The seamy side of online dating
May 23, 2015
Laura was at her wit’s end. The 23-year-old sat alone in her apartment kitchen, staring at the words “STUDENT LOAN” on the crumpled piece of paper in front of her. The type on the letter was crimson, matching the colors of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — her alma mater. The notice said she would have to pay $400 a month to retire the debt she had amassed while earning her bachelor’s degree. With her parents in California — and too burdened with their own bills to support her — Laura was desperate to find a way out of this financial hole. Help arrived when a friend introduced her to SeekingArrangement, a dating website where wealthy, older men, or “SugarDaddies,” pay for the companionship and intimacy of younger women, known as “SugarBabies.”
Laura (not her real name) put her profile on the site and within one year, she received 500 messages from interested “SugarDaddies.” Before long, she was climbing out of debt, thanks to the financial largesse of the older men she connected with. Her current “SugarDaddy,” with whom she’s been involved for the past five months, gives her approximately $1,400 monthly, and pays her rent and car note.
“He works around my schedule,” she says. “He has a really high- profile job, and can’t be seen a lot of places like clubs because he has an image to protect, so it’s nice that I don’t have to go out and do the boyfriend-girlfriend thing all the time. It’s not about the money necessarily, it’s about the traits that correspond to a man who makes a lot of money, like never being satisfied with yourself, always being hungry for more, always wanting to better yourself and make more money, always wanting to go up the social ladder.”
But, of course, a lot of their relationship is indeed about the money. And while some might look askance at a kind of companionship based on commerce — some might even call it prostitution — Laura sees nothing wrong with it.
Increasingly, educated young women like Laura are choosing to try to relieve their financial burden by signing up to be dates- for-hire on websites like SeekingArrangement. With more than 3 million members internationally, SeekingArrangement is the world’s largest website catering to older men who seek young, female companionship, according to public relations and marketing software company Vocus.
But SeekingArrangement, while one of the largest dating sites and one of the few willing to go on the record to talk about its business model, is not the lone player in this field. Vocus says SeekingArrangement has several competitors — websites with names like Sugardaddie.com or Mutualarrangements. com. However, an even more telling indicator of the growth of this business, she says, is the fact that the number of young women joining these sites has increased by 58 percent over the past three years, with college students making up 44 percent of the “SugarBabies” in the site’s database (SeekingArrangement offers free premium memberships to college students).
“Dating” your way out of college debt
That college students are resorting to selling their companionship online is not a surprise, says Angela Bermudo, SeekingArrangement’s press relations manager. That phenomenon coincides with the skyrocketing costs of higher education. According to the College Board, the cost of attending a public four-year college has risen 27 percent beyond inflation over the past five years. The average published in-state tuition at public, four-year colleges and universities for the 2013-2014 year was $8,893, compared to $2,590 in 2009-2010. The cost for attending a private institution is even higher. The average private school tuition in 2013-2014 was $30,090, compared to $20,930 in 2009-2010.
The Institute for College Access and Success Project on Student Debt reports that the average student leaves college about $26,600 in debt.
“Our graduates in their late 20s should be preparing to buy their homes in a few years, but, unfortunately, they can’t. They have to move back home with their parents because they have many thousands of dollars in student loans. So often students will turn to our site to provide for their basic needs,” Bermudo says.
The 10 colleges most actively involved with SeekingArrangement, according to the website, include Texas State University (189 students), University of California, Davis (192), University of Southern California (211), Kent State University (219), University of Colorado (232), Temple University (251), Georgia State University (269), New York University (347), Arizona State University (409), and University of Central Florida (474).
In 2013, 292 students from Georgia State University were listed on SeekingArrangement, making it the number one “SugarDaddy” school.
Julia is a good example of that. Though like all of the “SugarBabies” and “SugarDaddies” SeekingArrangement made available for this story, she declined to have her full name used, she candidly discussed her motivation for joining the site and her relationship with her current “SugarDaddy.”
She recently graduated from the University of Texas with a double major in law and psychology. Originally, she was uncertain about joining SeekingArrangement. But after identity thieves racked up thousands of dollars of out-of-state purchases on her credit card and emptied her bank account, she couldn’t pay rent for the month. SeekingArrangement seemed like her only option for income.
At first, the arrangements were unsettling. “There are the type of guys who would say ‘Hey, $400, let’s meet up tonight at a hotel,’ ” she says. “It took several months to get used to it. But there were times where I was having so much financial struggle that I was encouraged to get back on the website.”
Financial struggle wasn’t the only reason Julia joined, though. She says her father was an abusive heroine addict who couldn’t sustain her family. After being adopted and separated from her siblings at a young age, Julia was emancipated by the age of 17. She described having a “SugarDaddy” as like having the nurturing male in her life she felt deprived of.
“He is like a father figure, looking after me,” she says. “He knows my daily routine, knows if I’m taking my vitamins, he’s very, very genuine and loving. We check up on each other, have daily text messages and weekly phone calls. SeekingArrangement made me feel protected. Someone taking care of you and providing for you is a nice feeling. It’s like having the cake and eating it too — you have fun and the icing added on top of it is like the allowance.”
