We are living at a time when a wider range of human relationships is emerging from the shadows and becoming open. While they may not be considered acceptable by every segment of society, they have at least moved away from being criminalized . There are still areas, such as sex work, where there is still a wide range of reactions, from legalization to social disapproval to criminal prosecution.
Brynn Valentine writes about another kind of relationship that has emerged from the shadows and that is between what are known as ‘Sugar Daddies’ and ‘Sugar Babies’, archaic terminology that is an unfortunate carryover from a long-ago era when such relationships were seen as shameful and rightly belongs in the linguistic trash heap along with things like ‘kept woman’.
Throughout history and across various cultures, the practice of older, more financially affluent individuals compensating younger, more attractive companions for their time and attention has been observed.
…Bringing the lens closer to modernity, in the early 20th century United States, the practice known as ‘treating’ emerged, where working-class women, often shop clerks in department stores, would offer companionship or sexual favours to male shoppers in exchange for meals, entertainment and gifts. Today, the same old story, whereby care and affection are commodities, is being retold, only with new language and social infrastructure to guide it.
…In 2006, the US entrepreneur Brandon Wade launched the dating platform SeekingArrangement (now officially known as Seeking.com, it shifted in 2022 to a regular dating site). Unlike other online dating sites, it catered to a niche user group: primarily older, affluent men seeking young, beautiful women. Here, the two can find a symbiotic relationship wherein the older man, referred to as the Sugar Daddy, can provide mentorship, rent coverage, network connections, and often weekly or monthly payment plans known as ‘allowances’. In exchange, the younger woman, referred to as the Sugar Baby, offers emotional, intellectual and often (but not always) sexual services. This phenomenon, informally known as ‘sugaring’, stands out as a unique aspect of modern life, straddling the line between what appears to be an authentic romantic relationship and a transactional arrangement.
Often, the two participants’ lives are entangled, spending nights at each other’s homes, going out for dinners or travelling together. To some degree, they build their lives around each other. Encapsulated within this relationship is a shared understanding that the flow of gifts and money will not stop. That this emotional, material and sexual economy is not a haphazard occurrence but an intrinsic agreement, essential for the survival of the dynamic. Together there is a collaborative blurring of what is bought, what is sold, what is performed labour, and what is an authentic action. The two lovers take on a dual role as both romantic partners and employer/employee.
…At first glance, the commodification of romance seems straightforward. However, it becomes increasingly complex when we begin to examine the foundations of romance as a form of work. Specifically, what happens when one’s job is to perform as an authentic romantic partner – as the terms ‘perform’ and ‘authentic’ stand in direct polarity to one another. The amorphous nature of sugaring has the potential to leave many participants in a state of purgatory – straddling the authentic domain of dating, romance, and even love – as well as monetisation, income and labour. As a result, sugaring prompts a murky understanding of where one stands in relation to the other, when they are ‘clocked in or out’ of their job, what is contractually agreed upon, and what is monetarily ensured. All of which are questions any labourer within modernity deserves a clear answer to.
…Lilah, a 22-year-old Sugar Baby from Canada mentioned during our Zoom call that often, in sugar relationships, conversations around payments take place early on. This allows both parties to understand what they stand to gain and provide before any emotional or sexual investment begins. However, this conversation is best understood as a loosely defined contract, relying on trust and mutual respect rather than written word or legal binding.
As with all human relationships, complications can arise. While there are supposedly specific guidelines that have been negotiated that govern each person’s responsibilities, the lack of an enforceable contract means that boundaries can get blurred. Even in formal employment situations where there is a contract and a whole host of labor laws that govern what can be expected of an employee, there are always grey areas that can create difficulties that need to be navigated. In the Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby relationship where usually nothing is written down, dealing with changes from the customary and expected can create conflicts and tensions.
