'Sugar daddy' website attracts GW students for paid relationships
by Jeanine Marie | Hatchet Reporter
Media Credit: Isabel Garcia | Assistant Visual Director
Carolyn remembers her friend walking into her room in Thurston Hall one night in September with $200 in cash and a few local pot dealers’ phone numbers – both courtesy of a man she met through a website called Seeking Arrangement.
The quasi-dating site comes clean about the business-like way it matches college-aged women and older men in what users call “mutually beneficial relationships.” Most men who use the site, dubbed “sugar daddies,” give younger women, or “sugar babies,” an allowance or pay for gifts and vacations – an average of $3,000 a month.
After her friend’s success, Carolyn, a freshman who spoke on the condition that she be identified by her middle name, signed up and described herself as “a bisexual college student looking for a good time!” on her profile. Immediately, she attracted the attention of multiple men.
Media Credit: Data courtesy of SeekingArrangements
Signing up for an account is much like creating a OK Cupid profile, with a few exceptions. Seeking Arrangement prompts new users to fill in their hair and eye color, body type, smoking and drinking habits – but also asks "sugar babies" what they expect of potential "sugar daddies."
The “lifestyle expectation” component of Seeking Arrangement is what makes it different from other dating websites, and where the company draws the thin line between prostitution and “sugar.” Expectations for compensation range from “negotiable” to “high,” or a monthly allowance of $10,000. Most "sugar babies" have “moderate” lifestyle expectations – $3,000 to $5,000 monthly.
Carolyn has gone on dates with about 15 men from the site. She’s slept with three.
“I was attracted to the guys I met. They were gentlemen, they were smart, educated and they had good jobs and wore nice clothes,” she said.
The website, which launched in 2005, is growing in popularity on college campuses. One million students have signed up for the site with .edu email addresses, representing 42 percent of users.
At GW, 129 students have used their GW email addresses to connect with wealthy men who are interested in paying for luxurious dates or making calls to connect women with jobs, said Angela Bermudo, a spokeswoman for Seeking Arrangement.
“I was attracted to the guys I met. They were gentlemen, they were smart, educated and they had good jobs and wore nice clothes” - GW Freshman
Nearby schools Georgetown and American universities have a lower number of participants, with 71 and 39 students signed up, respectively.
Media Credit: Photo Illustration by Erica Christian | Photo Editor
More than 125 GW students have connected with older wealthy men through the website SeekingArrangement.
Christine, a freshman who spoke on the condition that she be identified by a pseudonym, signed up for an account when she was 17 years old, but she waited until she came to GW to meet up with her first arrangement.
“I thought to myself, ‘This could be fun in college,’” Christine said.
Her "sugar daddy" paid for textbooks, supplies for her photography class and even a plane ticket home when she was short on cash during spring break. He also helped her land an internship at the History Channel. She still speaks to the man she met seven months ago, though they no longer hook up.
Christine said she expected men in the D.C. area to be more willing to pay larger allowances, but she has not met the politicians or impressive executives she thought she’d encounter through the website.
She did meet the chief marketing officer of a major corporation. “We only hooked up three times, but it was nice, because it was $1,000 every time we met,” Christine said.
Susan Milstein, a part-time sexual health professor at GW, said labeling Seeking Arrangement “prostitution” comes with an unduly negative stigma. The exchange of money for dates – and possibly sex – is something most people struggle to understand, because there is no illusion of romance in these not-so-traditional courtships.
“It’s cutting off the fluff,” she said.
Milstein said the site’s appeal also comes from the natural need to be desired. The search for unconventional relationships is nothing new, she said, but websites make them easier to find.
“When people are actively seeking relationships like this, it makes others uncomfortable. But before, men would take their wedding rings off and head to the bar. Technology just brings this concept of ‘kept’ women to the forefront and sensationalizes it,” she said.
Bermudo, the Seek Arrangement spokeswoman, said one percent of users are male "sugar babies."
Most colleges on the list of the top 20 fastest-growing “Sugar Baby Schools” are located near major cities, though GW didn’t make the list. New York University took the No. 3 spot, with 347 new sign-ups last year.
There is more to Seeking Arrangement for "sugar babies" than the financial benefits. Some women use the site to find someone with connections to graduate schools or employers.
“The other appeal is dating someone who is successful and has life experience. These relationships are often mentorships, and 'sugar babies' can use their 'sugar daddies' to network,” Bermudo said.
Both Carolyn and Christine said they have dated married men using the site, but Christine said after a few months, she grew more troubled with the reality that the man she was sleeping with has kids her age.
The last time she saw him was in a hotel room in February. “He left his laptop open and his screensaver was a slideshow of family photos. Seeing that was really sobering,” she said.
Carolyn keeps her Seeking Arrangement account a secret from her roommates because she believes they would judge her, but she said people like them have the wrong idea. Users must provide their college email addresses to be considered verified, which she said acts as insurance for both the men and women.
“[People] think it’s some creepy 80-year-old man with like, BDSM fantasies on the other end, but that’s not what it’s like,” Carolyn said. “It’s not Craigslist.”
Seeking Arrangement has a strict policy against prostitution, making sure that the "sugar babies" are not paid strictly for sex but for other services, like going out to dinner or a museum. Bermudo said the site monitors profiles and messages between users and offers background checks, in which they search a national sex offenders database, criminal records and history of financial fraud.
Christine said she used Spokeo, a reverse phonebook search engine, to screen men before she met them. She found out where they lived, where they went to school and whether they used their real names.
But all the precautions did not stop her from meeting men who made her uneasy.
“There were three dates I went on where guys were cleared on Spokeo, but when we met in person I just got bad vibes from them,” Christine said. “One of them definitely lied about who he was. He showed me different pictures online – clearly different pictures, it was someone else.”
These potential arrangements never made it past the first date, which Christine said typically involved just grabbing coffee or brunch. Both parties used these initial 20-minute dates to find out whether there was chemistry between them, and no money was exchanged.
Christine advised women not to join Seeking Arrangement for purely financial reasons. They have to be "emotionally competent enough to be cool with being an older man's mistress, and know to keep your distance from these people."
“All of your negotiating skills are gone if you’re a 'sugar baby' out of necessity,” she said. “But if you want to have fun, meet important people, travel, see ballets at the Kennedy Center, wear expensive lingerie or take advantage of your 'sugar daddy's' connections...go for it.”
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