Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I choose when we're going to have sex. I choose when you give me money. I choose everything. I was like, oh, you look really old. Like, you look like you could be my grandfather.
If they're going to be dating men, they want to be rewarded for it. And people in the restaurant and the wait staff are like, "We know what's going on here." When you talk about whether it includes sugar or not, it actually means whether it includes sex or not.
You know when you're hanging out with friends and someone throws out a fun hypothetical? Like, would you rather be able to fly but have constant BO or read people's minds but only ever wear low-rise pants? Or how about this one? You win the lottery, but the only song you can ever listen to for the rest of your life is One of Us by Joan Osborne. What if God was one of us?
There is a game of cosmic balance that we play. If you want something shiny, it comes at a cost. And sometimes when I'm marinating in hypotheticals, I think, "God, money is handy!" And I never seem to have enough of it. What random shit would I do for a bunch of money and less financial pressure? Would I date an older man?
Well, welcome to the world of being a sugar baby, where young women, called sugar babies, trade their attention and sexual favours for the financial sponsorship of a man, the sugar daddy.
Caveat, there are also sugar mummies and babies who are older, but the data tells us these transactional relationships are overwhelmingly hot young women and rich old white dudes. They don't call sex work the world's oldest profession for nothing. Since the dawn of time, we women have opted into the business of intimacy for money.
So, is it the best hack there is? A shortcut to the high life? Is it actually worth it? I'm Yumi Steins. Ladies, we need to talk about being a sugar baby. I was like, I need to plan how to leave. I need to plan how to pack my bags and go home.
I'm just done. I don't want to be here anymore. This is Charlotte. She's 32 and a couple of years ago she found herself in Thailand with a much older sugar daddy. It was supposed to be a special getaway, but after only a few days, Charlotte was feeling trapped.
He was really forcing his affection onto me, like he was like wanting to hold my hand in public all the time. And so I would either walk ahead of him quicker or I would just cross the road.
Charlotte needed distance, like oceans of distance between her and this guy. Mentally, she'd checked out. Physically, she was ready to leave. But financially, there was a problem. I didn't have any bank cards because I thought he was bankrolling this entire trip.
We'll come back to Charlotte's escape plan in a little bit, but to understand how she ended up stuck in Thailand, we need to travel back to Melbourne 2023. Charlotte's working full-time in admin, earning enough money to get by, but not enough to live the life to which she aspires.
over a third of my income goes on my rent. I want to live outside my means, but I don't want to have to go and get a second job. And I just want to like have the money to go to like shows and go out and eat and just like try and enjoy my life and selling your feet pics. It's like a running joke that my friends and I always had, but it was something that we'd never explored. And then one day I kind of just went, oh, maybe I will explore.
not selling feet pics, but doing something in that realm. Yeah. It's so funny that you say that because just yesterday I was thinking, would anyone want to see my feet? Like seriously, because I run a bit and so I've got these crusty like calluses from running and I was like, maybe there's like a tiny niche of people that would want to see me cutting the crust off my feet.
Yeah. And so that was kind of like the thing. I was like, who would ever buy my like feet pics? I just don't think that that's a, I don't think that's something that somebody would want to do. So that's where I sort of came across sugar dating and that kind of sphere. Okay. And so, I mean, it is a bit of a taboo. It is. Yeah, totally. So how did you cross that threshold?
I'd done a bit of, like, research, and by research I think I just typed sugar dating and sugar babying into Google and sort of did a really brief look at, I guess, what it entailed. I'm just like, oh, let's give it a try, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Charlotte figured sugar dating was more her thing than an OnlyFans foot-crust page, so she picked a site and set up a profile.
The whole sign-up process, I reckon, only took me like a couple of minutes. I just chose normal photos of myself that I thought looked pretty and I just made them all public. So that clearly showed that you're an Asian woman? Yeah, I have Asian heritage and I have been fetishised like my whole adult life and it's such a red flag for me. And...
Going into this, I actually was like, I'm going to take that back a little bit, use that to my advantage. So, Charlotte, you said you wanted to experience more luxury in your life. What kind of things were you after? I...
really love to go out and eat. So I was like, if I can go to some restaurants that I ordinarily would never go to, that would be great. I was like envisioning that I was going to go on trips, that I was really going to live this luxe lifestyle. Soon after signing up to the Sugar Baby site, Charlotte set up a date with an older guy. They got brunch and they were both kind of coy.
Because it was his first time and my first time and we were both navigating this very unknown, uncharted territory, we kind of were like, let's just see how it goes. Neither of them had sugar dated before and maybe that's why neither of them were clear about what the relationship would look like and what would be exchanged.
