Rian is offering a “monthly allowance” for a “sweet and caring [girl] who appreciates all I do for her.” He’s in his 30s, works in IT and earns good money — so how about $1,000 dollars a month if the sex works out?
He’s not looking for a “professional.” Liam wants to pay for “cuddles” and “fun” from a “hard-up” student. Call it what you like — an arrangement, a delicate excuse for sex work or modern love at its most upfront — there are hundreds of thousands of men all over the world looking for it, and as the job market explodes, more and more women are desperate enough to take them up on it. The women call themselves sugar babies; men like Rian are known as sugar daddies.
For me, it all started with an innocent bit of apartment hunting. Scrolling through online listings for only slightly bedbug-infested sublets in the Bronx last year, I noticed several offers of free room and board “for the right girl.” Wealthy, professional middle-aged men — or people pretending to be wealthy middle-aged professionals — were advertising rooms in their houses for “students” or other young women “having difficulty meeting their costs.” In exchange for free rent, an appropriately pretty and poor girl would need offer sex, affection — and perhaps a little housework.
In the investigative spirit, I decided to reply to some of these “sugar daddies.” Using a dummy email address and the handle gigglesandsparkles86, I pretended to be a hard-up student, and painted a broad-brushstroke picture of a naive, bookish, ingenue, the sort of girl who likes kittens and bubbles and walks in the rain — and exists mostly in the imaginations of lonely men on the Internet or Zooey Deschanel sitcoms. I kept the details brief — “Amy” was 25, like me, a literature student finding it hard to make ends meet, and interested in more details about the arrangement. I had her respond to every ‘”sugar daddy” ad on Craigslist New York and Craigslist London on three separate days. When necessary, I sent a picture loaned by one of my prettiest and furthest-away friends, explicitly asking her for a shot in which all trace of human complexity is hidden behind hair and sunglasses. It took approximately three minutes for the emails to start flooding in.
by Laurie Penny, Salon | Read more:
Photo: Victoria Andreas via Shutterstock
