next to each other on the Saturday night. We then saw each other around and about in London a few times and ended up snogging outside a pub.' The sad truth is that, however motivated they are, most women do not move in the sort of circles where they are casually invited to shooting weekends with 48 hours' notice.
And anyway, perhaps they should be careful of what they wish for. 'So much is lost in these broad brush strokes,' says Baker. 'It makes a lot of sense for people who are struggling to long for an easier life, but it is not necessarily a happier life if they are not fulfilled: they might have material wealth, but not the sense they have reached their own goals. Anyone who is aware of the history of marriage would know that we should pause before wishing to go back to a time when women were chattel and, yes, materially well off but with no freedom of their own.'