5 ms·

Where the Sugar Babies Are

35 points by samsolomon 11y ago

kelukelugames 11y ago
So many questions. What's a sugar baby? What's a trophy wife? Are these terms sexist? If I date someone with student loans then am I a sugar daddy? Some of my friends have wives who stay at home but don't have children. How do you define those relationships? Do all cultures fetishize the young? SeekingArrangements is in UK and Singapore too.
- sugarthrowaway 11y ago
  >What's a sugar baby? Someone financially supported by a sugar daddy/mommy in exchange for a sexual relationship. >What's a trophy wife? A much younger woman married for looks usually after divorcing one's first wife. >Are these terms sexist? Probably not helpful to label the terms sexist (given that they describe real phenomena) but the mentality that seeks out those relationships might be. >If I date someone with student loans then am I a sugar daddy? If you cover/displace significantly more of their finances than in a typical dating relationship without reciprocation, yes. >Some of my friends have wives who stay at home but don't have children. How do you define those relationships? Childless marriages, distinguished from sugar daddy relationship by the expectation of permanence and more complex mutual obligations. >Do all cultures fetishize the young? SeekingArrangements is in UK and Singapore too. Young women, yes, for fundamental biological reasons.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Have you seriously not heard the terms "sugar baby/daddy" and "trophy wife" before? They're not exactly new. Here's a google ngrams: http://tinyurl.com/zyohtp3 http://tinyurl.com/zyohtp3
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    I don't know when to apply these terms. Most of my male friends have younger partners and make at least twice as much them. It happens when a software programmer dates outside of tech. EDIT: wow! Trophy wives took off in 1990.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      Both terms are much older than the 90s.
- drostie 11y ago
  Well the phrase "trophy wife" doesn't exist on this web page and I would say that the expression itself is not sexist (because you could also have a "trophy husband" and everyone would understand what it means), but of course the practice's prevalence suggests a cultural sexism where the expression doesn't. The term "sugar baby" comes idiomatically from the opposite of the terms "sugar daddy, sugar mama" as the person who is the target of the affections of the latter. Obviously, "sugar baby" is not a sexist expression because it is not gendered. As for what it means, to be clear: Alice is Bob's sugar-baby (conversely, Bob is Alice's sugar-daddy) if Bob is an affluent older person who is both dating the younger Alice and is gifting her with financially-expensive gifts. The gifts could be as immaterial as "I have this car I never drive, you can use it as if it were your own" or as material as "I will pay off your student loan debts." Usually, if Alice has her own professional career and is providing well for herself, then we'd not call it a sugar-baby relationship even if the gifts are expensive and one-way. Furthermore if she is taking care of the household and/or kids, that would tend to mollify the judgment. The essence of the judgment is the belief that if the sugar-parent were not providing the gifts to the sugar-baby then the relationship would not persist; the very terms themselves suggest that the relationship is too uncomfortably invoking a parent-child dynamic in a romantic context. A stay-at-home wife is generally not a "sugar baby" since they are married and not dating; you could potentially extend the term to cover married couples but even so, if there are no expensive gifts or they're of comparable ages you wouldn't normally say that he's her sugar-daddy.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    Thank you for the detailed response. I feel most relationships have a large income disparity between the partners and would cease to exist otherwise. For example, if one childless partner stays at home then the other has to make enough for both. Does American society count housing and food as expensive gifts?
marcusgarvey 11y ago
Seeking Arrangement is brought to you by the fine folks behind Ashley Madison. So I would take any of their data with a boulder-sized grain of salt. I'm surprised that The Atlantic would base an entire article on their data without doing better homework.
- icedchai 11y ago
  The two sites and companies are actually not related. Do your own research.
  - marcusgarvey 11y ago
    How right you are. Arrangementfinder.com is the company in this space owned by Avid Life. It simply didn't occur to me that there would be yet another company with such a similar name in this space.
    - icedchai 11y ago
      The demand for sugar is pretty high, I guess!
glossyscr 11y ago
How does The Atlantic get all their data? Do Sugardaddies and Sugarbabies publicly confess their activities?? Maybe I'm naive but I can't imagine that the average student goes this path except she has been already escorting semi-professionally or professionally.
- speakup 11y ago
  Wrong. Hot girls, sick houses, rich guys. Like this lifestyle baby? Need some cash? Want some blow? He hook up with him too. (Turning them out.)
- jccalhoun 11y ago
  Despite all the graphs, there didn't seem to be any real information in the article. Not one statement from anyone (older or younger) who has used the site. I would love to hear from someone who actually used the site. Is it purely sex? Is sex expected or even normal? After seeing someone else comment that the site is owned by the Ashley Madison people I doubt that there is much evidence behind those graphs.
discardorama 11y ago
I hate to be pedantic, but: the size of the salt is directly proportional to the amount of the message you want to consume (because, as you know, in food there's a certain fixed ratio of salt to other ingredients). So if you want a person to not accept the premise, you should say "take it with a tiny grain of salt", which implies "accept very little of the premise".
- CPLX 11y ago
  Since this is a nerd forum and I am a nerd I will step up the pedantry by pointing out that a grain is a foundational unit of measurement of mass[0] equivalent to 64.798 milligrams, making discussion of both boulder sized and tiny grains of salt somewhat nonsensical. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(unit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(unit)
  - Chris2048 11y ago
    inflated salt?
- visakanv 11y ago
  > the size of the salt is directly proportional to the amount of the message you want to consume (because, as you know, in food there's a certain fixed ratio of salt to other ingredients). Hmm, where are you getting this idea from? It seems to me that the salt is meant to act as some sort of antidote and/or preservative: > The idea comes from the fact that food is more easily swallowed if taken with a small amount of salt. Pliny the Elder translated an ancient antidote for poison with the words 'be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt'. > Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, 77 A.D. translates thus: > After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Gnaeus Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own handwriting; it was to the following effect: Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/e21.html http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/e21.html Fun fact: The word "salary" comes from salt, too– Romans greatly valued the stuff for its preservative qualities, and built roads for its transportation.
banku_brougham 11y ago
Was having dinner with a Belgian friend, an older man that has seen a lot of life and is conversant in modern political economy. He didn't believe that: a. students in US mostly pay for everything with debt, b. those debts are impossible to discharge if students hit hard times.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  I think Vanity Fair posted an expose a few years ago about rich NYC people having orgies with young, attractive women.
lips 11y ago
For those clutching their pearls, I'm fairly confident that you can find an order of magnitude more sugar and/or exploitation based relationships in any large field that depends on a stratum of youth and/or beauty, and involves tiered access to attention. (Music, modeling, acting) Partially because sites like this are nebulous black-boxes, and partially because power corrupts. Have fun stigmatizing.
roflchoppa 11y ago
i mean shit, id be down to have a sugarmomma. that stay at home dad life, 10/10.
rdlecler1 11y ago
I wonder tonwhat degree this affects graduation rate disparity amongst man and women.