In reading the article, I began to wonder where this kind of arrangement fits in the spectrum of marriage, long-term relationships, and sex work. In the first two cases, there is an implicit agreement about what each person brings to the relationship. While there are often financial interactions involved when two people decided to combine their lives, the interpersonal issues are not (or ideally should not be) conditioned on the financial aspects. On the other hand, when it comes to sex work, the financial aspects are front and center and any emotional entanglement is usually incidental. The Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby relationship falls somewhere between those two.
I don’t think this is true. I mean the “long-ago era when such relationships were seen as shameful”. I think the shift is in the opposite direction.
Take for example Howard Hughes and his relationship with Terry Moore. Hughes was a motion picture mogul around 50 when he met 16 year old Mormon and aspiring “starlet” Moore and seduced and bedded her circa 1950. This was widely known and reported and had the consent of Moore’s parents. She wasn’t the only one -- Hughes was a notorious “ladies man” who was known to have a string of “starlets” at his beck and call (depicted in the 2016 movie Rules Don’t Apply starring Warren Beatty as Hughes). Hooking up with a powerful man like Hughes was seen as great for Moore’s career, and it was seen as the prerogative of a rich man like Hughes to bed young women.
Contrast with Harvey Weinstein in modern times. He was really no different. He wanted sexual favours from young women in return for helping their careers. But times had changed and he is seen as a creepy abusive predator.
I think what has changed is a greater emphasis now on consent. “Sugar daddy” relationships are more frowned upon than in the past, but marginally accepted as long as both parties have clearly stipulated to what they are agreeing, and what are the limits.
Rules Don’t Apply Final Trailer
Not at all. Taking, oh, just one reason why he is seen as a “creepy abusive predator” is that he was not interested in consent, to put it extremely mildly. And his threats and actions to destroy women who refused his demands or people who spoke about what he was doing were notorious.
Yesterday, I fell down the Youtube rabbithole of Trad Wives, which is not to be confused with traditional marriages. Trad Wives are usually young, under-educated, and attractive women who marry rich men--or, at least, men with the money to support a whole bunch of dependents--and drop out of the workforce to be totally supported financially by these men. In return, they provide sexual favors on demand and act as housekeepers, maids, social secretaries, and anything else the men demand of them. As you can imagine, these situations are rife with abuse because of the power imbalance, and also, the women often find themselves dumped by the men when they’re no longer so attractive and perky, and unlike Terry Moore in Silent Bob’s example, they have no way to support themselves.
The big difference I see between Tradwives and sugar babies is that sugar babies keep their self-respect, can walk away from abuse, and are often educated and able to support themselves when the relationship ends.
It is somewhat short-sighted to think about these relationships without recognizing that they are fundamentally capitalistic in nature -- a response to capitalist exploitation and a form of such exploitation in themselves. The capitalist mode of production has resulted in a society where people have radically different levels of wealth, many are alienated from and dissatisfied with their work and everything is commodified. Were people much more equal in their share of society’s resources, and their emotional and financial needs better addressed than they can be by our current society, this kind of arrangement would hardly exist.
It is particularly noticeable that a lot of the younger people in these arrangements are using the money to pay for university education -- something that the system has made all but unaffordable to ordinary people.
From the perspective of the one paying out for the service, it does strike me as an essentially hollow and self-defeating kind of arrangement, though. Why is companionship pleasurable? Because it reassures us that we are valid and valuable people who are liked for who we are. If you have to pay for it then, by definition, you are not the kind of person who is liked for who they are. At best what you are paying for is the pretense of companionship, the fantasy of companionship, an elaborate stage-play that feels something like it but lacks that essential ingredient of authenticity.
I don’t know how far such a masquerade can go in satisfying the desire for companionship. Would people pay for the pretense of a favourite food if they didn’t have access to that food? Some kind of pretend pseudo-sandwich that doesn’t satisfy your hunger but does remind you of the real thing? Would they pay for the pretense of friends to talk to if they didn’t have friends? I doubt it.
