Seeking “arrangements” to pay for college
As the cost of education rises, women are turning to the oldest profession to cover the bill.
Currently, according to a June 20 article in The Economist, nearly three quarters of American college graduates are leaving school with an average of $35,051 in debt. For comparison, Edvisors, which tracks student aid, said that roughly half of all graduates graduated with debt in 1995, and that debt averaged less than a third as much.
To cover the cost of going to college, young women are increasingly seeking older, wealthy men as benefactors. These young women sell companionship and sex for an average of $3,000 a month, according to The Economist, although some are offered much more.
The trend has gained media attention over the last several years, with many articles focusing on “dating” site seekingarrangement.com.
According to a 2014 article in The Atlantic, “In 2013, Seeking Arrangement announced that approximately 44 percent of its 2.3 million ‘babies’ [female users] are in college. This is a trend that the website encourages—if babies register with a .edu email account, they receive a free premium membership (something the guys have to shell out as much as $1,200 for).”
The website for SeekingArrangement welcomes visitors to its homepage with the assertion that by joining, they’ll enter a service “Where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships.”
Nowhere does the site refer to sex.
Instead, users enter into “arrangements,” which the site defines as “where people are direct with one another and stop wasting time. It allows people to immediately define what they need and want in a relationship.”
Women entering into these arrangements are called Sugar Babies. Men are Sugar Daddies.
Scroll down just a little ways and you’ll see thumbnails of Sugar Babies, and a little further down, Sugar Daddies. The women are posed provocatively, careful to show bare skin, long hair, shoulders and breasts (the website defines Sugar Babies as “attractive” and “beautiful” ).
The men, on the other hand, are posed in front of expensive cars, or present in simple headshots (“successful,” “generous [with money]”).
The website then lists the perks for Sugar Daddies, including a ratio of eight Sugar Babies per Daddy (“the odds are in your favor”), no strings attached (“redefine the expectations of a perfect relationship”), and ideal relationships (“upfront and honest arrangements with someone who will cater to your needs”).
The website is also mobile friendly, so you can find an “arrangement” any time, anywhere.
What do the Sugar Babies get out of this? First on the list of perks: financial stability (“unpaid bills no longer have to be a concern”). Then the website strives to sell Sugar Babies on the idea that their benefactors, who will typically be much older, present an opportunity to date “experienced men” (“start dating gentlemen who leave the dating games alone”). On top of all of that, you can also find a mentor and be pampered.
If you aren’t seeing red by now (Vane was), scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and you’ll find that SeekingArrangement currently enjoys 4.5 million members.
If the website’s ratio of female to male members is accurate, that means about 3.94 million women are looking to trade sex for money, many of them to help pay for college educations.
One example, according to The Economist, is Allison, a 23-year-old sugar baby whose goes by Barbiewithabrain. Allison said three successive sugar daddies have covered her college, rent, and car expenses since she was 18 through monthly allowances of $5,000-10,000.
As quoted in The Atlantic, according to James Madison University professor Tammy Castle, whose research includes analyzing the content of escort websites, “Sugar babies are escorts. [The administrators of the Seeking Arrangement] are trying to avoid the negative stigma of prostitution by advertising this as just another dating website, but money is exchanged for arrangements that may include sex.”
Even if that money comes in the form of gifts or credit cards, the assumption between Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies is that sex and money will both enter into their “arrangement.”
But by publicizing the number of women in college who use the site, SeekingArrangement appears to be attempting to legitimize its services as classier than prostitution. As Atlantic writer Caroline Kitchener put it in her article, “If so many college women are signing up for the site, it must be something different. It must be more socially acceptable somehow. It can’t really be prostitution.”
