College Student Seeking Sugar Daddy

It’s just what every girl needs in the face of rising tuition and a sluggish job market: a sugar daddy to pay her student loans. Wait, what?

SeekingArangement, a website that presents itself as "The Elite Sugar Daddy Dating Site for those Seeking Mutually Beneficial Relationships", says that 44% of its female “sugar babies” (seriously?) are students and that since the site launched in 2006, the number of female students has grown exponentially. The Daily Beast shed more light on this trend with an interview with the site's founder and CEO, Brandon Wade.

Are these stats plausible? Sure. Are they also disturbing? Yes. Without judging anyone who actually chooses to participate in what is, admittedly, a relationship between consenting adults, the fact that for some women education requires a literal sugar daddy in order to be affordable is appalling.

Of course, women have had to resort to this sort of thing since well before the rise of internet dating sites (or however we’re going to classify SeekingArrangement and its ilk). But the fact that the site seems so proud of itself is a little hard to take. At one point they compare women leading a "double life" as a sugar baby to Wonder Woman. This indicates that a woman is involved in a relationship that she feels the need to hide, and that smacks of being less than proud of the decision.

And while it’s nice that some women are able to put themselves through school in this unconventional way, it would be way better for everybody if we just got a grip on tuition costs and student debt. Rather than, you know, having women turn themselves into commodities.

After all, education ought to empower women, not drive them into "arrangements" with older men on the internet.