I didn't want to put too many barriers or things in place at the beginning because he was new to it and I was new to it, so we agreed that we would just honestly just go with the flow. He was clear about some things, though. He was like, I'm married, I have kids, I'm not looking to leave my wife, I love her and I'm going to be with her forever, but for him it was an intimacy thing.
As soon as she got back to her car, Charlotte googled the guy and realised he was a well-known medical specialist. I think his oldest child was around about my age and I'm in my early 30s. So you're in your 30s, he's got a kid about the same age as you. How old does that make him? I want to say definitely in his 50s, maybe...
late 50s. Take me to a day in the life of a sugar baby with a sugar daddy. What would you get up to? We basically ended up in what I think he thought was a full-blown relationship, which is not what I wanted, but we talked every day. We would meet up once a week. Like, we'd go and have a meal somewhere. He would come to my house, which in hindsight was a really stupid idea.
Many of the sugar babies are actually individuals who have full-time jobs, are also older. Sugar babies can range from 18-year-olds to 60-year-olds. This is Shushti Appadhyay. She's a PhD candidate at the University of Buffalo looking into sugar dating. She first became interested in the field in 2016.
I was a grad student back when I started this. I had friends who started talking about how they were in these arrangements where they were like just going to watch a movie with somebody and at the end of the movie date, they would pay them a certain amount or they would buy them a meal. The aim was to just explore this new dynamic that all of a sudden was like being talked about in my friend groups, people around me. Shrushti has interviewed hundreds of sugar babies in her research to try and understand their motivations.
A lot of them actually have full-time jobs. So this is something that they're engaging in to have kind of that luxury lifestyle or kind of have that secondary source of income. Of course, the concept of transactional relationships isn't new. The Seeking Arrangement website launched in 2006. It was a dating site designed for cashed-up older men to meet younger women.
In 2011, it started directly targeting university students by giving them free premium profiles if they signed up with their uni email addresses. That's how we found out how many sugar baby profiles there were at each university. Weirdly, they've stopped releasing that data now. LOL!
In 2019, there was a minor furor when a news site released a report showing 177,000 Aussie uni students had sugar baby profiles on there. The sugar babies weren't just motivated by promises of money and gifts, but also by access to a world not normally available to them.
A lot of sugar babies that I talk to, particularly those that are in their 20s and 30s, they describe how their sugar daddies helped them get internship, how their sugar daddies taught them how to invest money, where to invest money in. Essentially like a pseudo mentorship, but like you can then network with these people. So that's how it started getting popularity. A pseudo mentorship with sex? Yeah.
Sex work is illegal in the US. So that means sugar websites have to use coded language about what they facilitate. There is no open discussion about sex. It's more of a wink-wink situation, if you know what I mean. When you say you have a sugar arrangement and when you talk about whether it includes sugar or not, it actually means whether it includes sex or not.
Along with sugar itself, there's a couple more terms to get your head around in the world of sugar dating.
The ingredients of your sugar bowl are essentially your sugar babies, sugar daddies and sugar mommies. So they make up the sugar bowl. Sugar babies are the ones who are providing emotional, sexual and physical intimacy. Sugar daddies and sugar mommies are the ones who have resources and who want these companionships. Tell me what a Splendor Daddy is.
Ooh, so a Splendid Ad is somebody who just says that they're rich or that they are willing to pay you an X amount or they can buy you XYZ designer items. But essentially, they don't have that. They're lying.
They're not as rich as they're pretending to be. You know Splenda, that artificial sweetener? Yeah, they're the fakers of the sugar world. I wanted to understand from Shrushti what the difference is between a sugar baby and an escort. So sugar babies would describe themselves as having more or doing more of an emotional labor and having a longer term arrangement with their sugar daddies.
compared to escorts. But often the difference that a lot of sugar babies describe their relationships
having is that sugar relationships are more genuine. They're like real life. You're like dating essentially or dating with additional perks. What do you think that the sugar daddy wants from the sugar baby that they don't get from their marriages? They want to be able to have these sexual relationships with younger women where they do themselves feel young. These sugar daddies are looking for somebody who...
just wants to listen to what they have to say. Yeah. A lot of them are also high profile individuals in whatever industry they're in. So think about it as like having a therapist that you're also attracted to. That's what sugar babies are essentially doing is just listening to a lot of these men without judgment.
I think listening is the superpower. Meet Soraya. She's 26 and has been a sugar baby since she was 19. And she's learned a thing or two about how the game is played. Whoever is talking is the person giving up their power. Whoever is listening is collecting it because...
