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Via Half Sigma, a NYT article about the matchmaking site SeekingArrangement.com,
. . . a down-and-dirty marketplace where older moneyed men and cute young women engage in brutally frank transactions. They’re not searching for longtime soul mates; they want no-strings-attached “arrangements” that trade in society’s most valued currencies: wealth, youth and beauty. In the cheesy lexicon of the site, they are “sugar daddies” and “sugar babies.”
[snip]
Beth Bailey, a Temple University historian of courtship, said that her first reaction to the site was “revulsion.” But when she reconsidered it within the historical context of dating, she had a somewhat different response.
Heterosexual relationships, including marriage, have long involved economic transactions, but Bailey points out that when men provided financial security, they traditionally did so in exchange for a woman’s sexual virtue (and potential to bear and rear children), not for sexual thrills. For that, they often turned to prostitutes and mistresses, involving a more frank money-for-sex exchange. It’s only in the last century that money has been traded — albeit indirectly — for sexual attention from “respectable” unmarried women. In the early 1900s, courtship shifted from girls’ porches or parlors to a commercial venture: a date. Etiquette manuals of the time were explicit — boys were to pay for meals, entertainment and transportation, and in return, girls were to provide well-groomed company, rapt attention and at least a certain amount of physical affection. His money bought not only companionship but also her indebtedness.
“It made a lot of people uneasy, because if men’s money was central to the dating relationship, what distinguished it from prostitution?” Bailey says. Seen in this context, Bailey argues, Seeking Arrangement “is a piece of contemporary society. It’s simply more explicit and transparent about the bargains struck in the traditional model of dating.”
With an important distinction. Whatever the transactional standing of 20th Century dating culture (and how innocent it seems in retrospect), up until quite recently it at least pretended to be actual courtship, i.e. a way of wooing a husband or wife. In contrast, the whole point of SeekingArrangments.com is that marriage is explicitly off the table from the get-go.
But then, marriage seems almost an accidental byproduct of mainstream "dating" culture anyway. Once you allow sex outside of marriage, you find all the secondary defenses against complete sexual anarchy to be so weak as to be hardly worth the effort.
So it's hard for me to get much upset by Brandon Wade's creation. On the contrary, from a nerd's point of view, it is appealingly democratic: money is fungible, and here it buys opportunity for an almost-exclusive GFE with a pretty young woman. Plus, it has two apparent advantages over prostitution: it's more satisfying to the ego, and it's more cost effective. Remember that Ashley Dupre' wanted $5k per hour, whereas here $5k buys a month or more of attention.
But the externalities remain: such activity continues our distortion of the sexual marketplace away from monogamy, marriage and family.
One more thing:
Sugar babies outnumber daddies 10 to 1, Wade says.
In hindsight, it's hard for me to remember why I was once so fool as to believe in the moral superiority of women.
11 comments:
"It made a lot of people uneasy, because if men’s money was central to the dating relationship, what distinguished it from prostitution?" Bailey says.Aside from what you mentioned, there's also sexual exclusivity. The problem with a prostitute, from a man's perspective, isn't that she trades sex for money; it's that she's not faithful. Whereas exclusivity is (in theory) part of the deal with marriage.
Also, most wives, if they were in it solely for the money, would hold out for more than they actually get, which suggests that they're not.
Remember that Ashley Dupre' wanted $5k per hour...IIRC, the $5000 was prepayment for multiple sessions, and the price was closer to $1,000 per hour. Still much cheaper to rent by the month, granted. Which makes sense. A prostitute can dramatically reduce her risk of disease, violence, and arrest by limiting herself to a single client.
Brandon: thanks for the correction. I couldn't remember Ashley's precise pay scale.
Regarding the imbalance, the profiles are free for women to put up. Even if a woman is not seriously entertaining the possibility, finding out (without expense or fear of prosecution) that some guy would be willing to pay $5k a month to be with her would be a pretty substantial ego-boost and something she might feel better knowing. Most guys are less enthusiastic to know if they can buy a girlfriend for that amount.
Trumwill: this is an excellent point. When merely joining the site costs $600 per year ($1800 for the "Diamond Club" level), male membership will of necessity be limited to the highly motivated.
Come to think of it, I'd like to see the site's stats: what percentage of members actually get to meet a woman in person? What percent actually get a "relationship" from the site? These are the kind of numbers that, for $600, a prospective member should want to know.
I would bet the percentage of those that meet someone in person are pretty high. Though I suspect it will vary from individual to individual (and not just based on their pocketbook). There will probably be a number of girls who, once they meet the guy, realize that they just can't move forward with it.
Regarding high motivation, it reminds me of back in my single days when I had more money than time to meet people and signed up for an expensive Christian dating service. At first I was disappointed (though not surprised) by the comparative lack of selection, but my response rate was amazing. Not only was any woman that signed up for the service motivated, but they knew that I was, too, because most guys don't pay that kind of money to use-and-lose a young woman.
