Sugar and the Price

Two dates into the month, Jenna could finally pay the rent for her apartment. She is what is known as a sugar baby, the younger recipient of interest—especially financial and romantic—from a sugar daddy or sugar mama in an intergenerational relationship.

“I request pay per meet or a monthly fee outright and make $300-500 per meet.” With a $600 rent for her shared room in a two-bedroom apartment with five other people, the 20-year-old has to go on at least two dates per month to meet her basic rent, not including any of the utilities or food. The UCI sophomore found out about sugaring during her senior year of high school in a search to find a way to pay for the high price of her Irvine apartment.

In order to find these dates, Jenna uses a site called Seeking Arrangement, the self-proclaimed leading Sugar Daddy dating site. While a seemingly taboo topic, sugar relationships are more common than one may think. The website has over ten million users, eight million of said users being sugar babies.

Since FAFSA pays for the entirety of her tuition, Jenna is one of the few sugar babies that doesn’t need her earnings to pay for student debt. However, over 2 million of the sugar babies using the Seeking Arrangement site are a part of the 40 million Americans trying to pay off $1.2 trillion in student debt, and the site took notice of that. As Jenna did to have a safer and more profitable experience on the site, any sugar baby who signs up with a .edu email gets a free premium account.

However, as many stereotypes might suggest, Jenna didn’t start off with the best experience as a sugar baby. “I started the summer prior to attending UCI because my parents and I had just moved and neither of them was working. It was a really horrible time, and there was definitely a learning curve.”

With no exposure to sugar relationships and with no one to advise her how to stay safe, Jenna started her life as a sugar baby with a traumatizing experience.

“I was overwhelmed in the beginning and ended up being raped by a man I didn't have a sexual arrangement with. I went on a trip with him, which I didn't tell my parents about, and when I got back, I couldn’t tell them why I was so sad.” She wasn’t even making the same as most sugar babies did on a date-to-date basis, with an average of $100-200 per meeting. Even with a traumatizing experience, Jenna had to go on at least one date a week just to pay her rent.

She would have quit sugaring, but with no way to pay for the exceeding Orange County rent, Jenna adjusted and continued sugaring. “I took a break for a bit, read up on some blogs, and can now weed out the particularly horrible sugar daddies.”

As young as she is, Jenna doesn’t allow what she calls her job to impede romantic relationships outside of sugar dating. However, while she has tried dating for herself on top of sugar dating, the reactions from both her chosen dates and her sugar dates aren’t always positive. “Some daddies are annoying and request that you don't, but I view it as my job, so I do go on normal, non-sugar dates. I don't always enjoy seeing these men. Most of the time I have to be pretty, perfect, and submissive, so it's nice to go on dates where I can be myself.”

Jenna explained that while some sugar daddies are actually looking for love, some just want a pretty companion at their beck and call. The more research Jenna does while looking into potential sugar daddies, the more likely she is to find someone actually looking to create a lasting connection.

Even though the government might move toward legalizing sex work in California, Jenna doesn’t look at her relationships as prostitution. She sticks to using Seeking Arrangement since to her it feels more like a dating site in the likes of tinder.

“There are other websites, but they feel like outright prostitution, and there's nothing wrong with sex work at all. I'm just not on that level.” As the Seeking Arrangement Blog points out, being a sugar baby differs from being a prostitute on many grounds, making it completely legal.

The biggest difference between prostitution and sugar dating most times is that it is not a long-term profession. Jenna currently has a career-related job on the UCI campus, but only makes $30 a week, which isn’t anywhere near enough to live off of. Once she gets her degree and establishes a stable career, Jenna will stop sugaring. However, as that is not for at least another two years, she has to continue her life as a sugar baby.

Now with two years of experience under her belt, Jenna is making the right amount and saving enough to have just one roommate next year rather than sharing a two-bedroom apartment with 6 people. Most importantly, Jenna wants to give any possible sugar babies the advice she never got.

“Make sure to do your research. Learn how to spot Splenda daddies (men posing as sugar daddies but with no money) or fake profiles. Never meet a guy or even a woman without getting to know them over the phone or chat first. If their profile is lacking in info, that is suspicious. Whatever you decide to do, sugar babying or not, invest in yourself and your safety. After all, the money isn’t worth it if you’re not there to spend it.”

*Names changed for the privacy of the subject