Within listening to them, you can find their weaknesses, things that can be used against them. Soraya sees this as a cat and mouse game. She takes pieces of information from her sugar daddies, say that they like being perceived as funny or they appreciate a kind of dress style or behaviour. She adopts it and uses it as bait. And then he doesn't know why he's starting to fall in love with me, but it happens.
Every time. So I see how you maintain power as a sugar baby. Yeah. For you, what is the work? Do you have to stroke their ego and make them the central character? Men, they too want to be loved like a fairy tale.
They too have not felt passion since they were a teenage boy. And they've gotten used to not feeling butterflies in their stomach when they speak to a woman. But when they can find a woman who make them feel like a little boy again, where they can't wait till she texts, that is what you want. That is where the money is.
Soraya describes herself as a seductress and to be honest, I totally loved talking to her. She had this I don't give a fuck, bow down to me energy, which I couldn't help think comes in handy in her line of work. I
I choose when we're going to have sex. I choose when you give me money. I choose everything. Soraya lives in South Africa, a country with one of the most unequal wealth distributions in the world. She was raised by a single dad who told her, it's better to be poor in a rich neighbourhood than rich in a poor neighbourhood. His logic was that you could run into rich people in a wealthy area, network and be shown alternative rich people lifestyles.
Soraya has applied this approach to meeting men. She learnt from a young age about the power of money. And she isn't shy about bringing up the subject when she first meets her daddies.
Usually I say, okay, darling, we're having such an amazing time. Let's talk about my favorite topic, money. Then I kind of, yeah, I think it's maybe more important to use tonation, but you have to say the words either way. When Soraya was 21, she met an Australian man in his mid-40s on a sugar dating website. She was staying in Ghana at the time, and he was in Cape Town for business.
Soraya says he fell for her straight away and flew her to stay in his private villa. He was very rich. He kind of opened my horizon to more flashy stuff. By flashy, we're talking Louboutin shoes, diamond bracelets, gold rings. Oh, and he also gave Soraya a weekly allowance.
He didn't bat an eyelash, making sure that I'm always comfortable in any way possible. How did you spend the time together? What would the conversations be like? Honestly, just imagine you with a boyfriend, normal like that, from anything to...
I don't know, to where you're going to eat tonight, to jokes and to laughing. Soraya was offering the Aussie guy the full girlfriend experience. She'd figured him out and moulded herself into his fantasy. They want to see you silly. It makes them silly too. They want to see you comfortable. It makes them comfortable too. You're sexual, they're sexual. It sounds like you're really good at your job. Did you have to be specific about transactions?
Yeah, money is a stubborn element, so you have to be stubborn too. When it comes to money, that's when you have to be serious to make sure that no words are missed. What was your relationship to dating before you started sugar dating? I never really cared for dating. It was too much feelings involved. I struggle sometimes with regulating and understanding people's feelings.
I just like, why do I have to put myself through this normal dating with emotions that I don't even like? Like putting this much energy and needing to deal with all of these men. I think I should be compensated for it.
Shrushti Aparia's research into sugar babies lines up with Soraya's feelings around dating. Shrushti has found that most sugar babies do not date men in their personal lives. If they're going to be dating men, they want to be rewarded for it because men hold a lot of power in this patriarchal society everywhere they go. And so to them, putting in this emotional labor, putting in this
time and energy into relationships with men and dealing with men personally is something that they don't want to do for free. Yeah, right. And it's just a lot of work. Shrushti has found in her research that sugar babies want to differentiate themselves from sex workers, and so they use coded language.
They would hint at that they like having a hypergamous relationship or they're interested in hypergamy. That's their preference for dating. And that essentially just means you're looking to date or you're looking for a partner who's essentially has more social capital than you. So on TikTok, you see sugar babies on private jets and in these incredible resorts.
What was the scale of financial recourse that most women you spoke to were getting? Was it comparable or is that the far end of the extreme? That is definitely far end of the extreme. It's those that are lucky to have individuals who are taking them on these private jets or who are taking them on these luxurious trips, buying them all these designer luxury goods and things like that. That is definitely possible, but not everybody gets there.
Have you seen sugar daddies fall in love with their sugar babies or the other way around, sugar babies falling in love with their sugar daddies?
Yes. So a lot of the sugar babies that I talked to were very clear and explicit that they would not fall in love with their sugar daddies. Many of them shared that their sugar daddies became very fascinated with them or were very interested into turning a sugar relationship into a romantic relationship. And to a lot of the sugar babies, that was the first sign that they want to not pay for the arrangement. Ah, okay.
Wow.