35 points by samsolomon 11y ago

So many questions. What's a sugar baby? What's a trophy wife? Are these terms sexist? If I date someone with student loans then am I a sugar daddy? Some of my friends have wives who stay at home but don't have children. How do you define those relationships? Do all cultures fetishize the young? SeekingArrangements is in UK and Singapore too.

sugarthrowaway 11y ago
>What's a sugar baby? Someone financially supported by a sugar daddy/mommy in exchange for a sexual relationship. >What's a trophy wife? A much younger woman married for looks usually after divorcing one's first wife. >Are these terms sexist? Probably not helpful to label the terms sexist (given that they describe real phenomena) but the mentality that seeks out those relationships might be. >If I date someone with student loans then am I a sugar daddy? If you cover/displace significantly more of their finances than in a typical dating relationship without reciprocation, yes. >Some of my friends have wives who stay at home but don't have children. How do you define those relationships? Childless marriages, distinguished from sugar daddy relationship by the expectation of permanence and more complex mutual obligations. >Do all cultures fetishize the young? SeekingArrangements is in UK and Singapore too. Young women, yes, for fundamental biological reasons.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Have you seriously not heard the terms "sugar baby/daddy" and "trophy wife" before? They're not exactly new. Here's a google ngrams: http://tinyurl.com/zyohtp3 http://tinyurl.com/zyohtp3
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  I don't know when to apply these terms. Most of my male friends have younger partners and make at least twice as much them. It happens when a software programmer dates outside of tech. EDIT: wow! Trophy wives took off in 1990.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    Both terms are much older than the 90s.
drostie 11y ago
Well the phrase "trophy wife" doesn't exist on this web page and I would say that the expression itself is not sexist (because you could also have a "trophy husband" and everyone would understand what it means), but of course the practice's prevalence suggests a cultural sexism where the expression doesn't. The term "sugar baby" comes idiomatically from the opposite of the terms "sugar daddy, sugar mama" as the person who is the target of the affections of the latter. Obviously, "sugar baby" is not a sexist expression because it is not gendered. As for what it means, to be clear: Alice is Bob's sugar-baby (conversely, Bob is Alice's sugar-daddy) if Bob is an affluent older person who is both dating the younger Alice and is gifting her with financially-expensive gifts. The gifts could be as immaterial as "I have this car I never drive, you can use it as if it were your own" or as material as "I will pay off your student loan debts." Usually, if Alice has her own professional career and is providing well for herself, then we'd not call it a sugar-baby relationship even if the gifts are expensive and one-way. Furthermore if she is taking care of the household and/or kids, that would tend to mollify the judgment. The essence of the judgment is the belief that if the sugar-parent were not providing the gifts to the sugar-baby then the relationship would not persist; the very terms themselves suggest that the relationship is too uncomfortably invoking a parent-child dynamic in a romantic context. A stay-at-home wife is generally not a "sugar baby" since they are married and not dating; you could potentially extend the term to cover married couples but even so, if there are no expensive gifts or they're of comparable ages you wouldn't normally say that he's her sugar-daddy.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Thank you for the detailed response. I feel most relationships have a large income disparity between the partners and would cease to exist otherwise. For example, if one childless partner stays at home then the other has to make enough for both. Does American society count housing and food as expensive gifts?

