Of course, the term sugar daddy has been around for a long time – and the sugar daddy dating site, Seeking Arrangements helps sugar daddies find their, you guessed it, sugar babies. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about: those girls who look damn fine in a bikini and just as good on their rich counterpart’s arm.

The dynamic of a wealthy benefactor paired with a pretty young thing has been a fairly common courtship pattern for centuries. But the formalised roles of sugar babies and sugar daddies has come to rub mainstream society the wrong way, seeming a little too close to the highly stigmatised prostitution industry.

The website even defines what each term means and offers options, depending on your type:

The sugar baby lifestyle is slowly entering the mainstream with feature length movies, interviews on real life situations and even summits, tutoring sugar babies from beginner to expert levels, along with Q&A panels with experienced babies and a sugar daddy mixer. It has become an occupation with some sugar babies earning around R800 000 a year. But competition is tight, and Seeking Advice reports that there are around eight sugar babies per sugar daddy. Take that, Ashley Madison.

You see, the competition between sugar babies on the site provides a substantiated reason on the importance of taking home the title of ‘Sugar Baby of the Year’ – it’s all about exposure and getting a leg up on the already over-populated dating site. Every month, a sugar baby is honoured and given titles such as Miss March, Miss July etc.

Although most of the sugar babies who enter the competitions have tepid goals (wanting only to travel or own material possessions) others are more humble, aiming for notoriety, exposure, and even mentors. Melissa, who slightly resembles Kim Kardashian (whatever that means), was encouraged by her grandmother to join the site. Now, she is aiming to get her real estate license after she met an inspirational man.

He’s a commercial real estate investor and I met him last year. It was something that I was always interested in but never did it, so I decided to go to school for it. There are a lot of real estate investors on that site so I was like ‘Great! I’m going to pick all of your brains!’.

You go girl.

[source: thedailybeast]