Nothing from that service worked out, but I met some pretty impressive and people through it. Moreso from that service (limited selection and all) than any other I participated in except one.
Wow. By what I take to be the standards of online personals, your story is a ringing endorsement! Of course, judging by your photo, you were helped by being you.
It occurs to me that the social dynamic whereby men seek youth and beauty and women seek material security is a dynamic in any relationship. But for some reason, most women won't admit to themselves that this is what's going on. Hence the necessity of game: men create for themselves the illusion of social dominance while pretending not to be impressed by a woman's physical appearance. Women, for their part, pretend to themselves that wealth doesn't matter, even so far as to reject out of hand appeals made on that basis.
From a nerd's point of view, the advantage of this dating service is that it selects for women who, at some level, are prepared to skip game and consciously embrace the underlying dynamic. That's not to say that money compensates for anything; I would expect, and the article implies, that fit, educated men with good breath will still outscore fat, drunk and grabby. But the website still puts the nerds way ahead of where they would otherwise be.
It occurs to me that the social dynamic whereby men seek youth and beauty and women seek material security is a dynamic in any relationship.Any relationship? My wife is a doctor and I'm younger! :)
I do think that it is often an unspoken dynamic. I knew a young woman during my young-and-single days that I thought I would be great with. She was dating someone so I never asked her out, but we had (have) so much in common. And I didn't think that her relationship would last because they didn't seem well suited for one another.
In retrospect, though, she needed to marry someone better-to-do than I was ever going to be. I don't know how conscious she was of that, but I don't think it was a coincidence that she married a future doctor (yet another thing in common...). She was raised well-to-do but did not have much career ambition money-wise. So she needed someone that did. Her husband provides that. Importantly so.
I think it's one of those things that varies from individual to individual. This site demonstrates that there are a lot of people at least interested in the prospect of marrying up for the sake of marrying up, but the number of girls that sign up for a site like this are a small slice of the female population. No doubt there are many, many more than won't sign up, but it's certainly not a representative population sample.
I can't resist pointing out that the sector I see the importance of money being greater is in conservative women (aforementioned doctor-marryer was a Republican). Makes sense, though, given traditional views of the household, so I'm not assigning moral value in this instance.
But I think different people demand different things. I think that women's desire for a man with money is actually overstated somewhat, at least once you get beyond the whole "must have stable income" (or maybe "must be able to provide the driving force in affording a lifestyle comparable to what I was raised in") threshold. I think that the importance to physical attractiveness in men is generally understated. Because they are generally less hung up on appearance than men, some assume that appearance doesn't (or shouldn't) matter except in the extremes.
But I think that some women do look for wealth. Others look for attractiveness. Others still look for forceful personalities. Some look for combinations of the above or other things. Being wealthy does increase your pool of potential mates. Being poor decreases it. But it's far from determinative even in cases where the guy is not hideous/gorgeous in appearance or repulsive (or magnetic) in some other way.
Yeah, my wife is older than me, too. But like your friend, she needed taking care of, which I was able to do. And she has nurtured me through some rough patches, which not all women would have stuck around for. So it's worked out pretty well.
It's true that different women make different trade-offs when selecting from among the men available to them based on their particular background and circumstances. But that's not the same thing as saying that women want different things. Women (almost all of them) want remarkably the same things: physical, social and material dominance.
I know these sociobiological explanations can get a little facile. But if you accept the basic evolutionary paradigm, then it should strike you as necessarily true that the present pattern of female preferences were under positive selection somewhere in our evolutionary past.
My theory-o-the-day is this: in our pre-industrial past, raw physicality and social dominance were positively correlated with the ability to provide protection and sustenance to women in their childbearing role, and women's evolved preferences reflect this fact. The late-agricultural and industrial period put a premium on other qualities; diligence and cognitive ability -- nerd qualities, basically -- became postively correlated with the ability to support women. Unfortunately (from a nerd's point of view), the industrial period also created the conditions for female emancipation before natural selection could complete its work changing female preferences in favor of nerd qualities. So women, freed from material dependence on men and from the consequences of their own reproductive choices, now act on their pre-industrial preference pattern irrespective of any actual evolutionary benefit.
For this and other reasons, I, too, doubt that SeekingArrangement will become particularly common among women.
Women (almost all of them) want remarkably the same things: physical, social and material dominance.What woman, or what man for that matter, wouldn't want these things if they were available? These are all desirable things to have (except to the extent that it would make a man feel insecure). The question is not whether, in a void, they want these things, but rather the importance that each of them are given. Most women also, all things being equal, want a good personality, shared values, and a plethora of other things. The question is what they are willing to sacrifice to get what. That's why the different weights are so important.
The vibe I've getting from you is that wealth is a dominant desire. For many (most?) the overwhelming one. That's primarily what I am disagreeing with.
Not consciously. On the contrary, women whose dominant consideration is wealth are the exception, which is why I predicted that SeekingArrangement would remain a marginal player.
Fair enough. Your third comment threw me off. I can get kind of wound up and lose track of what people are saying sometimes.
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