$ugar COATED

freeman-s asked: Hi, you said in your previous post that the Sugar Daddies offered an estimated total of $8,865.30 in gifts etc. Was this per daddy, or for all of them? You then said that this was 3% of their net worth. I wonder because if you meant as a group, that would put their incomes at only $26,864.82 (assuming 11 daddies). But if you meant per daddy, that puts the average daddy's income at $295,513 which seems too high, surely there are lots of sugar daddies on around $100,000 a year?

Hi freeman-s. Thanks for your message and I apologize for the delay in response. I haven’t been on here for awhile! I determined the estimated $8,865.30 as an average total. I determined net worth and total income as an average as well, among all the sugar daddies who offered me “compensation” in the forms of travel/gifts.

Yes, there are many incomes above $100,000 - it is frequently posted as $500,000 and above (net worth falls in the millions). Of course, though, this is the Internet and their financial value was not verified; it was simply what they posted.

 

And now, my friends, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: THE PROFILES. Some were intriguing, some questionable, others hilarious, and several simply atrocious. Out of respect for the men I am about to make fun of, I won’t post their pictures or use their real names. But that is being really nice; they were the ones who chose to put this stuff online.

So here were some of my “Top Matches”:

• lefacaliente69 (You need to either know Spanish or translate it yourself - I’m not writing it on here.)
• RichardHead1 (I bet he insists upon using his nickname.)
• Looking for Juliet (To whom I responded: “Juliet doesn’t exist. She killed herself. I hope you’re not looking for the suicidal type.”)
• Willing to Invest in Your Future (And who tried to do so by proposing that I come to the U.S. to spend a week with him, when I am clearly enhancing my education by studying abroad.)
• Pleasures44 (Who didn’t have a profile picture.)

Ummm…nice to meet you, too….

They say, “don’t judge a book by its cover”. But is that really the case? Just how much weight do these secondary factors have?

No person is single-faceted. I like to think that people value my character and personality rather than my physical appearance alone. Likewise, I created these dating profiles not to find a man who was attractive not only due to his wealth alone, but who was also financially wise, humble, and an interesting conversationalist.

Were men, as they themselves stated, really looking for both a beautiful and intelligent woman? To test this, I created three different profiles. Although all had the same or similar pictures of myself, each was distinguished by different degrees of sophistication. Let’s consider them:

Profile #1: The Work Hard/Play Hard Mentality.

This was intended to be a true representation of myself. It was friendly and sophisticated: an open-minded tone, the use of a Kierkegaard quote for my greeting, proper grammar, and articulate vocabulary. (Note the use of “assiduous”, which was meant to scare off anyone who thought I was dumb enough to accept a quick and worthless proposition.) I received plenty of responses from this profile, and some initially seemed to be a great fit: the men sought to help me accomplish my goals and were impressed with my education. But only initially. Too quickly the conversations turned to discuss my amount of “compensation” required. And I knew that they would expect to be compensated in return.

Maybe I was getting such crude responses because I wasn’t specific enough in what I was seeking. “Spontaneity”? Could be interpreted as a quick exchange. “Diligent yet fun”? Close to the idea of “work hard and play harder.” And although these words were used in a purely innocuous sense, I began to think by some of the messages I received that they were not perceived as such. So I decided to eliminate some of the words that could be misconstrued.

Profile #2: The Platonic Friend.

While maintaining the same pictures and “About Me” sections, I updated my profile to state that I was simply looking for “friendship” and “interesting conversation”. Over the course of two days that I had this profile, I received no new inquires from men. No winks, no favorites, and no messages.

Profile #3: The Generic Gold-Digger.

As I extracted the information from the sites in preparation for my blog, I changed most of the relevant information so people wouldn’t find me when I deleted my profile: my age and location were completely fabricated. In addition, I created stereotypical taglines: I mean, how much more generic can you get than “I like long walks on the beach”? My listed name was “Diamonds Forever”, which to me seems very superficial and materialistic.

So what were the results of this profile? I received three messages from men who were seriously interested in my profile. In two days. But I received none in the same amount of time when I created an articulate profile as a woman seeking only friendship? There is something terribly wrong with this picture.

