{"id":1462,"date":"2017-05-15T04:55:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T08:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2019-01-15T03:29:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T08:29:36","slug":"john-doyle-a-tale-of-sugar-daddies-and-transactional-dating-a-big-so-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/john-doyle-a-tale-of-sugar-daddies-and-transactional-dating-a-big-so-what\/","title":{"rendered":"John Doyle: A Tale Of Sugar Daddies And Transactional Dating \u2013 A Big So What?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Who am I to judge twenty-something women who sell their bodies or their mere presence to older, well-off men for money? I don\u2019t judge. It doesn\u2019t bother me. It\u2019s their business.<\/p>\n

What does bother me is a certain type of spin \u2013 the presentation of the story of selling yourself for money as a fraught, cautionary tale about discovering that it is emotionally damaging to peddle your body and charm. Of course, it\u2019s damaging. And if you\u2019re 28 years old with a university degree, you\u2019re either formidably, implausibly naive or you\u2019re just concocting drama out of the bloody obvious.<\/p>\n

\"steps<\/p>\n

Sugar Sisters<\/em> (Thursday, CBC, 9 p.m. on Firsthand<\/em>) is the saddest thing. And bothersome. It\u2019s about the world of \u201csugar dating.\u201d It\u2019s made by Hannah Donegan (with Ann Shin), who chronicles her own and her sisters\u2019 journey into transactional dating \u2013 the search for older guys who will pay them handsomely to go on dates, but the transaction doesn\u2019t involve sex. In an essay for the CBC website, Donegan explains, \u201cThis story is told from my own perspective \u2013 that of a sex-positive queer feminist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the doc is about Hannah herself, who has a live-in girlfriend, Jocelyn. There is some emphasis, but not enough, about how Jocelyn feels about her partner selling herself to men. It seems she\u2019s a tad upset on a regular basis, and little wonder.<\/p>\n

Hannah and her younger sisters, Amalia and Caroline, are in this sugar-dating thing together. Why? Well, you know, they\u2019re young and usually working two part-time jobs to make ends meet. They\u2019re presented to us as \u201cbroke,\u201d but in reality, they live very bourgeois lives. These are not desperately poor people forced by extreme circumstance into selling themselves. They want it easy and they figure that using their youth and looks is the easiest way to having a more cushy life.<\/p>\n

Their adventures begin with a sense of fun and games. They look on their \u201cdates,\u201d hopefully, as cash machines. Sometimes they get money for simply having dinner with some guy, and sometimes they don\u2019t. And that\u2019s the point of the exercise \u2013 get money from men for simply being present.<\/p>\n

They say they look on it as work and hope for one or two hundred dollars per date. Since it\u2019s \u201cwork,\u201d they won\u2019t have alcohol. But, of course, eventually, they do indeed.<\/p>\n

Caroline believes she\u2019s smart enough to negotiate her way through the minefield of transactional dating. She meets Sandy, who gets thousands of dollars a month from a sugar daddy. \u201cPeople pay Sandy just for her attention,\u201d Caroline exclaims, wide-eyed and jealous. \u201cThat is so cool!\u201d<\/p>\n

The mixture of greed and naivete is breathtaking. And a scene in which two of the young women sit in the back of a car, cackling about the cash they\u2019ve just received on a date, is mind-boggling in its depiction of crassness. Oh, by the way, mom and dad disapprove of this \u201ctransactional dating,\u201d but the disapproval seems to have limited impact.<\/p>\n

Long story short, not all of the sisters are either successful or entirely comfortable in the sugar-dating world. But one does persevere. After all, there is a documentary film to be made here. Hannah goes to New York to check out the sugar-dating scene there. Viewers get a glimpse of many creepy guys gathered to meet young women looking for a sugar daddy. The event organizer, a guy more creepy than most, says, \u201cIt\u2019s a mutually beneficial relationship, that\u2019s the mantra!\u201d Right.<\/p>\n

Our heroine starts a transactional relationship with a guy in New York named David: \u201cAt the end of our date, he handed me $400 cash and said he wanted to do it again. This could be a regular income.\u201d And it becomes just that \u2013 he pays for her to visit him regularly in New York and pays her when they go on dates.<\/p>\n

The inevitable climax occurs when David offers to pay her living expenses and they negotiate. After, he invites her back to his place for a drink. We\u2019re told he asks her to stay the night but she flees. And then comes the confession: \u201cI realize if I\u2019m going to do this and get money and there\u2019s going to be a big payout, I\u2019m gonna have to sleep with these men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, duh. Nothing about Sugar Sisters<\/em> rings quite true. It\u2019s not an expos\u00e9, nor is it truly illuminating. If it were to be truly honest, there would be much more from Jocelyn, who is the one the viewer longs to hear from. She is, after all, the partner left behind while Hannah gallivants about, seeing men for money, disappearing for days and, while at home, spending a lot of time texting back and forth with guys.<\/p>\n

The conclusion is no surprise \u2013 somebody discovers that it\u2019s better to concentrate on the stable relationships in life and stick with caring people. As an attempt at a cautionary tale, Sugar Sisters<\/em> is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t judge twentysomething women who sell their bodies or their mere presence to older, well-off men for money, but I will judge Sugar Sisters<\/em> \u2013 somebody was desperate for a career move with this ridiculous documentary, and that\u2019s the sum of it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who am I to judge twenty-something women who sell their bodies or their mere presence to older, well-off men for money? I don\u2019t judge. It doesn\u2019t bother me. It\u2019s their business. What does bother me is a certain type of spin \u2013 the presentation of the story of selling yourself for money as a fraught, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":5030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-for-sugar-daddies","8":"anons"},"views":821,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sugardaddy.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}