Self-Esteem for Sale
THERE’S an old joke that goes as follows: A man asks a girl if she will sleep with him for a million dollars. She says yes. He then offers her two dollars and she slaps his face, saying, “What do you think I am?” He answers, “I know what you are. We are just haggling over the price.”
Prostitution is not new, of course; but organized “sugar” dating is. Sugar dating is far more nuanced than traditional prostitution: Partners enter into businesslike arrangements, where the wealthy partner, or sugar daddy (or mama), exchanges money and gifts for the “companionship” of a younger partner (the sugar baby) without necessarily including sex in the agreement. According to Brandon Wade, the founder of multiple sugar dating sites like SeekingArrangement.com and WhatsYourPrice.com:
“Every successful relationship is an arrangement between two parties. In business, partners sign business agreements that outline their objectives and expectations. Likewise, romantic relationships can only work if two people agree on what they expect, and what they can give and receive from each other.”
In other words, sites like SeekingArrangment.com are able to circumnavigate the laws of prostitution by selling romantic interaction, rather than sexual intercourse.
Romance is an umbrella term that includes the possibility of sex, but it’s vague enough to avoid any legal wrinkles involving the exchange of sex for money. Last week, the site held a “Sugar Baby Summit” for its members in New York City, playing host to over 100 women eager to cash in as paid girlfriends.
This comes on the heels of former Playboy bunny Holly Madison’s new memoir, released last week, which detailed how quintessential sugar daddy Hugh Hefner used underhanded tactics to pit his multiple girlfriends against one another.
She also accused Hefner of attempting to “buy” her outright in a legal document laid before her:
“It was there, in black and white. The will stated that $3,000,000 would be bestowed to Holly Madison at the time of his death (provided I still lived in the Mansion). At the time, it was more money than I’d ever know what to do with. . . But I didn’t want it. I actually pitied him for stooping to that level. I couldn’t help but be offended. Did he really think he could buy me? ”
Personally, I can see where women might become confused. I recall meeting a man who managed to work into our first conversation the fact that he drove a Bugatti. The friend who had accompanied me to the bar that evening promptly Googled the brand name (average price: $2.25 million), and I remember feeling confused because he was a Richard Gerelike, goodlooking, smart businessman.
I called my grandmother with my moral quandary: “I’d like to go on a date with this guy, but I’m afraid I might be dating him just because he owns a Bugatti.” Her response: “Why would you date anyone who doesn’t own a Bugatti?”
She was joking, but she had a point. I went to dinner with him out of curiosity and left the date early out of discomfort.
In one way, sugar relationships might be at least as harmful as traditional prostitution.
Prostitutes sell sexual intercourse, but in sugar relationships, sugar babies sell an equally important piece of themselves — their selfesteem — by putting a price tag on emotional intimacy.
And yet it’s difficult to find fault with sugar babies; after all, their rallying cry —“Girls Just Want to Have Funds”—is merely an extreme version of the message women have been hearing for decades about knowing our own “worth.”
Popular culture encourages them. This contributes to a skewed perception that women need a wealthy man to support them in order to feel beautiful and valued. This perversion of selfworth is rooted deeply in pop culture, celebrated in movies and television (“Pretty Woman,” “Sex and the City”) and books (“Fifty Shades of Grey” wouldn’t be the same if its male heart throb was a bank teller rather than a billionaire).
The problem isn’t the prospect of negotiating one’s worth; the problem is that emotional intimacy is, by definition, personal rather than professional. Genuine romance is not a commodity that can be exchanged or transferred to the highest bidder.
Sugar daddies and babies may have found a way to avoid the technicalities associated with prostitution, but not the shame: When you put a price tag on emotional intimacy, you enter into a business partnership that looks a lot less like love and a lot more like desperation.