And, yet, people clearly do pay for this particular pretense. Why? My guess is that it’s less an attempt to delude themselves into believing they have something they clearly don’t, but to present an image to the world that will reflect well on them. It’s not about having actual companionship so much as having convincing props to fool others into believing you are socially and romantically successful. Perhaps there are a small number of deluded souls among this group who believe that the masquerade will eventually turn into the reality, or who actually have deluded themselves into believing that the pretense is as good as the real thing, but I doubt it.
To the best of my knowledge, this practice is comparetively rare in Scandinavian nations, which indicates that -given financial security- few women (or men in same-sex relationships) would opt for such a relationship.
While I do not judge, the business is not something I would recommend.
Concubines, harems, et al are at least as old as recorded history. The relationship exists wherever there is a power imbalance. It’s not limited to men, either For example Catherine the Great was notorious for her flock of boy toys. For that matter, the very concept of boy toys shows that it is not just powerful men taking advantage of these types of relationships.
It occurs to me that these relationships might be ubiquitous regardless of power imbalances; when the power is more equal, we call it something else -- fuck buddy for example.
In the Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby relationship where usually nothing is written down…
Making it much more “authentic” than, say, any of D.J. Trump’s pre-nuptial-contract marriages.
The myth of completely unaffordable education just will not die, will it? Nobody’s holding a gun to someone’s head and forcing them to choose an $80k/year private school.
Per https://www.communitycollegereview.com/avg-tuition-stats/national-data, “For public community colleges, the average tuition is approximately $4,815 per year for in-state students”
Per https://www.savingforcollege.com/article/average-cost-of-college, “Public four-year in-state: $11,260”
I think whats changing is that the more liberal sections of societies now have lesser of an issue with the “sugar baby” (if consensual then their body and their choice) and the scorn is now directed towards the sugar daddies (a change from powerful rich men will be men to what a bunch of pathetic losers). The conservatie side is probably still in awe of such men while condemning the women as having loose morals (except their sugar babies of course).
@cartomancer @6
I think a third reason is for lonely people anything is better than their situation. Having someone who can listen , non judgmentally is sought after by many people (a therapist of sorts if you will) -- i think thats one of the reasons why the sexual aspects of this relationship may be somewhat diminished as compared to previous eras. I agree that the social show of being visible with a young pretty person is the more common reason though.
@cartomancer, 5:
I think the question is wrong. Would people pay for their favourite food if it was prepared by someone who didn’t actually like them or particularly want to cook it for them but was only do so in exchange for money? Those are called “restaurants” -- the very question sounds ridiculous. And unless the sugar daddy is particularly gullible or stupid, they’re not paying for the “pretence of” sex.
They’re not paying for the pretence of friends, either. They’re paying for sex. “Sugar babies” are sex workers, whether they delude themselves otherwise or not.
Almost certainly there’s a minority who believe that on both sides of the transaction (see episode 3 of the wonderful British sitcom “Alma’s Not Normal”, a semi-autobiographical story by the great Sophie Willan). But that doesn’t change what’s being transacted here: ultimately, it’s money for sex. Sure, it’s dressed up as something more, but if you removed the sex from the equation, is anyone deluded enough to think there’d still be any market for “companionship”?
It’s sex work. It’s on a spectrum, says the OP, with marriage at one end and sex work at the other -- agreed. It’s at the sex work end of that spectrum. If marriage is a zero and having sex on street corners for cash is a 10, I’d place “sugar” arrangements at a solid 9, alongside working in a brothel or visiting “clients” in their homes. They’re prostitutes exchanging sex for a consideration. Why sugar coat it? Professional porn (whether filmed or photgraphed) maybe an 8 (or a 7 if it’s softcore porn like Playboy, say), stripping a 7 or less since it doesn’t involve actual sex. But it’s all “sex work”, and anyone thinking it’s not is only kidding themselves.
