History Main / HookerWithaHeartofGold

Some may take pity on a protagonist and offer him or her a place in [=~This Bed Of Rose's~=].

* Stacy-X was a member of the ''ComicBook/{{X-Men}}'' after her brothel was destroyed, and had a rivalry with Husk for Archangel's affections. Sadly, she was PutOnABus in a rather {{Wallbanger}}y manner, and wasn't mentioned again until ''HouseOfM'' some 3 years later, where she lost her powers and was killed shortly after the Decimation.

* Parodied / lampshaded in the trope-attacking movie ''[=~Rustlers' Rhapsody~=]'', when the cowboy breezes into town and the drunk offers to show him how it is, he points out a prostitute. "But I bet she has a heart of gold." "How did you know?"

** The 2003 re-imagining subverted this one in "Black Market," in which Lee Adama has been travelling to another ship to see a prostitute and her daughter. It looks like this trope, until it's revealed she was spying on him for a crime boss. After he rescues her from said boss, she tells him that she's done playing replacement family with him to make up for his dead pregnant fiancée. The WallBanger is that she thinks it's important enough to tell him this immediately, ''before'' her daughter is definitely safe and sound.

* Empress Theodora of the Eastern Roman Empire. A common streetwalker who became Empress and is now a Saint in the Eastern Orthodox faith.
** Actually, while Theodora ''was'' a prostitute, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_%286th_century%29#Origin she wasn't exactly a streetwalker]]. She was an actress, and in those times acting involved sexual acts by pretty much default, so she used her good looks as well as her sexual prowess, her brains and her PluckyGirl personality to go up the Byzantine society.

** Well, if you were a man visiting a prostitute for sex, which would be the more comforting thought? [[{{Understatement}} Kind of a]] FetishRetardant

* Most real sex workers do what they do because they need the money to support themselves/school/family/kids/food, and the job does not actually attest as to who they are-they're usually very intelligent, good people who are no different from anyone who works any other job.
** "Very intelligent"?

* Alma, Prewitt's girlfriend in James Jones' ''FromHereToEternity''.

* [[{{TheCinemaSnob}} Brad Jones']] miniseries "Hooker with a Heart of Gold" simultaneously plays with, lampshades, and keeps the trope straight in that the hooker in question actually has a golden heart. She's still pretty nice, though.

* Karen Kasumi from ''{{X1999}}''. Somewhat subverted in that she never becomes a love interest for any of the main characters, and has a completely platonic friendship with family man [[NiceGuy Aoki]].

** Ophelia somewhat subverts the trope early in the film, where she is introduced as a hard-headed businesswoman (she apparently shrewdly invests her earnings). Even the fact that she unwittingly became Clarence Beeks' accomplice in destroying Louis Winthrop III's life does not make her shrink away from demanding a six-figure reward for helping him. Only later does she fall in love with him and conform to the trope...

* ''StripTease'', by CarlHiaasen, hinges on this trope: Erin Grant becomes a stripper, but only because she has to do something lucrative to pay off her legal fees from trying to get custody of her daughter from her sleazeball ex-husband. Somewhat subverted in that she never actually has much of a romance with anybody, let alone being saved by ThePowerOfLove, and she gets the happiest ending of anyone in the book.

[[folder:{{Mythology}}]]
* One translation of the story of Romulus and Remus states that, rather than a she-wolf, the baby boys were found and cared for by a prostitute. This stems from the Latin word ''lupa'', which can refer to either a female wolf or a low-class prostitute.
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* Bertolt Brecht's ''{{The Good Person of Szechwan}}'' features Shen Te as the female lead character. Turns out she is [[spoiler: the [[GenderBender male]] ManipulativeBastard Shui Ta]], too.

* Subverted in ''TheBoondocks'', where Granddad dates Cristal, who is obviously a prostitute and GoldDigger, but Granddad refuses to believe it. He is eventually forced to confront it when her pimp shows up. Despite a CrowningMomentOfAwesome / [{CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming Heartwarming]] moment where he defends Cristal's (supposed) honor to the pimp, she ultimately chooses to go back with him rather than stay with Granddad, even though he's clearly fallen for her quite hard by this point.

* Parodied in the ''Futurama'' episode "Hell is Other Robots", there is Hooker-bot 5000, programmed with a heart of solid gold.

* In the ''Futurama'' episode "Hell is Other Robots", there is Hooker-bot 5000, programmed with a solid heart of gold.

* In the [[Futurama]] episode "Hell is Other Robots", there is Hooker-bot 5000, programmed with a solid heart of gold.

* In the ''Futurama'' episode "Hell is Other Robots", there is Hooker-bot 5000, programmed with a solid heart of gold.

* As far as I remember, there was a woman named Miljuschka once who subverted this hard. She whored herself into a Nazi-camp, and then blew the whole thing up. More of an ActionGirl, and a pretty grim one too.

* Deconstructed: Pepys (who preferred to harass his maids and his dependent employees' wives rather than resort to prostitutes) references it in his diary in the 1660s, and wonders if men see whores as being better than they are because it makes them feel less guilty about whoring.

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* [[AncientRome Livy]] records a story about the Hispala Faecenia, a prostitute who supported her well-born lover Aebutius when his mother and step-father stole his inheritance; when they tried to [[OffingTheOffspring get him out of the way]], she stepped in to save him and ended up being instrumental in suppressing the Bacchanalian [[TheConspiracy Conspiracy]] in 186 B.C.E.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hwhg.jpg

-->''Layin' down my money for love, she's the kind of lady who wouldn't take a penny from me''
--> ''Yesterday's Rain'' by '''Sweet'''

-->Cheyenne, '''Once Upon A Time In The West'''.

* Jeremy on ''SportsNight'' briefly dates a porn star during his break up with Natalie. Naturally the porn star was also ThePaolo.

* Fantine in ''LesMiserables'' turns to prostitution as the only available way to support her daughter and herself, in that order. Neither the book nor the world-famous musical takes her occupation lightly: the musical devotes an [[LyricalDissonance upbeat musical number]] to the dehumanizing life of a seaside hooker. [[AdaptationDecay The book is still more detailed about it]], but then again, [[AdaptationDistillation the book details everything.]]
** [[{{Understatement}} To put it very lightly.]]

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* Nancy from ''OliverTwist''.
** And Emily's best friend Martha from DavidCopperfield.