Sugar baby

Sugar dating, also called sugaring,[1] is a dating practice where a person receives money, gifts, support or other financial and material benefits in exchange for a dating like relationship.[2] The person who receives the gifts is called a sugar baby, while their paying partner is called a sugar daddy or sugar momma.[3] The paying partner is typically wealthier, older, and male,[1] but women can also be the paying partner.[4]

Sugar dating is especially prevalent among students,[5] who are able to find sugar daddies through online dating services. In 2015, the site SeekingArrangement claimed to have over 1.4 million students among its members, comprising 42 percent of registrants. Almost one million of these are in the United States.[6] According to the SeekingArrangement website in 2015, 36% of "gifts" received by women using their site was spent on tuition payments, while 23% was used to pay rent. The rest was spent on books, transportation, clothes, and other items.[1] The websites used to negotiate sugar arrangements are technically dating sites. Membership on one site in 2016 was $70 a month for sugar daddies, but free for sugar babies. What happens after the initial date, whether involving sexual or other activities, is between the parties.[7]

Though students make up a large proportion of sugar babies, the practice is not exclusive to students, as it also exists in older age ranges.[8] Described in 2015 as an expanding trend[5], sugar dating is most prevalent in the United States, followed by Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Colombia.[1]

Legality and comparison to prostitution

There is debate about whether this practice can be considered prostitution, i.e., purchase of intimate attention, sexual or otherwise.[9] In an article from Deutsche Welle, the CEO of SeekingArrangement denied that the site played host to prostitutes and their costumers, saying that "escorts and their clients are never welcome on our sites". One woman who used the site made it clear that she didn't want to sell sex, and that she didn't see herself as an escort. Another user, a homosexual man, admitted that the "economic power relationship is very noticeable" between him and his sugar daddy, and that he sometimes had to have sex with his sugar daddy when he didn't want to.[10]

Sugaring has been called the modern counterpart of the 17th-century courtesan,[11][12] "a prostitute, especially one with wealthy or upper-class clients."

Sugar dating sites were affected by the 2018 Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act passed by the U.S. Senate, which prompted the closure of many sugar dating sites operating in the US. This includes Established Men, a sugar dating site owned by the parent company of Ashley Madison, Ruby Corp, and the personals section of Craigslist.[13]

See also

References
  1. Pardiwalla, Anahita (20 April 2016). "Sugaring: A New Kind of Irresistible". Huffington Post.
  2. Nelson, Rochelle (6 November 2014). "'Sugar Baby' Reveals Why Married Men Cheat With Her For Thousands Of Dollars (VIDEO)". Huffington Post.
  3. "Meaning of sugar daddy in English". Cambridge Dictionary. 30 March 2019. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  4. Ayalon, Liat, and Ateret Gewirtz-Meydan. "Senior, mature or single: A qualitative analysis of homepage advertisements of dating sites for older adults." Computers in Human Behavior 75 (2017): 876-882.
  5. Ross, Terrance F. (15 January 2015). "Where the Sugar Babies Are". The Atlantic. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
  6. Ross, Terrance F. (15 January 2015). "Where the Sugar Babies Are".
  7. Elizabeth Hernandez (13 May 2016). "Colorado "sugar babies" use online dating to cover soa. There are more than 2,700 sugar daddies registered with Seeking Arrangement in the Denver area and 202 sugar mommies". The Denver Post. Retrieved 13 May 2016. Local law enforcement agencies say that because the site was set up like a dating website and advertised as facilitating consensual connections, it is not illegal.
  8. Thistlethwaite, Felicity (25 November 2015). "Is this the SEXIEST calendar yet? SugarDaters strip off in the name of DATING". Express. Express. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  9. Juan Fernández, Jorge de (2019). "El fenómeno sugar babies". 21. La Revista Cristiana de Hoy. 1029: 38–41.
  10. Sex work or companionship? 'Sugar Dating' is growing in popularity, from Deutsche Welle
  11. Lawson, Leidra (2002). Sugar Daddy 101: What You Need to Know If You Want to be a Sugar Baby. Sugar Daddy 101. ISBN 9780972760805.
  12. Agrell, Siri (19 July 2007). "Sugar daddies finding sugar babies". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  13. Cole, Samantha (23 March 2018). "Craigslist Just Nuked Its Personal Ads Section Because of a Sex-Trafficking Bill". Vice. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
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