Arianna Huffington and her Huffington Post was all a-buzz this week exposing the growing phenomenon of Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies. In short, young women (and some men) paying off their steep college tuitions and student loans through the selling of their time/bodies to older men. This match made in hell or at least online is done so courtesy of a web site called SeekingArrangement.com. A URL dedicated to hooking up the financially strapped with money-forking fogies.
Is any of this new? This is American Capitalism, isn't it? Supply Side Tittynomics? The Penis Trickle Down effect. Basic Supply and Demand Booty Economics, no?
Now, I don't mean to make light of this issue or lessen its gravity. Those who seek higher education should only be rewarded with knowledge and good opportunities not insurmountable debt and no practical means of paying it off. But is there zero room for personal choices and restraint in this whole thing? For example, I could have helped my parents pay off my one full year at University Massachusetts, Amherst by blowing my professors and posing nude for the Science and Research Department. But I said no. I had my principals. I had my personal boundaries that didn't allow for this. Besides, I was way too stoned and unattractive for such offers to be realized.
But seriously, just because you own beautiful hanging fruit doesn't mean it's ripe for the sharing or monetizing.
Oh Funny Guy, you ignorant d*ckwad, don't you realize these women are terribly young, and desperate? Manipulated? They're financially handcuffed and unable to see the ramifications of their immediate choices. Don't you see this as just one spoke in the giant wheel of our society's ills? The literal whoring and raping of our youth and collective future.
Yes, yes, sure I do. I'm no dummy. But even once I subtract all that jazz and the huge reality that WE as a society have caused this issue, I feel there's still some itty bitty room for personal responsibility and some "to each his own" to spread around. I think we can't be certain that all women or young men involved in such sites are pawns, dupes and victims. One man's willingness to work at a Footlocker, is another man's willingness to work the door at Chip & Dales, is another woman's willingness to work the stage at The Pink Pony, is another woman's willingness to be a sugar-baby for some old chip named Dale who pays $5000 a pop to have his feet rubbed while she reads to him from Moby Dick.
Maybe a job is a job is a job. Maybe it doesn't speak to lose morals or a "Man, what the hell happened in your childhood?" thing. Maybe it's just a, "Now I'm 28, debt free and ready to travel for 2 years before I launch my start-up."
What do you think? Is this sugar-baby-daddy set-up vile sexual slavery? Do you have experience with this in your own life? Is nude modeling any different? For an art class? At a strip club? For a movie? Or literally for the price of admission to a movie? What is it these days $22 with popcorn?
I'm tired of people acting like selling your body is a bad thing. Of course exploitation and manipulation is bad, but what is also bad is allowing an entire industry, one that's never going away, to go unregulated, and putting both the providers of the service and the customers in danger of things like STD's and pimps.
Have you actually done any research into REAL sexual slavery? If the woman gets paid and can leave whenever she wants, by definition it isn't slavery. So many people believe that modern day slavery doesn't exist that comments like yours just perpetuate that myth. In the future, please be more careful when choosing your metaphors.
It is absolutely crucial, when discussing serious social issues, that we turn them into dick-measuring contests. Congratulations.
You know, I paid my own through University without having my parent pay, or whoring myself out. I worked two jobs, did workstudy and took higher classloads so I could finish sooner...but I did it without even once selling my body.
BUT, is this really any different than a woman (or a man) having sugar daddy at any OTHER time (when they're NOT in college)? Why is having a sugar daddy who will pay for your psyche books different from having a sugar daddy who will pay for a nice apartment on 5th Avenue and manicures rather than working your ass off as a waitress? It's not "more wrong" just because these kids are in college, is it?
Something tells me your school didn't cost over 50 grand a year, though.
By the way, is there a difference between "sugar daddy" and husband, except the obvious piece of paper?
The oldest form of prostitution in the world is the wife. She trades her body for the "protection" and "support" of her husband...at least thats the way it used to be, LOL
There are plenty of women that marry for love, men who have nothing at all to offer. And what about a woman who says no to a sugar daddy. What do these wives have in common with prostitutes?
Maybe it's not all about money for some women.
There are so many things wrong with the comment above I can't even.
Here's the way I see it. There are two types of people in the world: the haves, and the have-nots. The "haves" don't have to be rich, they just have to be born into a good situation and live comfortable lives never having to worry about ending up homeless or not having insurance or ending up being a fry cook for 50 years.
The have-nots, on the other hand, have two choices: either lay down and take it, accepting their situation, or do something about it. That something could either be getting three jobs and never sleeping (the old-fashioned way, if you will) or less conventional measures (stripping, nude modeling, and getting a sugar daddy/mama are a few examples.)
As long as it's a mutually beneficial, easily escapable situation, I see nothing wrong with it. Plenty of people marry rich people just for the money, and no one seems to bat an eye. I understand that lots of people find the sugar daddy situation deplorable, and they're entitled to that opinion. But it's a little harder to convince someone who's trying to pay their way through college, or support their child, or basically just live a life that doesn't consist of poverty and misery, of that.
Ummmmm......thanks for the website, Funny Guy. I was wondering how to pay those 100Gs school loans I am accumulating.
hahaha just checked out the site it is hilair. Thanks FG for introducing me to yet another method of procrastination when I am supposed to be studying lol... luckily I have a full scholarship so no need to make use of their services haha so weird!