marcusgarvey 11y ago

Seeking Arrangement is brought to you by the fine folks behind Ashley Madison. So I would take any of their data with a boulder-sized grain of salt. I'm surprised that The Atlantic would base an entire article on their data without doing better homework.

icedchai 11y ago
The two sites and companies are actually not related. Do your own research.
- marcusgarvey 11y ago
  How right you are. Arrangementfinder.com is the company in this space owned by Avid Life. It simply didn't occur to me that there would be yet another company with such a similar name in this space.
  - icedchai 11y ago
    The demand for sugar is pretty high, I guess!

glossyscr 11y ago

How does The Atlantic get all their data? Do Sugardaddies and Sugarbabies publicly confess their activities?? Maybe I'm naive but I can't imagine that the average student goes this path except she has been already escorting semi-professionally or professionally.

speakup 11y ago
Wrong. Hot girls, sick houses, rich guys. Like this lifestyle baby? Need some cash? Want some blow? He hook up with him too. (Turning them out.)
jccalhoun 11y ago
Despite all the graphs, there didn't seem to be any real information in the article. Not one statement from anyone (older or younger) who has used the site. I would love to hear from someone who actually used the site. Is it purely sex? Is sex expected or even normal? After seeing someone else comment that the site is owned by the Ashley Madison people I doubt that there is much evidence behind those graphs.

discardorama 11y ago

I hate to be pedantic, but: the size of the salt is directly proportional to the amount of the message you want to consume (because, as you know, in food there's a certain fixed ratio of salt to other ingredients). So if you want a person to not accept the premise, you should say "take it with a tiny grain of salt", which implies "accept very little of the premise".

CPLX 11y ago
Since this is a nerd forum and I am a nerd I will step up the pedantry by pointing out that a grain is a foundational unit of measurement of mass[0] equivalent to 64.798 milligrams, making discussion of both boulder sized and tiny grains of salt somewhat nonsensical. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(unit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(unit)
- Chris2048 11y ago
  inflated salt?
visakanv 11y ago
> the size of the salt is directly proportional to the amount of the message you want to consume (because, as you know, in food there's a certain fixed ratio of salt to other ingredients). Hmm, where are you getting this idea from? It seems to me that the salt is meant to act as some sort of antidote and/or preservative: > The idea comes from the fact that food is more easily swallowed if taken with a small amount of salt. Pliny the Elder translated an ancient antidote for poison with the words 'be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt'. > Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, 77 A.D. translates thus: > After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Gnaeus Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own handwriting; it was to the following effect: Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/e21.html http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/e21.html Fun fact: The word "salary" comes from salt, too– Romans greatly valued the stuff for its preservative qualities, and built roads for its transportation.

banku_brougham 11y ago

Was having dinner with a Belgian friend, an older man that has seen a lot of life and is conversant in modern political economy. He didn't believe that: a. students in US mostly pay for everything with debt, b. those debts are impossible to discharge if students hit hard times.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kelukelugames 11y ago
I think Vanity Fair posted an expose a few years ago about rich NYC people having orgies with young, attractive women.

lips 11y ago

For those clutching their pearls, I'm fairly confident that you can find an order of magnitude more sugar and/or exploitation based relationships in any large field that depends on a stratum of youth and/or beauty, and involves tiered access to attention. (Music, modeling, acting) Partially because sites like this are nebulous black-boxes, and partially because power corrupts. Have fun stigmatizing.

roflchoppa 11y ago

i mean shit, id be down to have a sugarmomma. that stay at home dad life, 10/10.

rdlecler1 11y ago

I wonder tonwhat degree this affects graduation rate disparity amongst man and women.