How it works
SeekingArrangement displays a photo gallery of different men and women with the words “Pick your SugarDaddy” and “Pick your SugarBaby,” written over each. Adjacent to these photo galleries are lists of perks to being either a “SugarDaddy” or “SugarBaby.” Amongst benefits listed for being a “SugarDaddy” is having eight “SugarBabies” per “SugarDaddy,” putting the “odds in” their “favor.” The advantages listed for “SugarBabies” include financial stability and being “pampered” by getting an “allowance,” and gifts, ranging from fancy clothing to vacations.
The average “relationship” on SeekingArrangement lasts about six months. The couples “date,” with “SugarDaddies” picking up the tab as well as providing other financial support.
“Boyfriends in the past, if I have gone gambling with them, gave me $5,000 just because they won it,” Laura says. “I don’t ever have to wonder who is paying the bill at dinner, or if I’m going to have to pay for my half. Even though I have a job, I make less than men. As long as I am making 70 cents to a man’s dollar, he should be paying. They’ll go shopping and pick stuff out for me just to present it.”
Though the website also has services for gay “SugarDaddies” and “SugarMamas,” male “SugarDaddies” and female “SugarBabies” make up the majority of its membership.
To create an account, “SugarBabies” must fill out a profile and assign themselves a number — between 0 and 5 — indicating how much money in allowance they seek from their “SugarDaddies.” The higher the number, the more financial support “SugarDaddies” are expected to provide.
“At first I selected 1-3, as I was not desperate for money or anything,” one “SugarBaby” says. “But this brought in a lot of the $200-per-day kind of guys. They don’t have genuine wealth. You can tell by the way they were speaking. The 3-5 men will be mature, a little older, more quality.”
Once either the “SugarBaby” or “SugarDaddy” sees a potential partner, they can contact each other through messages on the website to discuss the allowance and a date.
“There are a lot of guys on there who want a traditional ‘SugarBaby’ relationship, where it’s a much older guy who wants to hang out with a younger,” Laura says. “Some guys will want you to accompany them to some party, or they want to go and gamble. They’ll say ‘I’ll give you this much, hang out with me for the night,’ and I don’t really want a one-time transaction.”
Who wants to be a sugardaddy?
Several “SugarDaddies,” on the website are affluent men with high profile jobs. For them, SeekingArrangement provides a convenient method of dating.
“I do not have time for the tribulations that come with a normal relationship, or marriage for that matter,” a divorced “SugarDaddy,” a 47-year-old New York Contract Research Organization employee, said. “With the girls on SeekingArrangement, there isn’t jealousy or the bouts of attitude when you can’t spend enough time with them. Emotionally, I can have someone for when I feel lonely and need a companion to bounce ideas or stressors off of.”
This “SugarDaddy,” who requested to remain anonymous, has two “SugarBabies.” One is a student who lives in the United Kingdom and the other a 26-year-old in New York. He pays the former $2,700 a month, and has been seeing her whenever he travels to London for business for the past year. His New York “SugarBaby” is more like a “regular girlfriend,” he says. He takes her out to his apartment, dinners and shopping. He has been dating her for four months.
“Being of a certain age and divorced, there’s expectation that you should remarry and live a certain way. That has never rubbed me right, so it’s nice to see that I can be brutally honest about what I want and still have healthy relationships,” he says.
His son has also been introduced to his “SugarBabies.”
“I am very close with my son,” he says. “He understands and sees them as my girlfriends, not as ‘sugar babies,’ I suppose.” Julia says that most of the “SugarDaddies” who tried to connect with her initially were married. “I had to specifically add in my profile that I was not looking for married men, because it was all I was getting in the beginning,” she says. “Most of them wanted the whole hook up and leave idea, but that just didn’t feel right.”
Each “SugarDaddy,” Julia said, has his own request or preference for the date.
“A lot of the men are A-personality males, so they are used to having the last word and having their way,” she says. “They don’t have time to waste and know exactly what they want. Some of them might say, ‘I like a girl that’s always going to be dressed up in tight dresses and cleavage. I want to make sure you are always sexy, is that a problem?’ A couple of guys when first talking to me would even request that I not wear panties.”
Paniz Bagheri, the youth and Transition-Age Programs Coordinator of SAGE, says that while “SugarBabies” may think they are merely profiting from a mutually beneficial arrangement in order to retire their debts, Bagheri says they are, in fact, helping to promote the victimization and exploitation of women and children.
“We normalize the objectification and hyper-sexualization of children of younger and younger ages,” Bagheri says. “So, sometimes, young women in college are capitalizing on this to survive.”
But some former “SugarBabies” caution against becoming entangled in what they describe as a dangerous web of dependency.
“I honestly would encourage others to not start or think about engaging in this dangerous activity,” one “SugarBaby,” who started at the age of 15 and is “currently struggling” with ending the lifestyle five years later, says. “Never let anyone control your mind, brainwash, or manipulate you.”
This article was originally published in the pages of Wingspan, Issue 2, Vol. 1 on May 23, 2015.