So if they're wanting to be like, be my girlfriend, essentially, that's them hinting at that they are going to stop paying for things. They're going to not take you on these experiences that they were previously taking you on and things like that. So that to them was a sign that their arrangement was going to change very quickly. Oh, my God. I mean, the underlying message of that is fascinating. Yeah. And so that's what they're mindful of is like they do not want to give up the sugar arrangements.
There's also a darker side to sugar dating. A lot of them talked about different degrees of unsafeness that they might have felt, whether it's emotional or physical. So a lot of sugar babies talk about this as something that is either at the forefront of their mind or it's always something that they are mindful of.
After a couple of months of seeing each other, Charlotte, our sugar baby from Melbourne, was talking to married famous Dr Guy every day. You hang out and you go on dates and you do things together. And would you have sex? Yes. Yeah. So that happened pretty early on and I was consenting and I was fine with that. So where's the transaction between you two? What's the exchange? You're giving him sex. What's he giving you? Yes.
I had a lot of experiences with him. So we went to lots of really lovely restaurants that I would never, and I probably will never, ever go to. For my milestone birthday, he took me to a very, very fancy restaurant. Beautiful food. It's very expensive. Can be really hard to get into. This is the sort of place where you can drop a whole week's salary without much effort. I didn't care that...
I was with this person that's significantly older than me and that people in the restaurant and the wait staff are probably like, we know what's going on here. I just turned a blind eye to it because I was like, it's so cool. Yeah, you were just living your best life. After their experience at the acclaimed restaurant, things picked up pace between Charlotte and her sugar daddy.
We definitely started seeing each other a lot more, maybe two to three times a week. He always was like, "You're working from home, I'll just pop over," or, "I'll come over in the evening on one of the days that you're working from home," or, "Let's meet in the city." And then it all came to a head when we went overseas. Three months into her first sugar arrangement, Charlotte hopped on board for what she thought was going to be a bougie Thailand vacay with her sugar daddy.
I hadn't been on a holiday since long before COVID and I think I just was dying for a holiday so badly that I was like, yes, this is a great idea. I can't believe you're going to fly me overseas. Sugar Dad paid for Charlotte's flights and accommodation and told his wife he was on a cycling trip. Yep, that old chestnut. Charlotte packed her bikinis, but not her wallet.
I was so amped and then getting on the plane I was amped. Beaches, great food, shopping. Charlotte could see it all ahead of her. And then I reckon I kind of got the ick a little bit when I landed and he like met me at the airport. I was like, oh, you like look really old. Like you look like you could be my grandfather.
Charlotte put thoughts of her grandad aside and for the first couple of days, she had a good time. But then her sugar daddy started getting too much. He was forcing his affection onto me, like he was, like, wanting to hold my hand in public all the time. And so I would either walk ahead of him quicker or I would, like...
I would just cross the road. Wow. This is in Bangkok, so I just was constantly crossing the road. Yeah. But there were times where I didn't have a choice and I was starting to really feel like I was being judged because we were in a foreign country. He looks old and I look a lot younger than my actual age.
And so it's building up, it's building up, it's building up. And can I just say the quiet bit out loud is that there's sex tourists in Thailand who prey on young Asian women and they're generally old, crusty white guys. So you were kind of mirroring that dynamic. Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that's basically what I felt like we were presenting to the world and like I really could see the looks on everyone's faces when we went somewhere and so it was just
adding more and more to this, like, ick. Charlotte's discomfort levels were rising, but her options were limited. I didn't take any money over and I didn't have any bank cards because I thought he was bankrolling this entire trip. And then there was the straw that broke the camel's back. Charlotte's sugar daddy started getting stingy.
I thought we were going to go to a market and he was just going to give me a wad of cash and I was going to be able to go and buy stuff. I saw something that I wanted and I asked him, I said, oh, I wouldn't mind getting that. And he made it so difficult for me to convince him to buy it. He kept going, no, no, it's going to be cheaper at...
another vendor and we ended up walking around the entire market and then I just wanted to leave I just was like I'm just done I I don't want to be here anymore in the lead up to the market experience were you still having sex with him
I was trying to avoid it. Right. I was really trying to avoid it by being like, I have a sore stomach because I've eaten something funny or I'm tired or I'm sunburned or I don't feel well. And then on the last night before I flew out, he was like, oh, please, just one more time. And so I just obliged and like faked it.
The next day, Charlotte came up with an excuse as to why she needed to get home. Another sugar daddy she'd been seeing wired her the funds and she got on a plane back to Australia. It took two days and two grand. But that wasn't the end of her ordeal with the icky sugar daddy. Even after Charlotte's hasty exit, he wasn't ready to let go.
