That was a key theme of the keynote presentation he delivered at a Sugar Baby Summit (exploring “the strategy behind living the sugar lifestyle”) that he organized at 10 on the Park, an event venue in the Time Warner Center in May. Wade, who also runs other dating sites including, which promotes so-called “ ethical cheating.” “The moment you give sex, you have lost all your power,” he said. If anything, a “sugar baby” hoping to find a lasting arrangement with “a good provider” should withhold sex for as long as possible, said the thrice-divorced Mr. “We want to drive people to talk honestly on the first date about who they are and what they expect to gain from a relationship, just like you discuss in any business relationship and any business arrangement,” he said.
The terms of service, he said, prohibit transactions for sex the site simply seeks to bring the role that money plays in mating out in the open. In an interview with The Times, Brandon Wade, the founder of SeekingArrangement, said his dating platform, which he has rebranded as Seeking, is not a vehicle for prostitution. It includes a section on “hypergamy,” or what used to be known as marrying up. The website is illustrated by stock photos of white women, sometimes carrying shopping bags and often in formal gowns and diamonds, fawning over white men with business-trip suitcases and carefully groomed 5 o’clock stubble. (“Diamond” memberships for sugar daddies cost $200 per month and provide sugar parents with search engine optimization and top-of-page promotion for their profiles.) Sugar daddies (and some sugar mommies) pay monthly fees of $99 a month, which allows them unlimited access to the profiles of sugar babies, who join the website for free.
She signed up on, a website that helps people interested in monetized dating find each other. “I needed the money, and I didn’t want to ask my mom,” she said. Fowles hesitated at first, but she convinced herself that sugar-dating would result in her having something of a regular relationship with an older man who would pamper her with an allowance. Last winter, a friend told her about the concept of “sugar-dating”: a “sugar baby” (most often a woman or a gay man) connecting with a “sugar daddy” (a man) in a relationship that offers financial support in exchange for companionship and possibly sex.Īccelerated by the anonymity of the internet, sugar-dating is a variation on “escorting,” that practice formerly advertised at the back of New York magazine and the now-defunct Village Voice newspaper. The cost of living (and partying) was more than she could manage, along with her $25,000 in college student loan debt. She got a retail job at a clothing store in Midtown that paid her $15 an hour and a commission of 1.5 percent of her sales. For all the excitement of moving to New York City, she ended up sharing a three-bedroom apartment with two other roommates across the Hudson River, in Jersey City, N.J. When you are 24 years old, jobless, boyfriend-less and in a fight with your mom, moving to one of the most glamorous, ballyhooed cities in the world can seem like a good idea. She and her mother weren’t speaking at all after a particularly bad argument. Her degree in art history and fine arts from Eastern Connecticut State University wasn’t helping her land any job worth sticking around for. Chandler Fowles knew it wouldn’t be simple to move from Mystic, Conn., to New York City last year.