@sonofrojblake @11
Bolded the relevant part for you -- there have been couple of articles that similarly have mentioned that (surprisingly) sex is sometimes not part of the transaction or not a necessity anyway and more freedom or agency is granted to the sugar baby.
The problem I have with the “it’s just paying for sex dressed up as something else” argument is that there are a lot of much cheaper and less complicated ways of paying for sex. The difference here seems to be specifically the companionship element. Paying for sex, like paying for food, is readily explicable on its own terms -- because to enjoy those one does not need any sense that the person providing them is doing so from a place of authentic affection towards you.
Companionship is different, I would have thought, in that paying people to pretend to like being with you and talking with you doesn’t give you the fundamental core of companionship -- that sense of belonging and being liked and appreciated -- that real companionship does.
cartomancer @#13,
I agree that a true sense of companionship cannot be purchased. But maybe what happens is that what initially is a purely financial relationship can, over time, develop into companionship or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. I recall an Australian comedy series Rake about a lawyer who regularly frequents a sex worker and over time they become friends and companions. It is fictional, but maybe it reflects an underlying reality.
One could also look at the arranged marriages in some cultures, where the marriage is initially a purely transactional arrangement between two families with the expectation that the two people’s relationship will develop into something more over time.
I suspect that there are single people who like to do many kinds of activities but do not like to do them alone and are socially awkward or lack the opportunities to meet like minded people or are not comfortable with the common options of meeting them (bars, dating sites, etc.). For some of them, having a ‘trophy’ companion (i.e., someone who is physically attractive) is a requirement. While this may reveal a certain shallowness about them, there are many kinds of people and sites such as this may fill their niche.
@6 birgerjohansson,
To be sure, they are relatively rare in other cultures too. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, and it may be more common in the USA, but just the logistics of the practice limits the number of people who could engage in it. At best the Sugar Daddy has all the expenses of a normal home + the salary they pay to the Sugar Baby. I expect that more usually the Sugar Daddy is maintaining two homes, which is beyond the ability of a lot of people. I don’t know a person would have to be really rich, but they would at least have to be in the upper middle class or lower upper class. Then the people in that limited population would have to choose to engage in such a practice. I suspect that short-term arrangements through escort services are much more common.
This really isn’t a new phenomenon though. There are similarities the classical adventuress and in the gangster’s moll. One of Rex Stout’s, Nero Wolfe novels uses this idea as a plot device, Death of a Doxy. In that novel, while sex was certainly in the picture, the Sugar Daddy was not happily married and desired companionship as well. He regularly read and discussed novels with his paramour.
I find it incredible that this is being called a new thing.
I’ve read accounts from both people claiming to be sex workers, and people who claimed to have solicited sex workers, that sometimes, when there is a good personality match and repeated/regular visits, something akin to a friendship(?), or at least something more than the strictly financial transaction, where there is some emotional exchange.
Sorry, got no sources off-hand, but every now and then I run across a collection of writings authored by sex workers, or a couple essays or whatever by someone who talked freely about being a client of sex workers. It was always interesting reading, but yeah, I’ll have to admit there is no way to verify the accuracy (much of the pieces I read were anonymous/using pseudonyms(for very understandable readings)), or determine how common/frequent it is in typical sex-work scenarios/instances.
It’s not at all surprising that women’s sexuality and bodies are commodified within patriarchal societies.
There is nothing new about this particular form of wealth redistribution. As Marilyn once put it:
A kiss on the hand
May be quite continental
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend
A kiss may be grand
But it won’t pay the rental
On your humble flat
Or help you at the automat
Men grow cold
As girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end
But square-cut or pear-shaped
These rocks don’t lose their shape
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend
There is no reason to assume that the sugar arrangement doesn’t have any true emotional connection. Plenty of the men are in fact rather wealthy and married to women they don’t like but have children with, so a GF that gets paid to gratify his ego but make zero emotional demands is what they are willing to buy. You can’t fault the babies who work hard for them.