Sugar Babies: When “Feminism” Looks Like Online Misogyny

In 2019, the dating website Seeking.com reported having 365 University of Edinburgh students registered as members. Seeking.com is not just any dating platform. It’s the leading website specializing in what is known as “sugaring”: transactional arrangements between young, attractive women—“sugar babies”—and older, successful men—“sugar daddies.”

Edinburgh is not exceptional in having hundreds of students looking for a “daddy” online. A quick search will tell you that sugaring has boomed on campuses in the last decade on both sides of the Atlantic. But the figure was of particular interest to me because Edinburgh is where I teach. And in my feminist philosophy classes last year, all my students talked about was sugar babies. Their interest in the phenomenon took me by surprise, but so did their comments. They were not lamenting that the rising costs of education and housing were pushing their friends to these platforms. They were not saying “look at what young women have to do to get by these days!” Instead, my students were curious about sugaring. They were inclined to see it as something positive, as a path to independence, and even as a feminist act.

But how could dating old men for money be a feminist act? I remain unconvinced that it is. I suspect, in fact, that trading youth, companionship, and sex for gifts, money, and professional mentoring may have very negative consequences for these young women. And when this exchange is so clearly gendered, as sugaring is, it’s hard not to see classic forms of patriarchal hierarchy reemerging. However, I think it’s vital to understand why sugaring has become so attractive to young people today. At the heart of that story is an ironic twist that has made the worldviews of popular feminists and online misogynists in many ways indistinguishable.

In her 2020 book, How to Get Over a Boy, influencer, activist, and best-selling author Chidera Eggerue defends what she calls “hypergamy”: women’s preference for “dating wealthier people.” “Whilst it is crucial to treasure our right to work for our money, it’s absolutely okay to want to be treated well and, dare I say it, SPOILED.” Eggerue concedes that many women see this more transactional approach to relationships as degrading, or as “letting the feminist team down.” But, she says, given that women have to deal with rape culture and the gender pay gap, picking up the check is the least a man can do to show respect for his partner and support for gender equality. This is all the more important, Eggerue elaborates, for women of color who face racialized forms of oppression. According to Eggerue, splitting bills is a misguided idea. It forces women like her to share their “already limited resources with my oppressor.” It’s exploitation masking as egalitarianism.

Eggerue is not alone. The idea that you shouldn’t split bills is now big on TikTok, with young feminists urging other women to “make his pockets hurt.” Against this backdrop, sugaring seems like a great idea. As a student put it in the Harvard Crimson, sugaring is “fundamentally, a clever means for women to refute the same system that perpetuates catcalling, unwarranted, explicit private messages, and harassment by demanding payment.” The sugar baby is “sticking it to the man for the sake of advancing herself.” Unlike regular apps, platforms like Seeking.com allow you to target men who have money and are willing to spend it. You can get a lot more than a dinner out of your date. Unlike stripping your way through college, becoming an escort, or camming, getting yourself a sugar daddy carries minimal risk for maximum reward. And you don’t even need to meet in person if you don’t want to. These young women are then the Robin Hood figures in this new feminist redistribution of social goods: skillfully manipulating men to get what the patriarchy denies them. Eggerue sums it up: “it feels empowering to me to live luxuriously at the expense of my oppressor.”

But are sugar babies really winning against their “oppressors”? To be successful, they need to turn themselves into exactly what men want. After all, finding a “daddy” is hard work, especially when websites like Seeking.com make sure “the ratio of attractive members to successful members is 4 to 1.” In this buyer’s market, women have to excel by popular beauty standards. This is clearly one way sugaring cannot help but reinforce the mainstream and sexist norms of appearance that feminists challenge. But even for those blessed with what counts as a conventionally attractive body, standing out and looking “good” takes time, money, and care. As one sugar baby puts it: “This is a job: you mind the way you look, the things you say, etc.” You must listen, keep up men’s interest or convey exactly the right amount of disinterest, hold them when they cry, be their therapist, give them some punishment for their guilty conscience. To do this effectively, the sugar baby needs to learn to be detached and strategic, smiling and flirting, regardless of how disgusted and angry she may feel. And this is where the long-term effects of sugaring become painfully obvious.

In The Second Sex, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir warns that for a woman who makes a living by pleasing men her “whole life is a show: her words, her gestures, are intended not to express her thoughts but to produce an effect.” Sugaring requires women to get used to seeing themselves primarily as appearances for men, rather than full people living their lives. They need to get used to not saying what they mean, not doing what they want, and managing themselves to please others. The thing is, if you practice this skill long enough, it becomes second nature and you become a stranger to yourself. It’s precisely this deep habit of estrangement that makes women perfect to take up various feminine roles, like that of the submissive girlfriend or the dutiful wife. To excel as any of these things, you need to constantly look at yourself from the outside: do I look good? Does he like me? Will he get mad?

There’s also something very disturbing about the cynical realism of sugar babies. Ann, a University of Texas student, says: “Men have always objectified me as long as I’ve been online. Now at least they’re paying me to say this stuff.” Eggerue agrees: “most men want you to do their laundry or cook for them or be their therapist… so why not get what you can out of the deal as well?” Sugaring is supposed to set you free in part because of its honesty. What Eggerue and company are telling women is “Don’t be a sucker. Forget love, forget sexual satisfaction and take what you can have: money, expensive holidays, and nice clothes.” This explains why sugar babies are so willing to show an open disgust for men. As Molly, a student at Oxford, points out, sugar babies’ feminism often boils down to the idea that “men are scum” and will always be scum. But if you get paid to put up with them, you’re at least getting the best deal possible in our imperfect world.

When you think about it, this is a profoundly conservative worldview. It uses the feminist language of “oppression” and “objectification.” But what it’s really saying is that women are from Venus, men are from Mars, and heterosexuality is a battleground. Nothing can ever change because oppression is all-pervasive and never-ending. The sugaring ethos is deeply apolitical because it sees gendered hierarchy as unjust but natural. It’s the way things are. It concedes that a woman’s greatest talent is being young, pretty, and available, and that the fundamental measure of her worth is what men are willing to pay.

Sugar babies are not securing their independence and they’re not doing anything to challenge gendered inequality. They’re training themselves to be the prize that some wealthy and successful men think they’re owed. And, in the process, they’re saying that this is just the way the world is—make your peace with it and take what you can. It’s not a coincidence that the logic of “hypergamy” that Chidera Eggerue champions as liberating is the very same narrative that made psychologist Jordan Peterson a household name some years ago. On Seeking.com, CEO Brandon Wade tells prospective members about the various scientific explanations for hypergamy. The text below assures them that “moral outrage in response to hypergamy is a shortsighted response towards a naturally occurring and largely beneficial phenomenon.” But hypergamy is also a staple of narratives shared online by incels and other misogynistic groups who often blame their loneliness and failure on women’s natural desire for high-status men. So, the idea that women should “date up” is not just being embraced by feminist rebels “sticking it to the man.” It’s also upheld by conservatives like Peterson, by opportunistic entrepreneurs like Wade, and by a whole host of vitriolic misogynists online. That should give us all pause for thought.

The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or the Associate Editor Alida Liberman.

Filipa Melo Lopes

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Filipa Melo Lopes a Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in social theory and ontology, feminist politics, sexual ethics, and the work of Simone de Beauvoir.