First, the raw numbers:

• Total number of messages received: 11
• Total number of “winks” received: 6
• Total number of times I was “favorited”: 7
• Estimated monetary value of gifts/compensation offered: $8,865.39 USD
• Estimated monetary value of gifts/compensation offered as a percentage of the Sugar Daddy’s annual salary: 3%
• Estimated monetary value of gifts/compensation offered as a percentage of the Sugar Daddy’s net worth: 0.2%

Now, the analysis:

I could have potentially received $9,000 in cash/gifts over the course of 13 days. For a student, this sum is very attractive at face value. But consider the “investment” of the wealthy sugar daddies. This compensation, weighted as a value of their annual salaries, is negligible. The deduction is analogous to the combined 2011 Medicare Tax. When compared to the value of the Sugar Daddy’s net worth, the result is even more minuscule.

Is the “Sugar Tax” high enough to value respect?

Notes:

1. Upon the receipt of a “wink”, the user receives the automated message: I am interested in getting to know you. Please reply if you are interested.
2. Breakdown of estimated monetary value of gifts/compensation offered: I was offered three specific propositions —Easter weekend in Europe; a weekend near Roussillon, France;  and a week-long trip to Laguna Beach that included travel suggestions to Disneyland, Universal Studios, Hollywood, beaches, wineries, and a weekly “charge”. To value the cost of a weekend stay in Barcelona, I calculated the cost of a business class ticket from Madrid to Barcelona using kayak.com. I included a two-night stay (“Romance Package”) at a five-star hotel in the city, as well as two dinners at one of the most expensive restaurants using the price of the tasting menu with the course wines agreement. To value the cost of the boat trip in the Marina near Roussillon, I calculated the cost of a business class ticket from Madrid to the closest airport in Marseilles, France. To value the cost of a week-long trip to Laguna Beach, I included the cost of a first-class plane ticket from Madrid to Santa Ana, a Disneyland ticket, a “VIP Experience” ticket to Universal Studios, and an additional $350 to attribute a price to “escort services” (According to an actual escort’s account in SuperFreaknomics, her prices ranged from $50-$300/hour. Using a conservative estimate of $50/day, the cost of the entire week was valued at $350.)
3. The estimated monetary value of gifts/compensation offered as a percentage of the Sugar Daddy’s annual salary was calculated using the weighted average of each Sugar Daddy’s investment. The amount paid for each encounter (see #2) was divided by the lower end of the respective Sugar Daddy’s posted net income.
   
4. The estimated monetary value of gifts/compensation offered as a percentage of the Sugar Daddy’s net worth was calculated using the weighted average of each Sugar Daddy’s investment. The amount paid for each encounter (see #2) was divided by the lower end of the respective Sugar Daddy’s posted net worth.
5. According to AccountingCoach.com, the combined Medicare tax is 2.9% for all employee earnings for 2011. (This includes a tax of 1.45% of employee withholdings plus an equal amount that the employer must match.)

I remember the first time I heard of such an arrangement. I was at a friend’s house, and a girl spoke of how her “sugar daddy” had paid for some college tuition. And she hadn’t even kissed him. That evening, I went home and looked up the website. Yes, the idea was ridiculous and dangerous, but ridiculously and dangerously genius: beautiful women post pictures while wealthy men post their income and voilà! - the perfect Darwinian couple is created. Because the expectation is short term, it’s flirting with the title of an escort service, or worse, prostitution. But as I considered it, I realized that the main difference between a prostitute and a monogamous marriage was time. Or so I thought.

I hope you’ll follow my posts as I write of my two-week experience as a sugar baby. I created profiles on three different websites, first as a joke and eventually evolving to the deliberate effort to meet interesting, cultured, and —above all — respectful people. I didn’t meet any of the men in person and I didn’t gain the lifestyle I “deserved as a young, beautiful, ambitious woman” (as one site founder classifies her “perfect princesses”). However, I did realize how money and sex can be compelling factors that override the requisite of respect to dangerously tempt the human heart.

Photo credit: Tiffany Kray pics, flickr.com