I had like 75 unread messages over the course of a number of weeks. He emailed me this like essay. I opened it. I didn't read it. I took a screenshot of it. So I had the first bit. I had the timestamp. I had his email address. And then I deleted the email and I blocked him. Did you feel scared?
There was a moment where I did feel scared because he knew so much about my life. He knew where I worked. He knew where I lived. He knew where I frequented. I was looking over my shoulder constantly every time I left my apartment, every time I walked around the area that I lived. I just didn't know if he was going to pop up. And then I remembered that he's married with kids and I have a lot of evidence and that I could blow his life up and that it would be in his best interest to leave me alone.
Our friend Saraya from South Africa has been in the sugar bowl for seven years now and has learnt some things along the way. I do have one rule that I must always be able to afford myself travelling back on my own if necessary. She also never goes home with a sugar daddy on the first date. To show him who's in charge, whether you give me money or not, I choose when we're going to have sex.
And Soraya has an upper age limit, which puts the brakes on the gross grandpa energy. 60, 65, that's too much. Like over that is too much. Then it's, yeah, it's giving retirement. Retirement means too much time and I don't want to spend too much time with them. Yeah.
When Soraya dates sugar daddies, she's performing a fantasy for them. And it's exhausting keeping that up all the time. The Aussie sugar daddy she met when she was 21? Well...
She ended up marrying him. Being with one person in a marriage, it actually felt a bit like a cage, like a collector's item, not ever to be used, just to be stared at. So that was also kind of like, okay, but I could be having fun in the world and now I'm trapped here.
Soraya and Aussie sugar daddy got divorced after a couple of years, but she walked away with a trust fund. That's where my network skyrocketed into the many zeros. Does the trust fund mean you don't actually have to work if you don't want to, Soraya? Yeah, now, yes, it does, yeah. Unlike Charlotte, Soraya hasn't had a day job since she was 20. And now with her trust fund cushion, Soraya devotes most of her time to investing.
and advising sugar babies on TikTok with gems like this. Your sugar daddy needs to have these three things if he's even going to be considered a sugar daddy. As in, he needs to have all of them. Number one, obviously, he's got to be rich. Nobody giving you money from their child's college fund. He needs to be rich, rich.
As for Charlotte, who left her sugar daddy behind in Thailand, she's found a new daddy in an arrangement that works much better for her. He's really lovely and is so respectful and so kind and is the experience that I wish that I'd had across the board. Okay. Yeah. Is he a saggy old man? No. Is he a little bit saggy? No, not at all. Are his pubes grey? I think he's in better shape than I am. Okay. Tell me more. Like, what's the sex like?
Very good. So what do you get in return? So I get money from him. Oh, okay. Is it per visit or...? Yeah, it's a set fee and then I go off on my way and then I'm like, we'll see you next time. It's so nice. So what stops you from getting attached? Because he has a wife and kids. Oh, that. Okay. Because he's married. Oh, that bit, yeah. Yeah, that bit. Yeah.
I've always pictured sugar babies as being pliant and cute, batting their eyelashes and speaking in soft baby voices to their incredibly dull, overpaid overlords.
But it's way more nuanced and varied than that. Sugar babies are chameleons. They change their colours to get what they want from their daddies. It's hard work. And the better they are at their jobs, the more they can attune to daddy to give him what he wants. Frankly, it sounds like exhausting babysitting to me, but I think there are lessons in consent and clear boundary setting that we can all learn from and be better practised at. I confess...
I did look into being an older sugar baby after recording this episode. The big barrier for me is having to pretend to be nice.
How? How do they do it? For the babies out there and the ones we talk to, I wish them nothing but wealth, happiness and success. For myself, I think I need to revisit this funky footcrust OnlyFans thing. Would that be too callous? Surely someone would be interested.
This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gundungurra and Gadigal peoples. Ladies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie de Bettencourt. It's produced by Elsa Silberstein. Supervising producer is Tamar Kranzwick and our executive producer is Alex Lollback. This series was created by Claudine Ryan.
Hey, before you go, I wanted to recommend to you a podcast called QuickSmart. And joining me is the host, Siobhan Maron. Welcome to the show. Hey, Yumi. Tell us about QuickSmart. Yeah. Okay. So it's 10-minute episodes and we go into all number of topics.
and sort of give you the deep dive, but in that short timeframe. So things like what is actually in no and low alcohol beer to why is the far right making all of these gains in Germany right now? Why are short podcasts so useful, Siobhan? Oh, because we're all...
time porter. Sometimes if you're catching the bus, you know, you've just got that short walk to work, you can put this on and have something to talk about with your colleagues or at the dinner party later on. I love that. Thank you so much, Siobhan Marron from Quicksmart on the ABC Listen app.