User Friendly

This is a company that got a mention on the news recently: WAND-TV in Decatur Illinois. And along with the story were testimonials from a few Sugar Babies, young women who registered to get some financial help from a Sugar Daddy out there. My curiosity piqued, I looked into it a bit further.

Naturally, there is a website where you can register(and for free!) as either a Sugar Daddy/Sugar Mama or Sugar Baby, plus within the website many helpful tips-many of them found in their blogsite(lots of tres informative articles by both Sugar Daddies/Mommas and Sugar Babies!). 

If you register as a Sugar Daddy, you are asked about your annual income and net worth, and you are also expected to pick a level of financial support for your prospective Sugar Baby. The lowest level is purely negotiable, and generally under $1000 per month; and the highest is over $10,000 a month.  
   
So you figure, the attractiveness of the Sugar Baby is going to be commensurate with what you're paying out. I took a look at some of the pictures of Sugar Babies, and that's a matter of opinion. No, those prices are commensurate with the girl's materialism. Or, perhaps, shamelessness.

What actually happens here, I think,  is that the Sugar Daddy/Sugar Mama strikes a deal with the Sugar Baby to pay x amount of money on a monthly-or-so basis in exchange for sex. It all happens on the negotiating table(yes, maybe right on the table itself!), and who knows what people work out. Maybe the monthly allowance is a base salary for the Sugar Baby, and then sex is meted out on a commission basis: buy me a mink coat/automobile and I'll give it up for you. You get one sexual favor for every item you buy for them. 

And of course these Sugar Babies have to be giving it up, perhaps  reluctantly, but still.. Otherwise, why would someone be paying them a monthly allowance? According to the website, the average Sugar Baby gets about $3000 per month. Even if you're rich as Croesus, and this is just pocket money(or some twisted tax break), you'd still want a return on your investment. Sorry but I've gotta say it- some bang for your buck.

I started this post with a kind of smarmy sarcasm, and the veils of civility are starting to come off. Fuck it, let's be honest. I can't stand these guys. And I don't know who I have more contempt for, the Sugar Daddy/Sugar Mamas or the Sugar Babies. They both buy into it of course. The Sugar Daddy/Sugar Mama(known from here on in as SD/SM)uses the Sugar Baby(SB)as merchandise; and the SB uses the SD/SM as a meal ticket. Of course the website defends these relationships as mutually beneficial, but really they're mutually dehumanizing. 

What bothers me so much here is certainly not the sex. No, sex is fun, sex is good. Sex is the giving and receiving of pleasure. We could use more of that in the world(I certainly could!). What bugs me here, what truly rankles my ass is more in the attitude behind it. Having worked for the State for over 20 years, in a human services office where we dealt with the public, I've seen this a lot: the something-for-nothing,  user mentality. What can I get from this person/this situation/this government agency?

But my first taste of it was a bit earlier. As a college kid in Baltimore in the late 70's there was a girl I met who mentioned in conversation "the man who pays my rent". Don't remember the context but don't really need to, since the gist of the matter was that someone else paid her rent.  I only saw her that one time, and didn't ask any particulars(even though I knew), but found that whole thing distasteful- that she was letting someone else pay her way in life. That was perhaps my first exposure to User 101. 

And like I said, I saw it a lot on my job, right from the beginning, which was back in 1991.I was interviewing a young woman who had applied for unemployment benefits, and had apparently asked her a most impertinent question: are you looking for work?(They are actually required by Law to look for work while receiving benefits, and could lose their unemployment money if it's deemed that they're not).  She got indignant. "I don't want to work!"And then I got pissed. "Well I don't want to work either!"Didn't really get the point across to her, but it did shut her up. 

I'm sorry but I resent that shit. I had to get up every morning and go off to do something all day I'd just as soon not have done, having to deal with indolent asses like hers, and still maintain some cheerfulness about it. Likewise, aside from parents who helped me as long as I needed it, I've always had to pay my own rent. Somehow it just doesn't seem fair that I've had to do these things and you're exempted.

That's what bugs me about these Sugar Babies. If anything, I'd make sure they earned their money. I'd have them sign a contract, a legally binding document stipulating that in exchange for said monthly allowance, they are required to put out.  And the frequency and manner would be commensurate with the income level they were receiving.  

At least it's more fair.  Well, there have always been and probably always will be people who just get what they can from others. If this company were to advertise itself as a sex shop, pure and simple, I think I'd have more respect for them. 

I don't remember the specific book or short story it came from, but it was by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, and described an "arrangement"(much of the sort this company purports to set up, only greatly simplified)wherein a woman would show up at The Wilburhampton Hotel every 10 days to service a man. And as I remember, it was pre-paid, so that it would continue for quite some time. 

It's still merchandising, but at least it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. The world's oldest profession. Well that's my rant. I don't have any more answers than when I started but that's how this stuff makes me feel.